Dan Bookwalter N8DCJ

Lior Perfect , that is the kind of insight I was looking for .... thank you Dan

Ok , i am looking for someone with extensive real world PXI experience , who doesn't work for one of the suppliers etc... where I work none of us have any PXI experience. Here is a big picture overview of what we would be replacing for now. We have test stands that need upgraded, they currently use discrete instruments, Function Generator (4 Ch) , 4 channel oscilloscope , a Keithley 2750 , with 40 channels of DAQ , multiplexer card and relay cards ... all slots are full on the Keithley. So, for PXI I was thinking DMM card , multiplexer(s) , relay cards , Oscilloscope and Function Generator ... Ideally I would like to talk to someone for say 30 minutes on phone or Teams or whatever to get a better real world application feel etc.. From what I have read , we would not need a controller as the PC would be in control of everything and not offloaded to the controller. One of the aspects of PXI I like is the ability for expansion in the future. if you have any inclination to talk to us , message me on here and we will figure it out ... TIA Regards Dan

Cool , thanks I will check it out

Not sure if this is correct forum ... But , we are in the market for 1 or more of these instruments in working order (they are long obsolete) , we need to upgrade , but that is not a trivial task as we have stands all over the world using these things , not to mention all the software that would need upgraded to run with the new instrument. it is a painful situation that has to and will change , but , we need a few spares if we can find any. I am hoping someone has 1 or more laying on a shelf that they no longer want 🙂 Regards Dan p.s. we have been searching the internet , but , nobody seems to have any.

OK , i do not actually have the hardware yet ,i am using simulated so a little tough to test it out , i suppose i could use different ranges on each channel to try to figure it out .. anyway , if I configure a task to use channels , in say this order , 1,7,3,6 .... will I get the data back in 1,7,3,6 or 1,3,6,7 ? TIA Dan

Rolf/Log Thanks guys for the input , I will have to do a little testing , but , sounds encouraging. Regards Dan

If I build and exe using LabVIEW 2019 Pro , that utilizes the report generation toolkit , can it be run on a PC with just the LabVIEW runtime engine , and , some of these PC's may have LabVIEW 2019 Full installed on them. Will it run in that case ? Regards Dan

Gribo OK , i will look into reducing resolution , I should be ok with that ... Thanks Dan EDIT: GRIBO , i went to 4.5 resolution and i get the timing I need... i will have to make sure that the resolution is good , but , i guess i really dont have much choice .... this system is currently running by a program that was written in C++ , but we dont have the source code , and we need to get it converted to LV so we can add more types of units as needed ... Dan

I have an application where i need to scan up to 16 channels at 10Hz , using a 16 channel multiplexer card 34902A. i have tried a few simple things and am not close the 10 Hz , i saw somewhere either on here or NI.com about buffering , but , for the life of me i cant find it again. edit: i started with the advanced scan example. So , how do you set up buffering , and poll the instrument at regular intervals ? i did all the configuring outside of the while loop , and only triggered and read (into a queue) in the DAQ loop , but , it seems as though i am still a little shy of the 10Hz. Any pointers ? Dan

OK , i am looking into using TDMS , but , i am struggling to get it to work how i envisioned. I know i am missing something , i am very tired been up for 1.5 days (travelling) ... anyway , i like the idea of the meta data aspect vs a text file... what i am looking to do is write 350-400 data points per second , for this particular test it is basically 10 rows x 35 or so columns... i have mocked up some simulated data etc... when i try to write the 10 rows , it is very slow ... if i write all 216000 rows at once after the data , it is very fast , however , this test will run 12-18 hours , so i do not want to wait until the end to write the data ... if someone could point me in the right direction that would be great. Regards Dan

Hey John Yeah after messing with it for a bit , I was over thinking it , as usual... thanks Dan

I do not recall if i asked this already as I have too much going on ... But , I need to be able to add Alt Enter to a string before i save it to Excel so the cell in Excel is formatted correctly ,I am using the Report Generation toolkit to write to Excel... Suggestions ? Dan

I was looking for something else ... and ran across this thread ... "This header data is not actually useful" my question is , why the header then ? Dan

