Leaderboard

So a couple of years ago I was reading about the ZLIB documentation on compression and how it works. It was an interesting blog post going into how it works, and what compression algorithms like zip really do. This is using the LZ77 and Huffman Tables. It was very education and I thought it might be fun to try to write some of it in G. The deflate function in ZLIB is very well understood from an external code call and so the only real ever so slight place that it made sense in my head was to use it on LabVIEW RT. The wonderful OpenG Zip package has support for Linux RT in version 4.2.0b1 as posted here. For now this is the version I will be sticking with because of the RT support. Still I went on my little journey trying to make my own in pure LabVIEW to see what I could do. My first attempt failed immensely and I did not have the knowledge, to understand what was wrong, or how to debug it. As a test of AI progression I decided to dig up this old code and start asking AI about what I could do to improve my code, and to finally have it working properly. Well over the holiday break Google Gemini delivered. It was very helpful for the first 90% or so. It was great having a dialog with back and forth asking about edge cases, and how things are handled. It gave examples and knew what the next steps were. Admittedly it is a somewhat academic problem, and so maybe that's why the AI did so well. And I did still reference some of the other content online. The last 10% were a bit of a pain. The AI hallucinated several times giving wrong information, or analyzed my byte streams incorrectly. But this did help me understand it even more since I had to debug it. So attached is my first go at it in 2022 Q3. It requires some packages from VIPM.IO. Image Manipulation, for making some debug tree drawings which is actually disabled at the moment. And the new version of my Array package 3.1.3.23. So how is performance? Well I only have the deflate function, and it only is on the dynamic table, which only gets called if there is some amount of data around 1K and larger. I tested it with random stuff with lots of repetition and my 700k string took about 100ms to process while the OpenG method took about 2ms. Compression was similar but OpenG was about 5% smaller too. It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and will probably apply things I learned, but realistically I will stick with the OpenG for real work. If there are improvements to make, the largest time sink is in detecting the patterns. It is a 32k sliding window and I'm unsure of what techniques can be used to make it faster. ZLIB G Compression.zip

Phew that is a pretty strong opinion! Although I personally am not a fan of the overall style of DQMH none of my problems are with the scripting/wizards or placeholder text. I think any framework that tries to do "a lot" will be complicated... your own personal framework (which you likely find trivial to use) is likely to be a bit weird to others. DQMH is extremely popular for a reason... To paraphrase the words of a wiser person than I, "please don't yuck someone elses yum"

Seems like this one has "escaped everyone's grasp" too. ParallelLoop.ShowAllSchedules=True Because was only checked from the password-protected diagram of ParallelForLoopDialog.vi (LabVIEW 20xx\resource\dialog). Present since LabVIEW 2010. When activated, allows to apply more advanced iteration partitioning schedule. In other words, instead of this you will get this Сould this be useful? I can't say. Maybe in some very specific use-cases. In my quick tests I didn't manage to get increase in any productivity. It's easy to mess up with those options and make things worse, than by default. Also can be changed by this scripting counterpart.

Look at this new download on VIPM https://www.vipm.io/package/bjm_lib_request_power/

You want an ability to override the Equality or Comparison operators? I'm unsure, whether it really existed in OpenG packages, but now you have those neat malleable VIs, that let you do that: Search Unsorted 1D Array , Sort 1D Array , Search Sorted 1D Array. They have an additional input to specify your own equals or less function in a form of a custom comparison class or a VI refnum. There's an article to help: Creating a Custom Sorting Function in LabVIEW

This is exactly what was said in that ancient thread: Tree control in labview. So if you add 65536*N to the Item Symbols property of the Listbox and have the "Enable Indentation" option activated, you shift the symbol/glyph and the text N levels to the right. Could be useful for simple 'parent-child' relationships, if you don't want to use a Tree. And still it's used in Find Examples / NI Example Finder window:

I once went for an interview where they gave me a coding test and asked me to modify it. It was a very long time ago so I don't remember the exact modification they wanted (nothing to do with memory leaks) but I do remember the obtain queue and read queue inside a while loop with the release queue outside. I asked if they wanted me to also fix the memory leak as well as the modifications and they were a little puzzled until I explained what you have just said. I must have seen (and fixed) this while-loop bug-pattern a thousand times since then in various code bases. I also created this VI which I generally use instead of the primitives as it intialises on first call, can be called from anywhere, and prevents most foot-shooting by rolling them all into a single VI and ensuring all references but 1 are closed after use. Queue.vi

Those aren't typo's and errors. They are tests to see if we are paying attention.

