ShaunR

Steganography Version 1.0.0 is now released.

Enjoy.

1 hour ago, Phillip Brooks said:

--insecure is a curl argument. You don't need to include that in the headers.

You can do the equivalent of --insecure by setting verify server to False when creating the HTTP session.

 

Should never do this. Anyone can sit between you and the server and decode all your traffic. The proper way is to add the certificate (public key) to a trusted list after manually verifying and checking it.

What's the point of using HTTPS if you are going to ignore the security?

14 hours ago, Mads said:

I had a brief look at the code when you first posted it and thought perhaps it could benefit by working more on U8 arrays directly instead of the boolean arrays, but sticking to U8 all the way would not be practical either, so after some minor test runs I left that trail

You can get some of the way like that but there are a couple of bits per byte that have to be concatenated. So at some stage you have to convert to bits. The speed of the encoding for-loops with shift was a surprise to me though.

14 hours ago, Mads said:

imgs folder is placed incorrectly in relation to the Example, making the default path to image incorrect

Yup.

On 11/12/2025 at 9:35 AM, ShaunR said:

Not even the superfluous length parameter or the example images in the wrong location?

14 hours ago, Mads said:

The benchmark code, if it is going to be included in the release, might also look more logical if it was timing the individual steganography sub-components but with the contribution from other functions currently so small (relative to the current encode/decode functions at least) it has not much to say in practice.

It was purely for relative performances and will not be included in the release proper. For this sort of thing I would rather deal with relative performance (removes differences between systems that they are bench-marked on). The in-built Performance>Profile Performance and Memory is better for identifying which individual components contribute what; so I would use that if someone found a better solution.

2 hours ago, Neil Pate said:

You might have more success posting this on the Discord. Most of the conversations happen there these days.

I don't do Discord. I don't even do Ni.com.

Feedback isn't really necessary. I only knocked it up because I went down a rabbit hole and wasn't impressed with the existing LabVIEW solutions. I thought I'd throw it in here to see if someone could improve it. My solution is optimised but there may have been a better alternative solution or maybe someone had a nice JPEG one (LSB doesn't survive JPEG compression).

You might get a mention in the readme just for responding  

Nothing? No improvements. No bugs? 

Not even the superfluous length parameter or the example images in the wrong location?

I'll give it one more week then release the version 1.0.0

On 10/29/2025 at 7:57 PM, Bryan said:

With Win 10 support being terminated, and Win 11 essentially becoming "SpyWare!_OS", many people are switching to Linux distributions.

I only switched to Win10 3 years ago from Win 7 and that was only because I wanted encrypted SMB to my NAS.

I'll think about desktop Linux when they fix their application distribution methods . I dropped my Linux LabVIEW product support for a reason->my products broke every time someone else updated their product.

This all sounds very awkward for a home automation GUI.

Why would you compile software on the target? Surely all the devices are wifi with their own REST API so you only need an aggregating web server with pretty javascript front end. What am I missing?

27 minutes ago, Neil Pate said:

but not quite as punny... or am I just not smart enough to get that one?

Nah. It was just an icon I generated for an Ollama client.

17 hours ago, Neil Pate said:

Love the choice of embedded image 🙂

The llama is cuter

Hi all.

A bit of nerdy fun if you can spare some brain cycles.

I've written a Steganography API (0.9.0) and will be putting it on my site under a BSD-3 licence. It currently only uses the LSB method but I may do others if there is interest.

I've optimised it as much as I can but I expect that better people than I can improve it's performance. So. The task is to make it as fast as possible.

There is a benchmark with some images included so we can do comparative benchmarks. I'm looking forward to some innovative improvements. The winner gets a mention in the readme under SALUTATIONS.

If you can find the time and/or inclination then please post your times for the vanilla installation and then after any improvements as shown below.

Times to beat so far:

LabVIEW 2009 x64, Win10

Before Modification:
Encode: 297.9 ms
Decode: 98.1 ms

After Modification:
Encode: 297.9 ms
Decode: 98.1 ms

Oh yes. And finally. If you find any bugs, let me know and I'll fix them.

1 hour ago, viSci said:

Bridgeview?  You must be old as the hills   I think if back then they had our modern DDS options   We would have never had to suffer NSV’s and the product might be still viable today.

I couldn't see the hills because they were covered in glaciers. 

1 hour ago, viSci said:

Remember the venerable DSC toolkit?

I even remember BridgeVIEW 

On 9/30/2025 at 12:43 PM, hooovahh said:

can the tag be based on the Caption of the control not the label?  That way it can change at runtime

Just be aware that the Caption property is often used for translations.

1 hour ago, BitPack Tools said:

By the way, could you share what exact problem you had with the temporary file?

No problem. I just hadn't created a TRUE boolean so that the image is returned (default is false). I usually expect indicators to return things, except if there is an error, and not be conditional on other inputs.

Nice.

While I was trying to figure out why I wasn't getting the image (because there is a boolean to return it ); I noticed you used a temporary file  for the png image. There is a better option in the Web Services palette which means you can directly convert a byte string into a LV image without an intermediary file:

As you now have two different connector-panes for different modes of operation (text and file embedding), you might want to consider whether a polymorphic VI would be useful for their adapt-to-type feature.

Finally. If you are going to distribute the 7zip binary rather than requiring the end user to download it; don't forget to heed the copyright. They want you to add the actual LGPL text rather than reference a URL.

