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A customer asked me to create a powerpoint explaining the advantages of LabVIEW. While putting together the practical rationales, just for grins I asked Chatgpt to create a presentation explaining the philosophy of LabVIEW in a Zen sort of way. Here is what it came up with. Zen_of_LabVIEW.pdf

A is for Argumentative, right?

I spent a long time online with YouTube support and finally got to the bottom of it. The Channel is back, and all the links work!

0.6.0 version now on VIPM: https://www.vipm.io/package/jdp_science_postgresql/ This involves significant improvements, as well as Examples that work with a public postgres server (and thus work without needing Postgres installed). I am hoping this is close to a 1.0 version.

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"

Many years ago I made a demo for myself on how to drag and drop clones of a graph. I wanted to show a transparent picture of the new graph window as soon as the drag started, to give the user immediate feedback of what the drag does and the window to be placed exactly where it is wanted. I think I found inspiration for that on ni.com or here back then, but now I cannot find my old demo, nor the examples that inspired me back then. Now I have an application where I want to spawn trends of a tag if you drag the tag out of listbox and I had to remake the code...(see video below). At first I tried to use mouse events to position the window, but I was unable to get a smooth movement that way. I searched the web for similar solutions and found one that used the Input device API to read mouse positions to move a window without a title and that seemed to be much smoother. The first demo I made for myself is attached here (run the demo and drag from the list...). It lacks a way to cancel the drag though; Once you start the drag you have a clone no matter what. dragtrends.mp4 Has anyone else made a similar feature? Perhaps where cancelling is handled too, and/or with a more generic design / framework? Drag window out of listbox - Saved in LV2018.zip

The examples you provide are invalid JSON, which makes it difficult to understand what you are actually trying to do. In your VI, the input data is a 2D array of string but the JSON output is completely different. Your first step should be to define the types you need to produce the expected JSON output. Afterwards you can map your input data to the output data and simply convert it to JSON. The structure of the inner-most object in your JSON appears to be the following: { "Type":"ABC", "IP":"192.168.0.0", "Port":111, "Still":1, "Register":"Register", "Address":12345, "SizeLength":1, "FET":2, "Size":"big", "Conversion":"small" } In LabVIEW, this can be represented by a cluster: When you convert this cluster to JSON, you'll get the output above. Now, the next level of your structure is a bit strange but can be solved in a similar manner. I assume that "1", "2", and "3" are instances of the object above: { "1": {}, "2": {}, "3": {} } So essentially, this is a cluster containing clusters: The approach for the next level is practically the same: { "TCP": {} } And finally, there can be multiple instances of that, which, again, works the same: { "EQ1": {}, "EQ2": {} } This is the final form as far as I can tell. Now you can use either JSONtext or LabVIEW's built-in Flatten To JSON function to convert it to JSON {"EQ1":{"TCP":{"1":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"},"2":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"},"3":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"}}},"EQ2":{"TCP":{"1":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"},"2":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"},"3":{"Type":"ABC","IP":"192.168.0.0","Port":111,"Still":1,"Register":"Register","Address":12345,"SizeLength":1,"FET":2,"Size":"big","Conversion":"small"}}}} The mapping of your input data should be straight forward.

In a previous life, I used to teach a CLD level class using this book, and enjoyed it a lot -- Some of it is certainly outdated at this point, but I think it still has a lot of solid info / strategies in it. I've attached the files as a .zip file to this post. Good luck! Effective LabVIEW Programming Files.zip

I have put some effort into improving the VI icons in Messenger Library, in hopes of making things clearer. I have particularly been trying to get rid of the magnifying glass icon, which was standing in for too many concepts. I have also tried to improve the Palettes by putting the standard VIs (that one would most commonly use) in the root-level palette: The 2.0 version also introduces Malleable API methods (the orange-coloured ones), which make code cleaner. If anyone could spare some time, it would help me to have feedback. Especially from people who have not used Messenger Library before, so I can get an idea if the key concepts come across. New 2.1.3 version is available here: https://forums.ni.com/t5/JDP-Science-Tools/New-icons-for-Messenger-Library/m-p/4412550#M192

Yes you can. The official form is at https://www.ni.com/en/forms/perpetual-software-licenses-labview.html Some things to keep in mind: There is a current promotion (valid till the end of December 2024) where those who used to have an SSP can renew it today as if the SSP never expired in the first place. That means you can get the latest version of LabVIEW, under a perpetual license, at a discounted price (compared to buying it "new"): https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/LabVIEW-subscription-model-for-2022/m-p/4398958#M1296289 Quotes/sales are now handled by external distributors, rather than Emerson/NI. Lots of people have reported that they didn't get a response to their quote requests, or didn't get the expected discount applied. If that's the case, message Ahmed Eisawy, the Director of Test Software Commercialization (who wrote the forum post in my link above) and he'll get it sorted out.