In the past I have used the IMAQ drivers for getting the image, which on its own does not require any additional runtime license. It is one of those lesser known secrets that acquiring and saving the image is free, but any of the useful tools have a development, and deployment license associated with it. I've also had mild success with leveraging VLC. Here is the library I used in the past, and here is another one I haven't used but looks promising. With these you can have a live stream of a camera as long as VLC can talk to it, and then pretty easily save snapshots. EDIT: The NI software for getting images through IMAQ for free is called "NI Vision Common Resources". This LAVA thread is where I first learned about it.

Just to share how I got around this: By deleting 1 front panel item at a time I found that one single control was causing PaneRelief to crash; an XY graph. Setting it temporarily to not scale and replacing it with a standard XY graph (the one I had had some colours set to transparent etc) was enough to avoid having PaneRelief crash LabVIEW, but it would now just present a timeout error: I found a way arund this too though: the VI in question was member of a DQMH lvlib that probably added a lot of complexity for PaneRelief. With a copy saved as a non-member it worked: I could replace the graph, edit the splitters with PaneRelief without the timeout error (even setting the size to 0), then copy back the original graph replacing the temporary one, and finally move the copy back into the lvlib and swap it with the original. Voila! What a Relief... 😉 I probably have to repeat this whole ordeal if I ever need to readjust the splitters in that VI with PaneRelief though 😮

I confirm that this license is nearly identical to the standard EULA we use for our commercial products. Some wording is not applicable to a distributed palette of VIs like this. Our intention was to share a few reusable tools, used internally, with the community. Ideally, we should have released them under a standard open-source license such as MIT or a similar option. These VIs have been released “as-is,” without support or any guarantee that they will function for your specific use case. You may need to troubleshoot or fix any issues on your own. Feel free to use them in any context. I’ll look into whether it's possible to update the packages on the tool network to replace the current license with a more standard open-source one.

I put a temporary ban on inserting external links in posts (except from a safe list). We'll see what affect it has.

This is the modern 2020's equivalent of "works for me".

Your reporting of spam is helpful. And just like you are doing one report per user is enough since I ban the user and all their posts are deleted. If spam gets too frequent I notify Michael and he tweaks dials behind the scene to try to help. This might be by looking at and temporarily banning new accounts from IP blocks, countries, or banning key words in posts. He also will upgrade the forum's platform tools occasionally and it gets better at detecting and rejecting spam.

You can 'renew' your LabVIEW CE license this way if you haven't tried it: Go to https://www.ni.com Hover over your user icon in the upper right and select "My Account". Scroll down to "Products and Services" and select "View my products". Scroll down to find your LabVIEW Community Edition and select "Renew" from the drop-down menu to the right. Apologies if you've already tried this and still had issues. Maybe someone else will find it useful.

There should be a forum on the dark side for that, but anyway, here you go. LabGRAD_21.zip

yes

So in LV>=20, using OpenSerializer.Base64 and G-Image. That simple. Linux just does not have IMAQ. Well, who said that the result should be an IMAQ image?

The thing I loved about the original LabVIEW was that it was not namespaced or partitioned. You could run an executable and share variables without having to use things like memory maps. I used to to have a toolbox of executables (DVM, Power Supplies, oscilloscopes, logging etc. ) and each test system was just launching the appropriate executable[s] at the appropriate times. It was like OOP composition for an entire test system but with executable modules. Additionally, crashes were unheard of. In the 1990's I think I had 1 insane object in 18 months and didn't know what a GPF fault was until I started looking at other languages. We could run out of memory if we weren't careful though (remember the Bulldozer?). Progress!

I haven't had much time to investigate this until this month, but I think I've found the cause. XNodes on the production computer were not designed optimally. In the AdaptToInputs ability I was unconditionally passing a GenerateCode reply, thinking that the AdaptToInputs is only called when interacting with the XNode (connecting/disconnecting wires). It turned out that LabVIEW also calls the AdaptToInputs ability once, when the VIs are loaded and any single change is made, no matter if it touches the XNode or not. As I had many such non-optimal XNodes in many places, it was causing code regeneration in all of them. Besides of that some of my VIs had very high code complexity (11 to 13), because of a bunch of nested structures. When the XNodes regeneration was occurring simultaneously with the VIs recompilation, it was taking that a minute or so. After I added extra conditions into my AdaptToInputs ability (issue a GenerateCode reply only, when the Term Types are changed), the edits in my VIs started to take 1.5 seconds. Still the hierarchy saves can be slow, when some 'heavy' VIs are changed, but it's a task for me to refactor those VIs, so their complexity could decrease to 10 or less. By the way, my example from the previous page was not suitable for demonstrating the situation, as its code complexity is low and the Match Regular Expression XNode does not issue a GenerateCode reply in the AdaptToInputs.

