Dan Bookwalter N8DCJ

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

Rolf Thank you for the quick response , they do have an NI Developer suite license , maybe I will investige that , guess I will need to calll NI. Dan

quick question Are the fpga and realtime bundled with any NI products , i have a copy of all the serial numbers from our one facility , but , there doesnt seem to be any specific to fpga/realtime , but , they do use them. So , i was curious if it is included in somethign else ? Dan

Ok , I am not sure if such a device exists ... but here is what my ideal need is... What I am looking for is something that I can run on the remote PC when I am connected , such that I need to click a button every pre-determined amount of time , say 30 minutes , if I don't it can reset at least two, AC receptacles (120v,20A each). It needs to be USB or serial as I cannot , per corporate policy have a second ethernet port on the PC , there is no way around this. I prefer an out of box solution and not a home brew device. If needed (not preferred) I can always fire a contactor with the output of the watchdog device. Suggestions ? Dan

Jordan Thanks for the info ... The HMI is LabVIEW , and yes my plan is to just expose the the data to the HMI and let the processing take place there , as I can forsee limits and scaling changing often , I currently load all of that via an excel spreadsheet to a SQLite DB. I will look into shared variables and the streams. Dan

Ok , I had higher priorities than this project , but , now I an back on it... So , i have established communication with an AI module and can read a voltage. My question is , do I have to use sharded variables ? one of the examples i saw online was using shared variables to communicate between the cRIO and the HMI vi. My plan was have the cRIO take the data only and pass it to the HMI type vi to do processing and displaying , set AO and DIO. I was going to use a seperate while loop for each "function" , such as AI , AO , DI ,DO as I saw thatit is more efficient that way. I am goign to start lookign into this type of architecture and see where I go wrong. Dan

ok , I have had little to no time to devote to this , but , my guess (and is purely a guess) anything under the FPGA/RT sections of the LabVIEW project get compiled and loaded on the cRIO ? And , when I see examples , mainly just images on the internet for now , I see an Open FPGA VI Reference , once again my assumption is that is a reference to the VI that is on the cRIO , I also assume , since I can rationalize both scenarios , that the vi's referred o as "Main" are loaded to the cRIO , and the "Host" ones run on the PC , I am going from memory so , that will be a bit fuzzy... In the long run , I will be dealing with 7 modules in the chassis , 5 various AI modules (Voltage , mA, TC) and two output modules (SSR and AO). Nothing is highspeed , I just need to start working on this more than I have been able to , and to try and get up to speed a little ... Most of what I have seen is using User-Defined Variables , is that the standard/accepted approach ? Dan

ok , after messing with this for an hour , I now have all the s/w versions compatible with each other between the PC and the cRIO 9035... I was told the plan was to run this in scan mode , but , the one module is an NI 9202 filtered AI module , LV says it is FPGA only ... Next question (for now) is , can a chassis mix RT and FPGA ? Dan

Ok on the bitness , I Will stick with 32 bit ... The reason I mentioned the FPGA is because when LabVIEW finds the 9035 , it says one of the modules can only be used in FPGA Mode. Scan rate , I think 100Hz is more than fast enough , which I think is well within the capabilities of RT if I recall properly.

JKSH Thanks for the info !! next question , does bitness between LV and the cRIO have to match , my assumption is that it does .... I also see i need to download the XiLinx drivers etc... I am installing LV 2021 64 bit since the 9035 has 64 bit on it... and will download the Xilinx drivers after this is done installing. Dan