JohnRH

This is an unofficial 'heads up' for anyone interested in working in central Virginia.

The position is not officially open yet, but when it does open (hopefully in a few days) we are going to need to act fast.

For now, just PM if you are interested.

LabVIEW skills are important, but we also need someone with excellent 'general purpose' technical abilities. You will be the jack of all trade and master of them all. Everything from electronics to hydraulics, RF, analog, and digital - you name it we do it.

I really can't give to may details on the web, but this position has been one of those 'dream' jobs for me. Hopefully it will be for someone else now as well.

Good luck!

John

In hind site, I could have grabbed the latest Device Driver DVD from the Developer Suite. (dooh!)

Still... 311MB for a USB - Serial converter? Then about 20 minutes for installation time? Is it really necessary?

Am I missing something? Do I really need need the entire 311 MB NI Serial software just to install drivers for the NI USB-232 device?

I know it comes with drivers on CD, but by the time I ever get around to using the hardware I've purchased, the drivers on CD are out of date!

(perhaps I am just spoiled now that Windows 7 automatically finds and installs drivers for so many of the other devices we use)

Just got around to reading this. As a former Canadian turned American I find this absolutely hilarious!

Ok ok. I did it. Now following @lavag and @niweek on twitter! didn't make it to lava bbq tonight. Anyone else left behind?

At the LAST minute the trip was approved! so I am writing this from the bar at the Iron Cactus! wonder where everyone else is? (maybe if I was on twitter I would know?)

I STRONGLY recommend Single Board Systems for their top quality hardware and excellent support. You will not go wrong using them.

I had given up all hope... then I heard a rumor... now I am crossing my fingers... (the suspense is killing me!)

Depending on your time/budget constrains it may be sufficient to max out your computers memory (4GB), and eliminate unnecessary programs from running. (How much memory are you running right now?)

Either that, or upgrade to a 64bit machine with 8GB or more of memory (you would have to use a 64bit version of LabVIEW).

However, there really should be a way to overcome your problems without throwing hardware at it.

You may be in the range where you need to use a Current Transformer (CT).  Essentially a device that outputs a voltage directly proportional to the current.  You can then use a relatively inexpensive voltmeter to monitor your current.

The circuit you are describing would look like this ...

------------|>|-------------

| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |

| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |

------------|>|------------

| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |

| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |

----------- (-8V+)--------

Then, one diode may break down before the other.

Perhaps its my Canadian roots, but I'm loving it!

So I decided to ignore all your suggestions and went with this keyboard and this mouse.

I really need a real mouse because I will probably end up playing a few games on there. This mouse was chosen because I have a glass coffee table. The keyboard is minimalistic and small, and has a cool glowing backlight.

I already have a remote which came with the pc enclosure which has the directional keypad and the media center button. All the pieces are coming in tomorrow. I'll post pics up at some point with a video of course.

We use a very similar mouse here at work. Once you get use to that scroll wheel, all others seem very cheap and limiting.

The keyboard looks great!

Hi Veronica,

LAVA is perhaps female friendly and Canadian tolerant, but I'm not sure if we should tolerate someone from McGill!

(I'm from Queen's and could resist the chance to bring our friendly inter school rivalry onto LAVA! )

At first glance it looks to me like a classic race condition caused by your use of global variables.

Time prevents me from looking at it too close, but I'll bet that if you get rid of the globals or rigorously control when they get written and read, that your problem will clear.

I really don't they such a device exists. (I could be wrong)

As already suggested you could add a USB PCI card.

One other option might be ethernet to usb.

However, this sounds to me like an excuse to upgrade the PC!

Once again I am turning to LAVA for 'help'.

We are looking for at least one more Test Engineer to work at our Charlottesville manufacturing facility.

The job should be posted on CareerBuilder soon, but in the mean time feel free to contact me directly. (jhoward AT niitek DOT com)

Here is the Job Description:

NIITEK designs and produces state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar systems that work to safeguard our soldiers. Our sensors are the worlds best for countermine and non-conventional explosive detection. NIITEK technology also has long-term opportunities in other, non-military applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with design engineering and manufacturing to develop test requirements for new and existing products. Requirements development will begin at new concept development and continue through to production.
• Design appropriate hardware and software to implement test solutions that meet all requirements.
• Incorporate new test processes into low-mid volume manufacturing environment.
• Provide support to production test team.
• Create test documentation necessary to meet the requirements of ISO-9001.

• Bachelors degree in Engineering (Electrical Engineering preferred).
• At least two (2) years experience designing and/or troubleshooting electronic hardware and software.

Desired Skills

Software

• Experience implementing automated test procedures using National Instruments Test Stand.
• Experience writing software using National Instruments LabVIEW.
• Familiarity with software development life cycles and working in a team environment on software development projects.
• Experience using Microsoft Office including Word, Access, Excel and Visio.

