Sparkette

Well, I just took a quick look and noticed a couple, like App.Get Shell Icon of File and App.License.Get Licensed Version. Also, are there any other "security levels" of properties and methods? Right now I have access to public, scripting, and private, but are there any others? I ask because for the XNodeLib type (returned by App.XNode.Create) there are no properties or methods.

That's certainly a shame. As I'm sure you know, I think it would be great if the LabVIEW community had access to all the same tools as NI, but I doubt that's going to happen. Sorry if I did anything you or NI didn't like (like the Generic VI thing I posted last night, which I imagine inspired this post) but I really wanted to share my findings with the community. Don't take it personally, not that I think you do; I would have done the same no matter who released it. I wish NI would share more things with the community, even if they aren't fully tested. After all, that's what alpha releases are for.

One thing I'm still curious about is how NI makes generic VI's. Obviously the controls have to come from somewhere, so how do you make them? Is it like some kind of low-level VI editor that edits the individual data structures in the file? Also, how exactly does the compiler get confused?

Yes, I'm aware of that. That doesn't make it any less fun to mess with though, as long as I'm not doing anything high-risk.

Oh, okay, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining. They still could have used a nicer color for the property/invoke nodes, though. Like #80FF80 (this color). And what is there some trick to?

EDIT: I am unable to edit my first post, but I have made .ctl files for this that can be easily added to your palette. Generic Controls.zip

WARNING! As Aristos Queue stated, this is VERY experimental. I am not an employee of NI and am not responsible for anything bad that happens if you use this. Basically, it's just for experimentation. Just drop that VI snippet into a VI, and it will work with any array type. I copied it from Randomize 1D Array. If you don't know what a generic VI is, click that link. Here's a sample I created that takes a 1D array of any type, and outputs an array which is basically that array concatenated to itself. For example, {1, 2, 3} becomes {1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3}. Not too useful, but it works as a proof-of-concept. And in case the VI snippet isn't working, you can copy the control and indicator from there. Download link: Duplicate 1D Array.vi Another thing that might work (though I haven't tried it) is to take the DBL out of the array and see if that works with any type as well (not just any array). I can still think of a few uses for this, such as if the value is just going to be typecasted anyway. Like, say, something that converts any data into a hex string. EDIT: Yep, it works, and here you go. Data to Hex String.vi EDIT2: There is actually a much easier way to do this, which is likely how Aristos made the generic controls in the first place. All you have to do is open LabVIEW.ini, add the line "GenericsAreGo=True" somewhere, and you'll be able to right-click a control and select "Generic" to make it generic. EDIT3: Out of curiosity, I tried putting a generic control in a Malleable VI to see what would happen, since Malleable VI's basically do the same thing. Guess what? Crash. Not immediate, but it happened after I moved the subVI on the diagram. Fix your code, NI! (just kidding!)

The only posts I can find about this LabVIEW.ini key are from more than five years ago. Open LabVIEW.ini, and add "SuperSecretPrivateSpecialStuff=true" and then place a VI property node. Tons more properties appear, and if you select the new ones, it becomes this dark tan color, similar to scripting with the cyan color. Interesting...too bad it's read-only. So what exactly would make something qualify to only be enabled by this and not the scripting toggle? And Aristos, does IsGeneric indeed mean what I think it does?

Every time LabVIEW crashes for me, it gives me several disk errors beforehand. Each of these has "Cancel", "Try Again", and "Continue" as buttons. I've always just clicked Continue, so I'm not sure about what happens if you click a different one. Here's the sequence of errors: (not sure if it's the same every time) I do have a RAID setup, so that may have something to do with it. It's just annoying, sort of adding insult to injury whenever LV crashes, which unfortunately isn't as seldom as I'd hope.

I'm curious about that document. Any chance I (and the rest of the community, of course) can see it? Also, hooovahh, I saw your post, and I don't feel like a "leet haxor" just because of something small like that. Don't jump to conclusions.

Oh, okay. In case you're wondering, it was in a password-protected VI, so that makes sense. Hmilch's VI Explorer is awesome.

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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.

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: 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?

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?

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?)

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