Sparkette

Exactly what library is this calling? I found it in one of the VI's that comes with LabVIEW.

So I've been wanting to play around with the Arduino toolkit, but when I installed the VI Package Manager, the splash screen stayed up for a very long time. I tried quitting in Task Manager, and running it again. This time after about 10 seconds, it gave me the standard Windows crash dialog. I tried running it as Administrator, but that didn't help. I also tried running it in XP compatibility mode, and that opened a popup saying it couldn't detect a LabVIEW installation, but it still wouldn't load (It didn't crash though; just stayed at the splash screen.) I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, and LabVIEW 2011 Professional Development System.

Actually, it probably wouldn't be. Most people are not you. You play with it, learn from it and know enough to know what to do if there's a problem. Many LV developers aren't. Enough of them will ignore or not notice such a warning to create a support burden. You can see that AQ says this happens even when people have to actively work around the protection to get to the code, so you can be sure it will happen if it's simple to access.

The main difference between LV and Minecraft, in that regard, is that Minecraft is a free/cheap game developed by a single person and LV is an expensive IDE used for creating working systems - people expect the latter to work a lot more than they do the former and so the support for it has to be at a higher level.

And for what it's worth, I'm with you on this. I also like access to the private stuff, but I've seen enough of it to know that there's a good reason for *some* it to remain private.

Yes, I'm well aware of the differences. But that still doesn't change the fact that when Minecraft first became real popular it wasn't even in beta yet. And even when it was in beta people still expected it to have bugs. Because a beta is just that, a beta. Companies probably wouldn't use beta software for high-stakes industrial control processes, because the fact that it's a beta (even if it was something like LabVIEW) means it is expected to still have bugs.

Of course, there are some similarities between Minecraft and LabVIEW.

The password signals that if I'm looking for something I can adjust, there's no reason to look here. Now that scripting is released, that signal is the primary reason for passwords to exist. In that sense, its a time saver.

In the case of the call library, there's nothing there to read... it isn't as if you would learn any aspect of G programming to see that call, and the vast majority of them have all of their parameters wired fully to the conpane. In the case of the unreleased features, we may have configured it into the one setup that actually works and almost any adjustment will destabilize it. Or it has some feature that doesn't really work for arbitrary use cases, and the only one that does work is the one we have exposed as a VI. We get people calling us up all the time who have broken into these VIs and want us to fix their system which is no longer working. It's hard to have sympathy for them.

We've discussed that if the password protection becomes insufficient generally, we might change to shipping these as built DLLs, so the VIs won't even exist on disk. That may be the better thing to do so there isn't "just a password" standing between users and the diagrams.

You see, a much better thing to do than the password is when opening the VI, put a warning that says something like this:

"WARNING: Copying anything from this VI will likely cause your system to malfunction. National Instruments takes NO RESPONSIBILITY for any damage that occurs as a result of doing so. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED."

Word it so that it really tries to scare people against doing it, but so they still can if they just want to poke around. Maybe even have a link to an article on the NI knowledge base giving some examples, of course making it clear that other things can happen too.

In fact, that would work better for a lot of that kind of stuff. If you've seen any of my other posts on this forum, it'll be obvious I don't like NI preventing us from using features in LabVIEW that they can use. Just because something is unstable isn't an excuse to prevent someone who's just curious how things work from accessing it, so long as people are aware of the problems it can cause. Why do you think public beta testing is so popular? (Minecraft, anyone?)

Yep.

So, in other words, there's a license that even the consumer version will recognize that will unlock additional features intended to only be used by NI employees. Anyone know what this license is called internally? Like the Professional license is called LabVIEW_PDS, and the Student license is called LabVIEW_Student. I've heard there's a (non-NI-approved, for obvious reasons) program that can activate any LabVIEW license; maybe someone could use that? For purely educational purposes, of course.

Can you expand on this? I'm not making the connection as to why it would be easier.

For me, it's never about not trusting code I can't read - all of us do that all the time, it's practically unavoidable. It's more about knowing that there's something I could read and there's just one password between me and it.

Exactly. What mainly gets me is that even the LabVIEW process running on my own computer can "read" it as well, but it's hiding it from me. That's why I went looking for the kind of tool I mentioned. To satisfy my curiosity.

I actually found a VI password cracker in Google's cache, and I tested it and it works. PM me if you want it. Sorry, no NI employees.

(I hope this isn't against some forum rule I overlooked! If someone tells me it is, I'll remove this post, or a moderator can.)

Actually, as I was scrolling down to this post, I noticed somebody else posted a link to the same tool. The website was down, but I found the PHP source code in Google's cache. Remember Aristos Queue's "Randomize 1D Array" VI from the NI forums?

I actually found a VI password cracker in Google's cache, and I tested it and it works. PM me if you want it. Sorry, no NI employees.

(I hope this isn't against some forum rule I overlooked! If someone tells me it is, I'll remove this post, or a moderator can.)

Would that mean there's some other type of license that only NI has?

When I try to open an Xnode in LabVIEW, and click "Why is Library Locked?", it gives me the following message:

You do not have the correct license to be able to edit this library. Please activate or contact National Instruments.