I have always used this library to prevent the screensaver and windows lock from occurring. Our IT locks down the computer so the screensaver, lock screen, cannot be changed. This library bascially tells Windows it's in Presentation mode, e.g., slideshow, watching a movie, etc, such that the screen will not got to screensaver or lock screen.

I don't know what drivers are used under the hood, but I've recently used G-Audio to interface to the mic/speakers for a LabVIEW application I was working on.

I only switched to Win10 3 years ago from Win 7 and that was only because I wanted encrypted SMB to my NAS. I'll think about desktop Linux when they fix their application distribution methods . I dropped my Linux LabVIEW product support for a reason->my products broke every time someone else updated their product.

This toolkit offer you an efficient, stable, and reliable front panel control value refresh function. User can design their UI dashboard without any code development. 1. Powerful parallel execution capability, Support clone reentrant execution running mode, you can create multi dashboard UIs at the same time and controls can synchronous refresh across different UI. 2. High-speed data refresh capability, even with thousands of controls on a single UI, can easily maintain a refresh rate of 50ms while consuming very little CPU resources. 3. Support all control data types that "Tag Engine" support, this mean the only thing you need to do is to change the control "Label" with "Tag name", then the control will refresh automatically. 4. Support "muParser Expression", you can type the control "Label" with "Expression" that muParser Expression support, For example "a + b" "a > 1 & b >= 2".

I am also rocking version 4.2.0b1-1 for the same reasons.

Sir, TestStand is developed with C#, and my Sequence Toolkit was developed via LabVIEW from zero, and I posted it on this forum for the purpose of learning and communication. As a LabVIEW enthusiast who had ever worked at NI for several years, I don't understand why you said that.

I think this is fixed now. Please check.

I posted a demo set of VIs here which can pop up a window, centered on whatever monitor the mouse is on. There's also settings to have the window center on the mouse wherever it is, but saying on the same monitor. And yes this uses the All Screens, Working Area properties.

There is an Application property called Display->All Monitors. It will give you the pixel ranges of the monitors in your system. What I've done is to use the calling VI's position to figure out which monitor it was on and then place the new VI window as needed. You could use a win32 dll call to get the mouse position as well if that better meets your requirements.

When you send the message you encapsulate the message as a cluster of string and variant. You don't seem to unwrap the variant from the name/variant cluster in the receiver. What I expect to see is something like this in the receiver:

