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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

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.

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

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 would suggest rabbitmq, i want(ed) to present it at a LabVIEW user group (LUGE) but haven't done it yet. It's very powerful. I use redis and did a quick presentation (in french) at LUGE recently, i haven't used the stream feature though, I only used it as cache.

I think this is fixed now. Please check.

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:

If the child classes are statically linked in the code (via class constants, or whatever other mechanism you use), then this approach should always work, because the child classes will always be in memory.

In that case, I would suggest posting something here in case others want it in the future. I don't remember offhand where I used that API and a quick search didn't reveal anything.

Put the acquire image and save to file in the event structure timeout case, but only write to file conditionally (i.e. if the user has clicked the button)

@Natiq this (non-functional example) should be enough to get you started. The weird arrow thing on the boundaries of the while loop is a shift register. The event structure can also be configured to have a timeout case where you can then perform other stuff, like reading your image and writing it to the reference on the the shift register. There is heaps of information out there (YouTube for example), a bit of searching will lead to some more details.

To analyze large time series remotely I have a client application that splits the data transfer using two methods; It will break down the periods into subperiods that is then assembled into the full period by the receiver *and* if the subperiods are too large as well they are retrieved gradually (interlaced) by transferring decimated sets with a decimation offset. So, as a result of this I need to merge multiple overlapping fragments of time series (X and Y array sets). My base solution for this just concatinates two sets, sorts the result based on the time (X values) and finally removes duplicate samples (XY pairs) from it. This is simple to do with OpenG array VIs (sort 1D and remove duplicates VIs) or the improved VIM-versions from @hooovahh, but this is not optimal. My first optimized version runs through the two XY sets in a for-loop instead, a for loop that picks consecutive unique values from either of the two sets until there are no such entries left. This solution is typically 12-15 times faster than the base case (<10 ms to merge two sets into one set with 250 000 samples on my computer e.g.). Has anyone else made or seen a solution for this before? It is not as generic as the array operations covered by the OpenG array library e.g., but it still seems like something many people might need to do here and there...(I had VIs in my collection to stitch consecutive time series together with some overlap, but not any that handles interlacing as well). It would be interesting to see how optimized and/or generalized it could be solved. I have attached the two mentioned examples here , they are not thorougly tested yet, but just as a reference (VIMs included just in case...). Below is a picture of the front panel showing an example of the result they produce with two given XY sets (in this case overlapping samples do not share the same value, but this is done just to illustrate what Y value it has picked when boths sets have entries for the same X (time) value): Merging XY series LV2022.zip

In the LabVIEW community a phrase that has been used to describe undocumented, or incomplete features of LabVIEW has at times been called Rusty Nails. In searching LAVA it appear this is never explained and so this post is intended to give a brief history with as many details as I know having not been active when this all took place. The earliest reference to "Rusty Nails" found online (thanks to AQ) is by Greg McKaskle of NI in 1999. Someone was asking about all the undocumented INI settings that could be found, and how some weren't exposed to the Tools >> Options dialog. Greg's reply was this: Back in the LabVIEW 5.x and 6.x era there was a new emerging technology that was LabVIEW Scripting. NI had created scripting for their own purposes but the community saw it and wanted to be able to automate editing, or creating LabVIEW code. With the help from Jim Kring and others, the basic tools for enabling scripting in LabVIEW were available. The story of how this came about is worth a post of its own, but the summary is that NI shipped a VI that didn't have a password on the block diagram, which allowed for the creation of any object, given an ID. Using a for loop, you could easily create every object in LabVIEW, including objects which facilitate in creating and manipulating code. Discussing scripting often leads into discussing other INI keys which enable private functions like the well known SuperSecretPrivateSpecialStuff. It is possible this is one of the keys Greg was referring to. Other INI keys from 5.x can be found here. After these discoveries the NI forums started getting users asking about scripting, and private functions. Users were looking for help, and documentation but NI wasn't ready for this knowledge to be public and so they started deleting all posts related to private, and scripting functionality. Some of the motivation for the creation of LAVAG came about by a desire to have an independent place to discuss the LabVIEW topics that NI didn't want to have on the public forums, potentially adding to the number of support calls, and confusing new users with advanced topics that were undocumented or incomplete. After LAVA's creation a subforum section was labeled Rusty Nails, and intended to be a place to discuss Scripting, ExternalNodes, XNodes, Private methods, and general LabVIEW hackery. Over the years several private functions have been made public, and scripting has become an official feature shipping with LabVIEW. Because of this the Rusty Nails and XNodes subforums were combined into what is now the VI Scripting section. Even over on the official NI forums, discussions about private functionality and XNodes has been relaxed since those early days. Asking for private methods and getting unofficial help is something users, and sometimes NI employees will participate in, without the heavy censorship seen earlier. And topics of scripting are encouraged now that the feature has been official since LabVIEW 8.6. If you have anything you'd like me to add regarding scripting's history feel free to reply and I can add it. And if I got any of the details wrong let me know. Again I wasn't around when this all took place and I've just tried putting down the details I've heard from other developers.

