joshxdr

I am working on a refurbished IC test system. It was state of the art in 1998. The controller workstation uses Solaris 2.5. It comes with something called TestVIEW, which seems to be a wrapper for a C driver library using LabVIEW 5.1. Is there a more modern version of LabVIEW that can be used with Solaris 2.5? Do you know where I might find a license for such a version?

I waited four weeks, but they were actually done grading it after three weeks. I had a deal set up with the unemployment office to pay for the test (TAA training benefit). No surprise, they did not come through when NI sent them the bill. What was weird is that NI just sat on the results without informing me. I only found out when I called to check up on it. If you are a typical LAVA member you have a lot more hands-on experience than me, so you probably only need to practice pacing yourself for the test and getting used to the style conventions. Since my last employer went down like the Titanic, I have been studying on my own and working on volunteer LV projects for about a year, so I am on the "zero-to-hero" track . I took the LabVIEW Intermediate I class, which is very close to a CLD prep course. This was VERY helpful. Then I spent at least two weeks studying the practice exams backward and forwards. I timed myself at least three times to get used to the pacing. I found that I had to used the quick drop menu heavily in order to finish on time. Hope this helps.

I looked at the LabPython page on the OpenG website, and I saw very little as far as documentation, updates, examples, etc. Is anyone still using this? Has the project been abandoned? I have some coding experience using NumPy, so I would rather use that then have to learn Matlab.

Crosspost

Hi Mark, I was a part-time FRC mentor last year (I could only volunteer once a week). I assume you are volunteering for FRC (FIRST Robotics Challenge) which is the biggest competition under the FIRST umbrella. FIRST provides a software framework, in both C++ and LabVIEW, that provides a ton of abstraction for operating the robot. It is relatively easy to make the robot run and do things. Some of the challenges of being a FIRST mentor have nothing to do with teaching the students how to program or design a robot. There is a lot of fundraising, logistics, buying tools, herding students, setting up the workshop, setting up a new workshop after you get kicked out of the old one, etc. Being successful in the competition has a lot to do with things like scouting, researching the competition on the internet, human driver skill, and knowing the right strategy for the game itself. It is not purely an engineering competition, although the goal is to expose the students to the engineering field in a fun way. It is a cliche but mentoring is another case of what you get out of it is what you put into it. I wish I had more time to volunteer, because it really is a fun competition and both the mentors and the students get a lot out of it. I would recommend volunteering at least twice a week, and get involved early (like right now) so that you can be part of the training and preparation of the team before the competition season. I have heard there are a wide range of team philosophies, from very professional and disciplined teams to teams that do 90% of the work over the last week of build season and at the competition. I did not go to the actual competition but I heard it was a fun, exhausting, crazy marathon. Good luck with your FRC mentor experience!

Here is a shortened link to my LinkedIn profile. It seems that LAVA does not like long URLs. http://bit.ly/jd3ah

I wanted to express my thanks to everyone on this board who assisted me with preparing for my CLD exam. It helped me a great deal to have advice from experts like you guys. Now that I have my CLD certification, my next goal is to find paid employment, preferably in the Raleigh-Durham area. I have ten years of experience as a test engineer, and extensive experience building test solutions for electronics. I am open to contract work. My resume and work history is available on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin....orne/6/102/301. Josh

I just checked the example answer provided by NI for the Security System question. Strangely, the log file it produces does not match the spec in the question, and doesn't even record anything useful. This answer seems to have been posted on the NI webpage since 2007... I wonder if the example answers were actually graded? If this is the standard for passing the test, my confidence is way up! Personally, I found the difficulty of the examples to be Car Wash > Security System > Traffic Light. The traffic light just seemed simper, there are far fewer interactions. For example, what the car wash does depends on the current step, the wash selected, the sensor status, and the next step. I also wasted time trying to get built in Time Elapsed vi to do something useful. I ended up building my own that worked. Another comment about the example answers. There are often switches which are intended to be hardware inputs. In theory, these hardware states are totally out of the control of the software you are writing, you are just reading the sensor/switch/whatever. Yet, in every example answer, these switch states are reset at initialization, as though you can magically move cars off the street when the program starts!

Thanks Mark and Ned. I took the Security System example exam today. I read the question wrong and had to do a major rewrite, so by the time I finished, I had taken 5 1/2 hours. It will definitely be challenging to finish within four hours. I need to learn how to use the quick drop menu to get more speed.

Thanks Mark and Eric. Josh

I understand the frustration of the poster. Decisions made at the beginning of a project often have unexpected consequences down the line. Be warned, there are risks to going down the free software route. For example, I read a post from someone who was developing a commercial application using Python module PyXML. At the time this was the "official" xml library for Python. A year later, all the volunteers working on PyXML decided that a separate project, Elementree, was cooler, so they abandoned PyXML for Elementree. Now the developer has put time and effort into building an application with a library that see no further added features or bugfixes, and will have declining support since fewer and fewer people will be using it. And you can't go to the volunteers and complain, since they already work for free!

Attached is my version of the "car wash" CLD practice exam. Please let me know if my style looks good, in particular comments, documentation, wiring, etc. I will be taking the test next Monday. Car_Wash_Practice_Exam.zip

There is a "User Title" under my avatar that says "I need an avatar!" or something like that. I have searched for half an hour for how to change this and I haven't found it yet. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I am preparing for the CLD. If I posted one of my answers to a CLD example question and asked for comments, would I get any? Would it be better to post here or at the NI board?

There are libraries for Python that emulate 95% of MatLab functionality. Search the interwebs for numpy, scipy, and matplotlib.

Hi all, I am a mentor for a FIRST robotics team trying to set up source code control for our next season. Unfortunately the version of LabVIEW provided to FRC does not provide a license to "CMP compare two VIs.vi". This is a major problem for us, since one of our major goals for the upcoming season is to have more students become involved in software development. Using the mk-1 eyeball to check for changes seems foolhardy. I am open to any solution you guys can think of. I am willing to try developing my own substitute for this vi if someone can set me in the right direction.