Discussion forums like LAVA and ni.com are challenged these days by LLMs that can answer in a well structured manner very quickly and handle follow-up questions on the spot. Forums have their stenghts, but when it comes to basic questions that LLMs can find a lot about, spread across multiple forums, the LLMs win. It is a bit of a catch 22 though, as the LLMs need the forums alive to stay up to date 😮 ------------------------------ Here is Grok answering you question of what a DVR is: DVRs as References: In LabVIEW, DVRs (Data Value References) are a mechanism to access data by reference rather than by value. This means that instead of creating copies of the data (as is typical in LabVIEW's dataflow paradigm), a DVR provides a pointer-like reference to a single memory location where the data resides. This avoids unnecessary data duplication, which can be critical for large datasets or performance-sensitive applications. Avoiding Copies: By using DVRs, you can manipulate the same data in memory without creating copies, which is especially useful for large arrays, clusters, or other complex data structures. This reduces memory usage and improves performance. Parallel Operations and Race Conditions: When multiple parallel operations (e.g., parallel loops or VIs) access the same DVR, there is a potential for race conditions if the access is not properly synchronized. LabVIEW provides the In-Place Element Structure to safely access and modify DVR data. This structure ensures that only one operation can read or write to the DVR at a time, preventing race conditions. Without this, simultaneous read/write operations could lead to unpredictable results or data corruption. Key Points to Add: Thread Safety: DVRs are not inherently thread-safe. You must use the In-Place Element Structure (or other synchronization mechanisms like semaphores) to avoid race conditions when multiple parallel tasks access the same DVR. Use Cases: DVRs are commonly used in scenarios where you need to share data between parallel loops, modules, or processes without copying, such as in real-time systems or when managing shared resources. Limitations: DVRs are only valid within the application instance where they are created, and the data they reference is freed when the reference is deleted or the application stops. --------------------- Before DVRs we typically had to resort to cloning of functional globals (VIs), but DVRs make this a little more dynamic and slick. You can have a single malleable VI operate on multiple types of DVRs too e.g., that opens up a lot of nice reuse. If you have an object that requires multiple circular buffers e.g. you can include circular buffer objects in the private data of that object, with the circular buffer objects containing a DVR to an array acting as that buffer... -------------------- Here is ChatGPT comparing functional globals with DVRs: Functional Globals (FGs) and Data Value References (DVRs) are both techniques used in programming (particularly in LabVIEW) to manage shared data, but they offer different approaches and have different strengths and weaknesses. FGs encapsulate data within a VI that provides access methods, while DVRs provide a reference to a shared memory location. Functional Globals (FGs): Encapsulation: FGs encapsulate data within a VI, often a subVI, that acts as an interface for accessing and modifying the data. This encapsulation can help prevent unintended modifications and promote better code organization. Control over Access: The FG's VI provides explicit methods (e.g., "Get" and "Set" operations) for interacting with the data, allowing for controlled access and potential validation or error handling. Potential for Race Conditions: While FGs can help avoid some race conditions associated with traditional global variables, they can still be susceptible if not implemented carefully, particularly if the access methods themselves are not synchronized. Performance: FGs can introduce some overhead due to the VI calls, but this can be mitigated by using techniques like inlining and careful design. Example: An FG could be used to manage a configuration setting, with a "Get Configuration" and "Set Configuration" VI providing access to the settings. Data Value References (DVRs): Shared Memory Reference: DVRs are references to a memory location, allowing multiple VIs to access and modify the same data. This is a more direct way of sharing data than FGs. Flexibility: DVRs can be used with various data types, including complex data structures, and can be passed as parameters to subVIs. Potential for Race Conditions: DVRs, like traditional globals, can be prone to race conditions if not handled carefully. Proper synchronization mechanisms (e.g., queues, semaphores, or action engines) are often needed to prevent data corruption. Performance: DVRs can be very efficient, especially when used with optimized data access patterns. Example: A DVR could be used to share a large array between different parts of an application, with one VI writing to the array and another reading from it. Key Differences and Considerations: Control vs. Flexibility: FGs offer more control over data access through their defined interface, while DVRs offer more flexibility in terms of the data types and structures that can be shared. Race Condition Mitigation: While both can be susceptible, FGs can be designed with built-in synchronization mechanisms (like action engines), while DVRs require explicit synchronization mechanisms to prevent race conditions. Performance Trade-offs: DVRs can offer better performance in many cases, especially when dealing with large data sets, but this can be offset by the complexity of managing synchronization. Code Readability and Maintainability: FGs can make code more readable and maintainable by encapsulating data access logic, but poorly designed FGs can also lead to confusion. In summary: Use Functional Globals when: You need controlled access to data, want to encapsulate data management logic, or need to ensure some level of synchronization. Use Data Value References when: You need to share data efficiently between multiple parts of your application, need flexibility in the data types you are sharing, or when performance is critical and synchronization can be handled externally. It's worth noting that in many cases, a combination of both techniques might be used to leverage the strengths of each approach. For example, a DVR might be used to share data, while a functional global (or an action engine) is used to manage access to that data in a controlled and synchronized manner.

Some people might be tempted to use Obtain Queue and Obtain Notifier with a name and assume that since the queue is named each Obtain function returns the same refnum. That is however not true. Each Obtain returns a unique refnum that references a memory structure of a few 10s of bytes that references the actual Queue or Notifier. So the underlaying Queue or Notifier is indeed only existing once per name, BUT each refnum still consumes some memory. And to make matters more tricky, there is only a limited amount of refnum IDs of any sort that can be created. This number lies somewhere between 2^20 and 2^24. Basically for EVERY Obtain you also have to call a Release. Otherwise you leak memory and unique refnum IDs.

