Louis Manfredi

Hi Crespo: Welcome to LAVA! Louis Manfredi

Well put Rolf :thumbup: I agree completely. /BeginRant An example: I use read line from file with nothing wired to the output to skip a line in the file. I've used the technique for years. LabVIEW 8.0 optimized a previously working program for me by skipping the read (and not updating the file pointer) since nothing was hooked to its output. That, and other problems led me to a painful process of reverting to 7.1. So far, this thread, and other traffic in this forum hasn't motivated me to try version 8.2. My maintenance contract is up for renewal soon, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I haven't profited from any of the upgrades that I paid for in this year's contract, seems silly to pay again if I'm going to stick with 7.1 for the the indefinite future. A client has a level of work that might justify them buying their own copy of LabVIEW so they can shift some of the work from me to their in-house staff. But I can't reccomend they buy 8.2 if I don't use it myself, and I'm not sure there's any reasonable way to get them a copy of 7.1... Again, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'd like to use some of the neat new features of 8.2-- but none are essential to my clients' needs, which are adequately served by 7.1-- and whatever high-minded rhetoric we can come up with about real programmers always working with latest new version of software, I make my living by serving my clients' needs adequately, not by making them unwitting beta sites for NI. /EndRant At any rate thanks Rolf, for stating the issue clearly. I'd be happy to read as compelling an argument for the other side, but I doubt there is one. Best Regards, Louis

... and even if there is clear correllation, correllation does not imply causality. L.

Hi Bob: Depending on what your header looks like, there might be an easier way. You Can wire strings, like just about anything else, to the equals operator. (Also, if the header is a bunch of strings, you can compare string arrays, and right click on the comparison to choose "compare aggregates"-- giving a true value only if both arrays are identical.) Best Regards, Louis

Hi Diego: Welcome to LAVA! Hope you enjoy & benefit from the site as much as I do! I'm afraid I have to disagree with you when you say most of the Tech support people at NI don't know the product. I've been using Labiview more than ten years now, and often have had problems where I needed help from support. My experience has been that most of the tech support people do know their product very well-- I have certainly encountered a few people there who didn't know the language well enough to help me, and even a very few who didn't know enough to help and (most annoyingly) were unwilling to admit that lack of knowledge. But as a generalization, the NI folks support folks are pretty darn good in my experience. (Now, if you had criticized the level of testing that has gone into recent versions of LV before release, I've afraid I wouldn't have taken the trouble to disagree...) In any case, welcome to LAVA & Best Regards, Louis

Yes, Yes, but did Stephen Hawkins give it any consideration?

Hi Vader: Welcome to Lava! Louis

Hi Dingin: Welcome to LAVA :thumbup: Although you may be forced to pass your boolean data around as eight bit bytes, you certainly can break it into booleans using LV. See below for a couple of may ways... Hope this helps, Best Regards, Louis

Hi Hugo: Welcome to LAVA! Very good question. I'm afraid the answer is no. I do think its a good idea, perhaps it should be added to the wish list. In general I'm able to stretch my diagrams as required to leave room for comments where needed. And as an issue of programming style, I'm bet everyone would agree that this would be best. There's a question of avoiding confusion between the leaders and real wires, but since wires only do right angles, and leaders generally go on the diagonal, that might not be too much of a problem. A couple of relevant tricks which you might not know about if you are new to LabView: You can use an unwired string constant with a scroll bar for lengthy comments. You can control-click-drag on an empty patch of the BD to create some empty space in the middle of the diagram. Perhaps most important :thumbup: Don't be afraid to use sub-vi's. In general its better style than a single cluttered :thumbdown: diagram. The context help information you add for the Sub-vis can serve as much of the documentation which would otherwise have to be in free labels. At any rate, Welcome to Lava :!: :beer: Best Regards, Louis

Absolutely agree, if there's any chance you'll need to talk to RS232. I'm working a job now with a 9172 usb for A/D & D/A , and some stepnet stepper drives controlled through the RS-232 port. Worked fine on my development system with a built in serial port (Dell M60) either as source code or as a built application. Got all kinds of buffer overruns on the 9172 when with built application installed in a new HP desktop that used a USB to RS232 dongle for the serial comms. Then switched to built application running on a cheap Dell desktop, new, but with a real serial port, and the das overrun issues went away. Coincidence? perhaps, could be some other difference between the two machines. Especially since the stepper drive comms and the DAS operation don't overlap in time, but as far as I'm concerned, why throw added complexity into the system, better to stick with systems that have real serial ports. Best, Louis

Idea for a new challenge: Program solves a jigsaw puzzle. Input is a zip file containing bmp files of each piece in random orientation (or other suitable file format) Output is a image of the solved puzzle, and a table of x,y and rotation location for each of the pieces. Sample puzzles to solve provided, but of course the program has to solve a similar puzzle that the programmer doesn't get to see in advance. Make it tough enough that just matching edge profiles won't work efficiently, the winner will likely have to do some kind of texture, color or pattern matching to sort out the pieces. Best Regards, Louis

I don't generally do "me too" posts, but I've got to chime in here & agree with Crelf-- Ignoring coercion dots can cause all kinds of problems ranging from mere slow performance to out & out mysterious program failures! Louis

Certainly the way to go if trying it is quick... On the other hand if trying something might take a lot of effort, always good to ask if someone else has already invented the wheel. Best, Louis

Hi Msam: Welcome to LAVA! I'm sure we can help-- But it will be a lot easier if you can forward the code for what you've tried so far. That way we should be able to make some suggestions.