Setting up the project:

I fixed the issue. It was actually kind of funny. So there's a security rule on the server to protect against SQL injection. It found a match with "User_group". I guess it thought someone was trying to get the user data from the database? 😁 I added an exception. All good now.

There is a list of discord servers on the wiki: https://labviewwiki.org/wiki/LabVIEW_Community_Managed_Discord_Servers

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.

@hooovahh Is still weeding out the spam. I think he's in the eastern US time zone so he's 3 hrs. ahead of me ☺️. Much thanks to him. But I'm also improving the filters. Unfortunately, I think there are some sleeper accounts that were created before the changes that are starting to post. But, yes, I think it's getting much better. BTW, I just discovered that if you ctrl+right click a posted image you can set its' size! neat.

A little while ago I posted some code on how to create boolean controls with images that scale well because the images are vector based and can scale up or down better than a static image like a PNG. After making that I made a utility that allows for selecting an image, and a control template and it creates the control. I showed this off to Danielle Hamburger and she encouraged me to clean it up and post it to the community. I'm still putting this in the In Development section just because there are several external tools needed that working around would be ideal if this were to be finished but for now it works and I use it often. So it works like you'd think. There is a library of vector images you select from, pick the one you want, then pick the Control Type (which is a folder of CTLs), then click create and it creates the control setting the decal button, VI description (adding License text if needed) and sets the icon editor icon. Dependencies If you just run the Vector Boolean Control Creator you'll need OpenG Time, OpenG File, and the JKI State Machine toolkit installed in LabVIEW 2015 or newer. The included libraries will work without anything else as long as you are in Windows (more on that later). If you want to include your own controls there are a few more steps and I left a text file explaining that in the Template Controls folder, but I included several already. If you want to add your own images I also left instructions in the Libraries folder. I wrote a VI that can convert from SVGs to the needed PNG and EMF files as long as you download inkscape (again instruction text files included). But inkscape is only a dependency if you want to use that utility to add your own libraries which are in SVG. Demo For good measure I made a Jing video showing how it works. Windows Only... So the Windows only part is an interesting one. I started with my UI being just a single 2D picture control and as you type your search in the top, it would go and open each image that matched the result, shift them into rows and columns, detect the number of columns shown, then detect and show mouse selection, and all the other stuff that would be needed. To say the least it was slow. I tried several ways to improve it, but in the end it was slow and I couldn't come up with a solution I liked. I could have added a search button but I really like the live search of typing it in and seeing it update as you type just like the icon editor glyphs do. So for a first release I went with the cheap and hacky solution and that was to leverage some .Net to embed a Windows Explorer window into my front panel, which is just the search results of a folder on disk. This now means you see the PNG images on the front panel, but it will only use that to show the UI to you, but then use the vector based EMF file when creating the control. Doing the search was a bit weird too since I couldn't figure out how invoke a search with the Explorer .Net so instead I wrote to a temp location a saved search that is XML, which I tell the UI to navigate to which then shows the search results. Oh and there is some .Net GDI resize going on so the PNG image is used as icon editor icon for the control but dependency could likely be removed with some G work. Anyway hope people find this useful. Vector Boolean Creator.zip

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?

Update To get it to work I had to downgrade to version 6.0.0.25 - OpenG File Library (from 6.0.2.28) 6.0.0.18 - OpenG Array Library (from 6.0.1.20) May be this helps someone else 🤷‍♂️ Thanks

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).

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

It adds properties and methods to the LabVIEW VI server hierarchy, mostly application related and presumably project and other such stuff, that NI considers to dangerous, untested, or giving to deep insight into LabVIEW. It is related to scripting but not the same thing. Rolf Kalbermatter