This happens even in the Professional version, which I'm pretty sure is the most fully-featured license type. Is there some special kind of NI-internal license type that enables features that are in the binary but just not enabled?

http://joule.ni.com/...id/2337/lang/en

I guess you didn't see I'm on a Mac. I can't find the Mac version; can you please post a link to that?

Well, here's one: the Generic VI.

And just last week, this was posted: https://decibel.ni.c.../docs/DOC-16905

Not "NI-internal" as such, but not exactly fully supported either. Hmm, wonder if those are related at all....

Having written a few XNodes lately, I really appreciate having that functionality available, even in a completely unsupported way. But I'm still struggling to master the techniques that are available (XControls, LVOOP - I'm looking at you!) without worrying too much about what else might be under the hood - apart from that Generic VI - that really would be useful.

Why is that generic VI password protected? Just put an "unsupported" warning in the block diagram! We want to see how you did it!

(And can an NI employee please answer this question: in your "special" NI version of LabVIEW, if it exists, how do you use these features?)

Are you able to manipulate VISA channels in MAX?

I don't think I have that installed.

Every time I try to place a VISA I/O selector control, LabVIEW crashes as soon as I release the mouse button on the front panel. It also happened when I tried to use any of the Arduino functions, so I uninstalled the Arduino package to see if that made it work, but it didn't. This is LabVIEW 2010 Evaluation on Mac OS X.

Here's the crash information: http://pastebin.com/r8Jhuhi1

Right, as long as you don't violate any of the terms of the student license agreement.

I don't know of any reason I would have to break the EULA, but why did you mention that? What would happen if (hypothetically) I do?

Well here's a cheap solution: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10812

I know its for windows, but I would imagine you already have some sort of software that lets you run windows as well.

That's interesting, but it comes with the student edition, which as I said has a watermark. Besides, i already have an Arduino. In addition to getting in the way, there's also this annoying glitch I need to deal with whenever I scroll down (or right) on the block diagram:

I assume that glitch is in the student version as well. And about the guy who asked me why I wanted the pro features if I didn't know what they are: I thought the event structure was pro-only. Maybe it used to be. But I guess it's not, after looking at that website. Even if I do have to deal with the watermark and associated glitch, I will consider getting the student version, as long as it doesn't expire when I'm no longer eligible. (I can use it as long as I want, right?)

Lol, I do agree with you that LV should be free for non-commercial use. You're right that they make the vast majority of their money from businesses using it for industrial/research purposes, and that's just the software. They also make a lot of money from selling hardware, and that obviously can't be given away for free, even for non-commercial use (well it can, but NI would be at a huge loss if they do.)

Well, I would recommend checking out ni.com/jobs for starters

There was a good reason scripting wasn't released for a long while (and some not so good).

But the basic premise is that if we let loose all the hidden stuff, the likelyhood of you shooting yourself in the foot would increase drastically and even if that wasn't the case we would have to support you through trying to figure it out or unfiguring out how to do something.

I know this my not be NI's official response, but I've never been very official anyway.

There are things, to get access to all the passwords and hidden stuff, you need to be in the tower.

Until then, it's up to the community to figure out how to hack into hidden/non-released features as possible and in doing so, support themselves. IMO it's a good natural filter.

So to answer your question better, there is no magic key, and your best bet is to keep a close eye on LAVA

Best,

~,~

Norm Kirchner

How much is there still that we aren't seeing, though? There should be an option in the preferences (or maybe even just the configuration file) that says something like "Enable private/untested features" with a warning like "Checking this box will enable features that have not fully passed testing for use outside National Instruments and are subject to change. NI is not responsible for any consequences of using these features, and we do not provide support for their use. Use of these features is done solely at your own risk. These features will appear with red text in the LabVIEW interface."

Is there any way I can get LabVIEW 2010 Professional for free? I'm not with any company (in fact I don't even have a job yet) and I figure the $4299 price tag is because mainly only big companies use LabVIEW. I would consider getting the student version, but that has a watermark on it, which could get annoying (it certainly is on the evaluation version) and I don't know if it has the extra Professional features, whatever they are (I think the event structure is one of them.) Failing a free license, would it be possible for me to get the student version with the Pro features and no watermark? I've emailed info@ni.com about this, but I haven't gotten a response yet (though it is the weekend.)

Edit 2/5/22: Thank you NI!

I know about VI scripting (which isn't internal anymore) XNodes, and I also know there's some events that aren't exposed to the user, but what else is there? And is there any kind of "hack" that tricks LabVIEW into thinking you're an NI employee or something unlocking these features? I don't know exactly how this works.

Is there any way to read data from Windows NT performance counters into LabVIEW? Yes, I know it's a short post.

When I place a property node, right-click it, and go to Select Class >> ActiveX >> Browse..., or do anything else to open that same dialog, it has to take at least a minute before the dialog opens. Is there any way to make this shorter? I have 768MB of RAM (upgraded from 192MB!) in case that matters.

I created a simple VI and renamed it to .VIM, put it on my block diagram, and when I right-clicked it, it let me choose Main Material and Term Material, whatever those are, and uncheck Show Icon, which puts the terminals in weird places.

Last summer, I caught a cod that was longer than 4 yards. Do I win the codding challenge?

/sarcasm

Just to set things straight -- my profile says nowhere that I'm 16. I'm 15 (at the time of writing) and I don't know where you got 16.