Yep me too, and 20 % of the general population, perhaps more among engineers & programmers. But no matter, they'd rather lose 20% of the market and the heck with us southpaws than hassle with inventory control on two versions. Yes, I know, many southpaws mouse right handed, but why should I have to if I don't want to :question: I try to avoid all products from companies that sell any right handed-only ones. :ninja: :ninja: Louis

Hi i2dx: Mmm-- Same story with me, tried LV 8, generated a lot of forum traffic, tech support communications, wasted effort and smoke, but not much light, so I retreated to the stability of 7.1.1 I would like to use some of the new features in LV 8, but I don't need any of them. So I'm looking forward to hearing a report on your adventure with 8.2. Let us know how it goes. Louis

--You can change the color of the dots. I set mine to red. Sometimes I don't care much about coercion, but sometimes its really important, and its always good to know. Louis

Hi Again Synchron: Nope, I don't see a straighforward, simple way of fixing the problem-- you can simply add 7*60*60 seconds to your subtraction before formatting it into date/time, but then as soon as you send the program to a different time zone, or go off daylight time, the whole thing falls apart. There's a number of brighter bulbs than me on the LAVA string, perhaps someone else can make a suggestion... But When I have a similar problem, I use the MS tick timer divide by 1000, use integer quotient and remainder a bunch of times to get the seconds, minutes & hours, and then format all three into a string using regular format into string tool. rather a lot of stuff to go to, but it works. Really does seem like there should be an easier way... Best Regards, Louis

Hi Synchron: Welcome to LAVA. Not sure if it should be this way, but same thing happens to me, with my computer time zone set to Eastern (ZD-5) EDIT (Not quite the same, I get 2000-- Perhaps you are on the West Coast?) If I set my time zone to Greenwich, or Casablanca or somewhere else in ZD-0 I get the correct response. So, your subtraction is subtracting two times, and coming up with a time difference near to zero hours. LabView & windows interpret this as zero hours UCT, and convert it to 17:00 EDT. Ain't Windows Wonderful! I'll take a look and see if there's a more graceful way of getting the correct result than changing the time zone on your computer or subtracting the time zone from your answer before displaying it. You could also use the "ms tick" instead of real time, and take your difference in ms and convert it to display as you want. By the way, thanks for giving us a nice simple example vi showing your problem! Exemplary practice for a first-time user of LAVA, we're glad to help you! Best Regards, Louis

Hi Prasan: 115 kBaud through the serial port is no problem, I use that as a matter of routine? When you say that you're setting the higher baud rate in "the system"-- it almost sounds like you are setting it in the windows control panel for the serial port. If so, try setting it from within LabView instead. If that's not the problem, post your code if you can, we may be better able to help. Also, keep in mind that you can cheat on the maximum length for a serial connection at lower speeds, but perhaps not at higher speeds-- but my bet is a software issue that we might be able to help on. Best Luck, Louis

Water definetly does not wash off skunk smell. Hit one (it was already dead on the road) with a car once, despite much rain heavy rain, snow and slush, car didn't stop stinking as long as I had it ( fortunately this was a rental car, :thumbup: so I only had to put up with it for a couple of weeks.) A friend who had a dog more curious than smart tells me that tomato juice works pretty well. No personal experience, couldn't see a way to hide enough tomato juice to bathe a car in my expense report.-- even dog takes quite a few gallons I'm told. Seem to be getting a bit afield from the original topic. Perhaps time to say :beer:

I think there's more to the "chase the cat" application than one would first expect. Years ago got a radio-control toy car for chasing my cat... worked fine 'till the cat figured out all he had to do was sit on it to stop it. So I gave the car to my boss... worked fine for him until his cat figured out that all she had to do was go one step up the stairs to get away from the car. I suspect a decent cat chaser will require combination of both programming and mechanical engineering. (I have seen ads for a commercial product which is a lawn sprinkler set up with a motion detector-- so when a cat, or the mailman, skunk, or whoever) is detected, the sprinkler gives one broad strong sweep of water across the yard. Most cats really don't like getting wet. Of course skunks and mailmen don't either, and at least the skunk might be best left in peace to its own business.) Best, Louis

Hi Lalala: Welcome to LAVA! Several ways of plotting XY data. Easiest way to get started might be to place the Express XY graph from "Graph" subpallette of the "Controls" palette onto the front panel. You can use the express vi as-is or you can open it up (and in particular its sub-vi) and see how the data is prepared for plotting so you can do the job on your own. There are also a number of examples of XY plotting that ship with LabView, you can navigate to them through the help system--- a powerful friend of the LabView newbie :thumbup: Hope this helps, Louis

Hi Juan: Also, think about possibly using the enabled property node to set the inactive controls to the "Disabled and Greyed" state-- from the UI point of view better than simply making the control disappear-- the user knows that the action is sometimes, but not presently, an option. Best Regards, Louis [edit] P.S. Welcome to LAVA!

Hi Grizz: Welcome to the forum! Louis