Quote

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce related license information from this file.

13 hours ago, BitPack Tools said:

I am fully aware of the drawbacks of this approach.

Your customers also need to be aware of any drawbacks and caveats. If the filename is used as a key for an encryption scheme then perhaps it should be mentioned in the documentation and, additionally, what scheme you are using. I think this will be the most common reason people will seek support from you.

I won't harp on much more about the MGI licence but just say, finally, I don't think you fully understand the issue, which could have been completely avoided.

Just for reference, I have attached my test harness from above in LV2019.

Example_1.vi

2 hours ago, BitPack Tools said:

so there is no hidden copyright issue

There is. If they create an executable they need to add the copyright to their documentation or distribution in some way as the licence is contained in the MGI VI's description.

2 hours ago, BitPack Tools said:

You also mentioned “Data does not survive a copy operation”. Could you clarify or give me an example? I’d like to reproduce that issue, since I haven’t encountered it myself.

Example_1.vi

OK. Now we're cooking with gas.

Some minor (and one major*) comments.

1. Data does not survive a copy operation.*
2. Error in (No error) shouldn't be required.
3. Add a document that states the licence conditions that you are distributing under (e.g. MIT, BSD, Creative Commons etc)
4. Use a Hex Encode and Decode you have written. Don't use the two MGI utilities.
5. Make your logo smaller. 

With regards #4.

You are only using two MGI utils to convert to and from hex chars. That can easily be done natively without requiring installation of a 3rd party toolkit. Using those two requires the end user add an additional copyright statement to their binary distribution that they may not be aware of (were you?). Save them (and yourself) the copyright issues.

Quote

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

If you are going to use 3rd party toolkit, require they install them as a dependency then you will not have copyright issues ... but you don't need it for this.

It doesn't seem to produce a valid png (either as XML or "not encoded").

I've changed the extension name of the produced file (.notaping) because the web interface will not allow uploading as a png.

PicPack_Embedded.notapng

2 hours ago, hooovahh said:

Here is the Community Edition announcement. https://www.jki.net/blog/news/vipm-2020-community-edition

Perfect for the OP if that suffices then.

13 hours ago, hooovahh said:

This feature is the VI Package Configuration (VIPC) and is free and included in the community version of VIPM.

Just download VIPM today and activate a 30day trial to try out VIPC files.

Pretty sure it is a pro feature. You may be able to use VIPC files in the Community version but I'm sure you can't create them without the pro version. Maybe it's changed since I last looked though.

As an addendum...

I did something very similar to you many moons ago. Maybe it will give you some ideas. Here is "Dispatcher". Should work fine for you as long as you don't select TLS. Just open the project and run the file Demo - Run ME.vi (then press Register and Subscribe buttons). It also does stuff like compression and blowfish encryption. It's a simple custom, home-grown,  protocol that I wrote to explore high-speed data streaming before the more modern protocols were available. The Dispatcher, Publishers and Subscribers can run on any machine that has network access-they don't all have to be local to each other. There is an API that can be used to implement it in applications.

It's not really a product so not much in the way of documentation, I'm afraid.

Dispatcher.zip

14 hours ago, Reds said:

In theory maybe....

But how would I get LabVIEW to create QUIC connections?

Tough one for LabVIEW. It's a bit like RTSP - there's nothing until someone writes it. 

OpenSSL has QUIC support. M$ have .NET support and MsQuic.

RabbitMQ is discussing whether they should or not. I will support it later this year (waiting for OpenSSL version 3.6).

I have some LabVIEW prototypes that I've played with and it's damned fast with almost no overhead. It has in-built failover and multiplexed channels making it ideal for your use case. 

Your idea of streaming directly is a good one, though. You don't really need a higher protocol unless you can identify a particular problem you need to overcome. Websockets is another that would be a good start because you would be able to have an Apache/Nginx server for routing or even send the data directly to browsers.

Hmmm. Yes. Considering where you are now I would recommend Websockets. They are probably the easiest and get you almost all the way to where you want to be and a good start for expansion later for streaming in other more efficient and scalable protocols like QUIC. I think there are a few LabVIEW Websocket implementations to choose from so you wouldn't have to write your own.

On 8/26/2025 at 2:43 PM, Matt_AM1 said:

ShaunR,

 

Based on what you are saying, it looks like I'd need to go down the VM route.  However, I'd like to verify I'm using the right jargon after rereading my initial message and reading your response. 

 

When I am saying portable, I mean that I would like to be able to transfer what toolkits and what not relatively easy between PC's.  So if my PC crashes or I have to change PCs in a few years, I don't have to recreate my wheel and be super meticulous about everything.

 

When I say isolated, I am thinking since I do dev work in 2 different versions, then those versions shouldn't be interfering with each other for common drivers, such as DAQmx.  So to me, that means that they should never be able to see each other, thus isolated.

 

If both of these are accurate to the jargon, then I do need to go down the VM route.  However, I am unsure if what I think portable means is what it actually means 😅.

 

Thanks,

Matt

Not sure what a "wheel" means in this context. I've only ever seen it in context of A.I. python scripts.

If you are just looking at toolkits installed with the JKI Package Manager then the full version can create super packages where you can create a list of toolkits to install. you could then walk from PC to PC with that package and install them with the package manager.

QUIC