• Strong professional experience with Analog and Digital troubleshooting at component level.
• Understanding of how to use grounding, shielding, twisted pair wiring, and circuit/wire layout to minimize noise, and improve hardware performance.
• Experience supporting custom automated test equipment (ATE) systems for use in production.
• Familiar with simple Ethernet network architecture.

General

• Experience writing and executing test plans and procedures and marking up technical documentation.
• Ability to compile and analyze test data to define changes required in test equipment, test procedures, manufacturing processes or identify new test requirements.
• Ability to work independently or within a team environment.
• Strong problem solving skills.

I'd love to see a photo of a 50 chassis system!

It was something like 19 racks. It took up almost an entire room. (not to mention 50kW of power)

It was also a sore point for NI because they REALLY wanted us to use PXI.

Does anyone know the advantage of PXI system, is there any difference from PC system? or please give some hint for PXI programing.

Bottom line for us is often just the physical requirement of how many cards we need to fit in a chassis. If it is more than 2-3, then PXI is once of the simplest options.

(although I have used 20 slot PCI rackmount PC's as well, saving a pretty penny when using over 50 chassis for one test system)

QUOTE (zmarcoz @ Mar 15 2009, 10:42 PM)

After I fail in my LV job interview, I really want to know what knowledge should a LV programmer should know? I understand that the answer may depend on the company, but any general knowledge that I should know?

Maybe I should give an example, I would expect a webpage developer knows about Photoshop, Dreamwaver, php, frontpage, etc

Like you say - it really depends. I suspect that very few LabVIEW programmers do nothing but write software. Off the top off my head here is a short list of non-LabVIEW stuff that I like to see in our programmers:

1) solid understanding of computers and networking

2) basic understanding of serial communication protocols (RS232/485)

3) electronics! (at LEAST enough to design basic DAQ setups)

4) comfortable using an oscilloscope

5) basic math (calculus and statistics)

QUOTE (peteski @ Mar 10 2009, 12:19 PM)

...If you already have a "floating" (uncommitted) oscilloscope on hand, you could potentially use that for troubleshooting, while you have nicely tucked into the test system a set of PXI based digitizers to do the heavy lifting after everything has been verified to be working properly...

Good point!

Also - getting back to the original question regarding Signal Express. I've only used it a couple times, and it never did what I needed at the time. However, I never did try using it as a scope.

John

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 6 2009, 04:11 PM)

... However, the technician who will be using the fixture wants to be sure he can troubleshoot the devices. He's a bit reluctant to give up the oscilloscopes, and I can't blame him. ...

It is really none of my business, so forgive me when I cry out in terror ... "DON"T DO IT"!

The few times I've tried to use a soft front panel, I've found them to be very limiting compared to the full featured interface on almost any scope. The soft front panel does provide most of the standard scope functionality, but you loose all the proprietary stuff that is unique to the scope manufacturer. For example all the custom math fuctions, probe calibration, filters, histograms, ...

And then you still have to deal with the problem of sharing valuable screen real estate with whatever other software you are running.

Perhaps you have compelling reasons to get rid of the genuine scope, but I can't help but wonder if you are making a huge mistake.

Just my $0.02.

QUOTE (Ale914 @ Feb 24 2009, 03:42 AM)

Hi i have a 7813R here and i need to use it a se 8 different RS232 (of course at TTL levels)

I wrote the code to manage one serial and works so i decide to multiply this code for 8 obviously modifying the physical pin associated to each but at compilation time this "monster" don't compile, take an enormous amount of time only to inizialize all vi needed (1033 VI!!!! )

Have you any suggestions? never try to make somethings similar?

Thanks

Making the leap from 1 to 8 seems ambitious. It may be useful to try just two.

QUOTE (Dan DeFriese @ Feb 7 2009, 06:53 PM)

...

*Programmatic setting between RS232/422/485.

*A hardware time-tag option.

Fantastic suggestions. Especially the hardware time stamp!

QUOTE (MikaelH @ Jan 22 2009, 11:49 PM)

I’ve gotten some answers from NI regarding my problem.

First there is a known bug in LabVIEW that prevents the runtime engine to allocate as much memory as the development environment.

Second problem is that I tried to allocate a big chuck of memory at once. If Windows can’t give LabVIEW a continuous bit of memory from the RAM with this size you get the “Out Of Memory” message.

There are memory defragment program that can make it better.

I tried to allocate many small chucks of memory than it works better, but still an executable can’t allocate as much as I can from the development environment.

//Mikael

NI has "LabVIEW 64bit Pioneer" available under their beta test program. (go to "www.ni.com/beta")

If beta software is an option, then you may find this helpful.