The 'Arrange VI Window' Quick Drop keyboard shortcut does this. With the diagram open, Press Ctrl-Space, then once Quick Drop appears, press Ctrl-F. If you want to look at the code that accomplishes this, see here... it should be a good resource for writing your own tool: [LabVIEW 20xx]\resource\dialog\QuickDrop\plugins\_Arrange VIWin SubVIs\Arrange VIWin - Arrange BD.vi

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.

Apparently they moved it under Visible Items Edit: This also affects other types of structures.

Well, there are two aspects. The first is the technical one from hackers diving into the software and unhiding things that NI felt were not ready for prime time, to complicated for simple users, or possibly also to powerful. The main reason definitely always is however: if we release that, we have to spend a lot more effort to make it a finished feature (a feature for internal use where you can tell your users: "sorry that was not meant to be used in the way you just tried") is maybe 10 - 20% of development time than the finished feature for public use. There is also support required. That costs money in terms of substantial extra development, end user quality documentation (a simple notepad file doesn't cut it), maintenance and fixing things if something does not match the documented behaviour. And yes I'm aware they don't always fix bugs immediately (or ever) but the premise is, that releasing a feature causes a lot of additional costs and obligations, if you want to or not. The other aspect is, if someone who is an active partner and has active contacts with various people at NI, he is infinitely more likely to be able to influence decisions at NI than the greatest hacker doing his thing in his attic and never talking with anyone from NI. In that sense it is very likely that Jim having talked with a few people at NI has done a lot more to make NI release this feature eventually, than 20 hackers throwing every single "secret" about this feature on the street. In that sense the term "forcing NI's hands" is maybe a bit inaccurate. He didn't force them, but led them to see the light! Not out of pure selfless love, but to be able to officially use that feature for himself. The according Right-Click framework was a proof of concept to see how this feature can be used and mainly an example to other users how it can be used, and indeed once it worked it had fulfilled its purpose. That it was not maintained afterwards is not specifically JKI's fault. It is open source, so anyone could have picked up the baton, if they felt it was so valuable for them. The problem with many libraries is actually, if they are not open source and free, many complain about that, if it is open source and/or free, they still expect full support for it! In that sense I have seen a nice little remark recently:

Well, you are missing some important details in "The story of how this came about". So maybe indeed "it is worth a post of its own". It was LabVIEW 7.0 where they forgot to put a password on one of the VIs shipped with LabVIEW. And that VI had some node(s) on its block diagram including, I think, the BD reference property for the VI class. The community indeed got excited. But what did NI do? They tried to hide everything again in LabVIEW 7.1! I made a joke then that "our mother" NI must had had a PMS so she put the most interesting toys on a top shelf. So I made a"ladder" for us, kids, to get to them again and called it hviewlabs was me then, because that was a name of my company I used to sell my LabHSM Toolkit, an actor framework with actors controlled by hierarchical state machines (statecharts), long before the Statechart toolkit by NI, "THE Actor Framework", DQMH, and even before LVOOP. After PJM_Labview has published his private class generator http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?showtopic=307&hl=# and class hierarchies http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?showtopic=2161# and http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?showtopic=314&hl=hierarchy# (neither topic is available anymore) it became clear how to get access to private classes, properties and methods. However, it wasn't convenient enough. My PMS Assistant made it really easy. It gave back the access to those features to a much wider community of LabVIEW enthusiasts As you can see from the PMS topic discussion, by that time brian175 already had made his DataAct Class Browser. And he got really excited about the possibility not only browse but also to actually create objects, property and method nodes with the properties and method NI didn't want the users to see. By April of the same 2006 he figured out object creation too and incorporated the capabilities of PMS Assistant into DataAct Class Browser. At that point, I guess, NI decided that "the cat is out of the bag" and there is no point to resist. Nevertheless even after VI Scripting was made released by NI some classes, and even some properties and methods of public classes remain hidden even in LabVIEW 2024. I wonder why DataAct Class Browser is no longer available (as of January 2025) as well as original findings by PJM_Labview even here, on LavaG. Did NI "politely asked" admins to remove all that and just forgot about my PMS Assistant?