I may be in need of a dedicated serial adapter , the NI ones are super expensive , but , if it was up to me thats what I would buy... So , does anyone have any recommendations .... you can find them anywhere from $20 to $600 obviously it needs to interface with NI-MAX , although I am sure they all would.. Dan

dadreamer thanks i will give this a try .. Dan

Shaun We do have 2012 Pro but as noted it is not included , I do have 2019 Pro , but , I am contrained to 2012 for most things ... Dan

I have found myself needing to use PID (probably just PI) , for this project I am using LV 2012 Pro , but it either didnt come with any of the PID stuff or it wasnt installed. Either way I cant install any toolkits as we have a dozen or so stands all over the world all with the exact same harware and software. I was hoping somebody had a PID vi they wouldnt mind sharing. just trying to save time rather than roll my own etc... this will not be part of anything that will be sold or marketed , all internal use... Dan

Maybe something like this could help https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/software/products/xlr8.html Hey John , i will have to take a look at that as it may solve a few issues we are having... Thanks Dan

Jordan I actually started down this path today wth a production test setup , it will likely be the easiest most painless option Gribo I briefly looked into this , but , and it would be a bunch of extra work , which is fine , until our company finds out it is installed , then they may have serious issues .... I was also thinking today we have test setups around the world , most do not have Excel , but a few do , so asking them to move to another spreadsheet platoform may casue even more headaches especially since a few are military ... OOTH who is in this thread knows what I am referring to regarding corporate policies and trying to do non-standard thinkgs ... I already push their policies to the limit in a few cases... So i think I will explore the single seat license , we did it once for another project , so hopefully it wont be an issue again ... Thanks for the input everyone... Dan

Has anyone ported any code using ActiveX from Excel 2016 to 365 , is it seamless ? somehow i figure it isnt... to be honest I know nothign about 365. I have several apps that rely heavily on Excel 2016 , I cant use the report generation stuff since some of the machines do not have LabVIEW (2019) Pro only base or full. unfortunatly I cant rely on IT to warn me when they are going to switch ... TIA Dan

Hooovahh yes basically , i have already moved on from the icon idea , i like the tree control idea , i was messing around with a listbox , but , the tree should work better. nice looking panel there. Dan

Before I go down this road of a vision I have to make things easier for the engineers to write their own procedures .... I figured I would ask here first... What I would like to be abe to do is have a Tab control with different functions per tab , then let the user be able to drag and drop an "Icon" so to speak to the listbox,table etc... then I can pop up the user input screen for that particular function. Note , when I say function , i mean things that relate to testing , not , functions from the pallettes etc... Dan

Ok on all , well I will let them battle it out with NI over licenses .... o in the mean time... I have 60 inputs and 15 outputs I need to deal with .... What is the best/easiest way to realize say a 10hz scan rate , which methodology would be recommended? I threw some stuff together today just to see if I could get readings , I was able to , but , way too slow ... as I figured , I dropped a bunch of I/O nodes for a couple of the modules on the block diagram , connected some indicators and ran it. with only 25% of the channels I ultimately need to scan , I got maybe 1 Hz. the one module requires FPGA , I figured I would try to do it all in FPGA mode , rather than Hybrid , not sure which approach I should... Looking for guidance ... Dan p.s. I am going to start looking at what examples I can find now ....

Ok after spending 2 hours today with NI support , it appears we will have to buy a RT license as we do not have one... if we do it is from an NI Developer Suite from 2014 or 15 I think , and I doubt that will work with our LV 2021 and FPGA 2021. I hope someone can answer this question for me , we bought a perpetual FPGA license , my assumtion , is that means the license will work on all future versions of FPGA , and , that we need (or highly advised) to get an RT perpetual license if such a thing exists. NI did extend my RT evaluation by 2 weeks so I can at least work on it until work decides what they are going to do , although the solution seems simple to me. accounting may think differently. Dan

Ok , after reading some of the cRIO dev guide , the Current Value Table looked like it might be somethign I could use , i downloaded everything vi JKI PM , everythign installed fine. But it doesnt show up anywhere. is this a RT only componenet ? I only have the FPGA Module license , they didnt buy a RT Module. I need to start hitting this hard so , any advise is appreciated. Dan