crossrulz

I do this all the time. You can check out here and here for examples. I was unable to open your VIs (I'm using 8.6), but attached should be an idea of what you want. I use this VI to communicate between threads. One thread reacts to what the other thread sends. But I have several commands that could be sent. So this VI is used to open the queue, send commands, simply get the reference, and close the queue. Monitor Queue.vi

Australian spirit: Sit in the back and wait for everyone to wipe out?

I know Cincinnati wasn't hit quite as hard as the east coast, but Round III is here and hitting hard. I even heard reports of yet another big snow possible this weekend.

We did something similar here using MS Access. Personally, I hate it. Only one person can be in the database at a time, it is a pain to maintain, and our SCM is constantly having to update the VBA due to new program requirements or general complaints. However, there are no licensing fees (other than your normal MS Office license) and you can tailor it to exactly what you need. As you stated, it is ok for a small organization or group. But we have had many problems with people leaving the data base open and then nobody else can access it.

I think our cat is trying to become an engineer. My wife woke up this morning to him playing with my Newton's Cradle.

I like to have VIs that wrap a queue to communicate between the threads. You can visit here for a good example. I mostly do this to avoid polling and I know I get every data point.

I did something similar to what rolfk is suggesting for a presentation I gave back in April. I would like to attach the results, but apparently I'm not allowed to upload .xls files. I used a for loop to write to and indicator using the terminal, local variable, an explicit property node, and a property node w/ a reference 1 million times. Keep in mind that I ran this on a Windows machine that IS had a hand in, so the timing can be off a little bit.

Functionally, they are the same. But the implementation is totally different. A property node will force the front panel to draw and will really slow down your program. Local Variable is faster, but not nearly as fast as a wire, shift register, or terminal.

I use the "TestStand - Get Property Value.vi", right click on the sequence context and choose create control. In newer versions of TestStand it is an ActiveX control. If you are using an older version (like 3.5), it is a separate control you can find under TestStand -> Legacy.

I too am a LabVIEW developer. I fully understand having trouble thinking in TestStand. I am still fighting it. The Monitor Queue.vi is a functional global variable which will hold the queue reference for outsiders to use. During the Initialize case of that vi, the queue reference is created and stored in the uninitialized shift register. The queue is then destroyed during the Close case. The Initialize and Close should only be done in the monitor vi itself. "Sequence Context in" is a reference from TestStand. This reference is needed if we need to look at TestStand variables, abort the application, etc. See the following screen shot for finding it in TestStand.

Here you go. test_vis.zip

When I upgrade the VI, it didn't break. Not sure why Francois would be different. scxi-1122_voltage.zip I must admit, old examples is the only reason I kept 7.1 on my machine.

That is a very good point. I will endure until the kind, wonderful admins of this great forum find the problem.

Yep, my RSS was cleaned out and then *bang* 200 postings, all Alpha String. My RSS will only grab the first 200 from that post so I don't know who to shoot for actually posting to the Alfa String. I think I'm with Ton, complain until it is fixed. That's how it goes around my work too. I don't know how many months I annoyed my boss before finally getting a response about NI Week.

Or if you are looking for a piece of software for screen shots, I highly recommend Snagit

I too have had problems with USB-to-serial adapters. If I remember correctly (I'm going back a few years), the main problem was that each time the adapter was plugged in it had a different COM port or the settings were totally different. I also had to "synchronize" the VISA drivers in MAX to what Windows had occasionally.

For me, it seems to rear it's ugly head daily. If a new post comes in on day 1, I get the entire thread. If someone else posts on the same thread on the same day (after I went through and deleted), only that one post shows up. Next day, new post will cause the entire thread again. Doesn't matter if it is Lava 1.0 or Lava 2.0 threads.

I made this one to find the serial ports available in a system. Get List of Serial Ports.vi

Like the VISA Find Resource

The Remote Instruction Handler is what reads and processes the data being sent to the monitor (from Test Stand or internally) via the Monitor Queue. What we do is for each test step we send the Test Paragraph, Description, Upper Limit, Lower Limit, Measurement, and Pass/Fail via the Monitor Queue to the monitor. The Remote Instruction Handler will then read from that queue and process the data however it needs to (send data to be written to file, update step information, update measurement displays, etc.). The queue is being created in the Monitor Queue.vi when the task is set to Initialize. We have a wait in Test Stand that will sit there and wait for the queue to be created before performing tests (poll the Monitor Queue to see if the ref is still a NULL). This way we know the monitor is up and running and we won't miss commands (which was a lesson learned over the years). But the Remote Instruction Handler is the main part of the Monitor VI.

You send data to the monitor using the Monitor Queue.vi. That VI is an action engine. Set the task to Send Message and pass in the string data. The data will then be placed in the queue that the monitor VI will read from. The monitor VI will then decipher the message however you need to. When your test is over, send the "TERM" command to shut down the monitor.

Here is a majorly stripped down version of what I have been working on. I tried to leave enough for you to get the idea of what I'm doing. It is written in LV 8.6 and TestStand 4.1 Monitor Example.zip

A true engineer would use duct tape!!!

I'll try to strip one down for you. It'll take some time to get a chance to work on it though. Hopefully by the morning I'll have something for you.

We have a sequence that we run in another thread. The only thing in the sequence is a VI that is used as a GUI (we call it a monitor VI). We communicate with this VI using a queue. Since all of our drivers are written in LabVIEW, we just have our drivers send data over this queue and have VIs for sending specific commands called from the TestStand level. It is not terribly difficult. Just remember to set the sequence to run is a new thread (so that TS won't wait for it to end before moving on) and that the GUI will close upon a terminate command when your testing is done. If you have more specific questions, let me know. I have been recently working on this sort of thing.