Unfortunately, many of those are bots. I've disable user:pages long time ago, because of the spam. If there's anyone that deserves a lot of credit lately it's @LogMAN. He's doing amazing work cleaning up the pages and adding/editing content. There's a push recently from NI to support the Wiki and promote its use to the broader community and within NI internally as well. So, we should see more traffic and more activity than usual, which is great. This is one of the reasons for the recent stability updates. I encourage everyone here on LAVA to find whatever LabVIEW topic they are passionate about and start adding some pages or even fleshing out some existing content that needs improvement. One way to start would be to find some information that you always wish NI had easily available on their website but could never get easy access to. Then create that on the Wiki.

I have had this in my toolbox for a long time to do what you are asking. It is part of a QuickDrop plugin I made to "fix up" a VI, similar to Darren's Nattify plugin. Size Diagram Window.vi

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

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.

I cannot look at your file, but I suggest save the data to TDMS or any binary format of your choice. Once the file is saved, then you can convert it to text.

Drat, and now my typos and errors are put in stone for eternity (well at least until LavaG is eventually shutdown when the last person on earth turns off the light) 😁

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

Done some simple testing. On a directory containing 838 files it took 60 ms.

I'm prone to use JKI state machines for this sort of simple test sequencing. It is easy to learn, and surprisingly powerful once you become proficient with it. You can also use JKI State Machine Objects (traditional JKI SM wrapped in a class) which makes it simple to support multiple parallel state machines, and which also supports using events. Regards, Rick

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:

C:\Program Files\NI\LVAddons\nivisa\1\vi.lib\_probes\default\VisaProbes.llb\VisaProbeInstr.vi

Open the search function (Ctrl+F) and browse for the "NaN" constant. A dialog pops up telling you this palette item is not supported by the Find Dialog... You can search for the "NaN" string and it will find all the NaN constants (plus all the occurrences of the "NaN" string). You can search for all other constants (pi, machine epsilon, +/-Inf, etc.), but not for the NaN constant, which is just a numeric constant with NaN typed in it. You can search for ALL numeric constants, but not for a specific one, say "1". Of course, you can search for all "1" strings in your code, and the constant 1 will show up among the search results, but it will be hidden in a long list of irrelevant results. And try to search for a constant with units... You can't. What would be nice is to look for a constant irrespective of its unit, as for instance 60 s = 1 min. Did I encode that time constant as 60 s or 1 min? I need to search for 60 AND 1 to find out.

Since you asked, here are my findings: LV23 - can create the attached snippet (don't know if it works), and save it for LV14 (also attached). All the pulldown menues show relevant properties LV21 and LV 19 - open the saved for LV14, show a correct image, but the first property node lacks the "Block Diagram" entry in the pulldown; further properties have no menu ETA - and show the relevant pulldown menues when "Show VI scripting" is checked. LV14 - the first property node menu *has* a "Block Diagram" entry, but the further properties don't match LV23 W14.vi W23.vi

Well regardless of the reason, what I was trying to say is that references opened in a VI, get closed when the VI that opens them goes idle.

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?

What doesn't work with the function: AJ_NETSDK_IPC_PTZControl() on page 21/22? Or are you not using the SDK functions to retrieve the RTSP stream but some other ready made interface for LabVIEW? Meaning you have no idea how to interface to a DLL? A few points to consider: 1) The camera may not like a secondary connection, either through the SDK or through generic TCP/IP while it is busy streaming image data to the VLC or whatever interface. 2) Trying to reverse engineer the TCP/IP binary stream protocol is likely going to be cumbersome and difficult to realize as it is usually proprietary. The SDK interface is simple enough to use, except if you lack any and all understanding about C programming. It's not a CIN node either that you will need to configure but a CLN (Call Library Node). CINs are not only legacy technology but on most modern LabVIEW versions simply not supported anymore. An interesting problem, but none I can help you as I do not have that hardware, and I would expect it to be a bit cumbersome considering above 2 points.