@Rolf Kalbermatter the admins removed that setting for you as everything you say should be written down and never deleted 🙂

yeah that is the payload 😉

It feels strange to me too. As I understand it, the "no merge" clause makes libraries legally unusable by others. A quick search reveals that the "no merge" clause is found in numerous different software licenses: https://www.google.com/search?q="merge+the+Software+into+any+other+software" My best guess is that the clause was originally written for standalone applications (meaning that you're meant to run the software as-is, without copying its source code into your own, or linking your own software to its binaries). However, somewhere along the way the clause got copied directly into a library license, without the involvement of a lawyer who understands software licensing. Perhaps @mabe can clarify? He helped at:

I actually had a similar experience when first moving everything to the new OpenG structure. It broke heaps of stuff (even inside its own OpenG stuff), so I rolled back the change. Some time later I tried again, and think I did have to deal with a bit of pain initially with relinking or maybe some missing stuff, but since then things have been stable.

Close should be inside the loop. Before you start a new file you would close the old one. The file reference you get from opening the file would be put onto a shift register so that you can access it in the next iteration of the while loop. Can you share your code?

Indeed. It's not a full solution as it doesn't support multiple streams, audio or other encoding types. But if you want to get the audio then you need to add the decoding case (parse is the nomenclature used here) for the audio packets in the read payload case structure.

Just an FYI...I found this software very helpful in playing ,setting and testing IP cameras.

If you look at the actual array sizes, things will make a lot more sense. 1. The Build Array will add the number of expanded elements to the first dimension. The array size after the first Build Array is (2,0), which is still an empty array. 2. The Transpose Array will swap the array sizes. The array size after the Transpose Array is (0,2), which is still an empty array. 3. Again, the Build Array will add the number of expanded elements to the first dimension. In this case, it will add 1 to the first dimension, resulting in the array size being (1,2), which is no longer an empty array.

IIRC there are a couple of RTSP libs for around (a while ago now). Some are based on using the VLC DLL's and I even saw one that was pure LabVIEW. Might be worth having a look at them for "inspiration".

I can confirm that LabVIEW 2018 SP1 f4 (32-bit) automatically selects LabVIEW Runtime 2018 SP1 f5 when "automatically select recommended installers" is checked and LabVIEW Runtime 2018 SP1 f5 is installed. Though, it does not ask for the installer source. There used to be SFX installers that were extracted to "C:\National Instruments Downloads". When such an installer was used, the destination folder must not be deleted as it is used as a source location when creating installers in LabVIEW. Perhaps you installed the runtime engine through an old SFX installer and deleted those files at some point?

Regarding Levenshtein: Wladimir Levenshtein developed 1995 an algorithm for this. It is called the Levenshtein Distance. Some years ago I developed a VI to calculate the Levenshtein Distance. Here it is (LabVIEW 2016). Can you post your VIs in LV2020 or 2019, please. Levenshtein Distance.vi

Here is a VI that gets the title of the window that is active. You could then continually loop until the title you expect is active, then perform operations. https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Get-Current-Active-Window/m-p/3930389#M1116926

You can add text labels to a dial. It does not turn it into an enum but sort of works like you would expect (change the data type to U8).

Well that's okay I felt like doing some improvements on the image manipulation code. Attached is an improved version that supports ico and tif files and allows to select an image from within the file. For ico files it basically grabs the one image you select (with Image Index) and make an array of bytes that is a ico file with only that image in it, and then displays it in the picture box. For Tif files there is a .Net method for selecting the image which for some reason doesn't work on ico files. Edit: Updated to work with Tifs as well. Image Manipulation With Ico and Tif.zip

Updated VIs to obtain hwnd by FP.NativeWindow as suggested above. Saved in LV 2013 SP1. Only tested with Windows 7 64-bit and LV2013 SP1 32-bit. Set Calling VI Wnd Top & Active.vi Set Calling VI Wnd Topmost & Active.vi Cancel Calling VI Wnd Topmost.vi

I think that's what the function does behind the scene. A rectangle is simply one case of any number of geometries you can make with this function's inputs. NI Vision rotation algorithm is more complete because it will interpolate colours when the rotated pixel positions are not integers, but otherwise it's the same. The rotation matrix in 2D is exactly what you state above. Rotation of points.vi

The OpenG Pipe Project does just that. It is a LabVIEW Library that replaces the System Exec function and returns pipe refnums for the three standard IO interfaces and functions to read and write to those refnums. The project hasn't been released yet as I consider it not entirely release quality but it does work for me and I have actually used in in several of my projects already. Since there is no officially released package yet you can't just download it through VIPM from internet. But here is a copy of a package you can install using VIPM. oglib_pipe-1.0-1.ogp

Sweet! That solves it. So, now we can write a LabVIEW console app! Here is the VI that let's you write to the StdOut of the calling console: Write to StdOut of Calling Parent.vi -John