Yes this has been done before. I believe BlueVariantView is what you are looking for. It creates a recursive tree of any data type: JSONtext on the other hand illustrates how to turn your data back into a data type.

I fixed it. I had to disable an extension that was breaking that page for some reason. Several others have reported it broken on the support page.

You are probably getting a permissions error on the Open (windows doesn't ordinarily allow writing "c:") which will yield a null refnum and an err 8 on the open. Your err 5000 becomes a noop as does the write. You're then clearing that error so when you come to close the null refnum it complains it's an invalid parameter - equivalent to the following. Is it expected behaviour? Yes. Should it report a different error code? Maybe.

Yes- that did fix the issue. I moved "Create control.vi" out of the C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2018\project\UI Tools\Control Generator directory, opened LabVIEW 2018 SP1 (which now launches without crash), moved "Create Control.vi" back into the original directory and mass compiled the directory and now everything works. I appreciate your assistance and I apologize for digging up an issue with an outdated version of LabVIEW but some of us are stuck on older versions. Again- Thanks!

I just went through the examples and everything appears to be working. Edit: Running on Windows 11, using LabVIEW 2019 (32-bit) As someone who is familiar with your SQLite library, it feels very familiar Thanks for sharing!

I checked on a system where I had VIPM 2013 installed and looked in the support/ogb_2009.llb. Maybe your newer VIPM has an improved ogb_2009.llb. Also check out the actual post I updated the image.

Not quite! It's better to actually modify the Copy Resource Files and Relink.vi. Just add an additional case structure to handle shared libraries. The VI in question is this one: This will unconditionally change the linking name of all shared libraries in your build. There is a possibility that that is not desired although I can't think of a reason why that could be a problem right now. Fixup Shared Library Name.vi

Welcome back. Retirement not all it was cracked up to be? My only comment about this (because I still use LV 2009-best version ever) is that generally: Never do it in the middle of a project. Upgrading LabVIEW is a huge project risk. Don't upgrade if the software already works and you are adding to it (only use it on new projects). Only upgrade if everyone else in your team upgrades at the same time. Upgrade if there are specific features you cannot do without. Upgrade if it will greatly reduce the time to delivery (unlikely but it has been known). Upgrade if there is a project stopping bug that is addressed in the upgrade you are considering. Remember that you can have multiple versions on the same machine. You don't need (and should never) go and recompile all your old projects.

Writing strings to TDMS that are a byte stream can be tricky. I have a Read/Write Cluster to TDMS and it flattens it to a string. But as you noticed there needs to be special consideration for null. Well it also turns out that on different platforms there are other characters that need special attention too. You can absolutely do extra work on your images. But I fear that you won't get the performance you want. TDMS is crazy fast and all, but it sounds like a bonkers amount of data real fast, and I don't know if it will be able to keep up, especially if there is special code needed to convert a string ready to be written to TDMS so the null (and any other characters you want) get written correctly. Writing an array of bytes also sounds crazy for this application. The number of samples on the channels might approach NI's limitations for the data type, and then keeping track of where the offsets are for files would need to be a separate channel. I've done stuff like this for logging raw CAN frames to TDMS files but that seems like way less data. Honestly you might be better served writing to binary files, then having the TDMS file just keep an index of the file names or locations for replay. Not sure how I'd go about solving this.

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

Maybe you'll get Xmas before you know it... I found a way to retrieve all tags from a VI. I basically scan the VI file and get an index to the position of tags in the file. I then extract the tag names. Since I don't know to which objects it is related, I have to scan all objects on FP and BD to associate them properly. Once done, you get a list of refnums and variants for the Object's references and a list of tags to which it is associated. I also included an example of code to write a tag to the Block Diagram. Use the same template to write to FP or any objects. Open the project and launch "Get All Tags from VI". Browse the path to the example file "Tagged Test VI" and that's it. Saved in 8.6 but will work in 9.0 (2009) as well. Note that the versioning is important as tags are seen only through scripting and NI can change the way it is saved from one version to the other. Retrieve Tags 8.6.zip