Jim Kring

Hi Forrest, That sounds frustrating. You've definitely done everything right: you have contacted NI, sent them an example, and documented your problem and how you recover from it. I guess that I would look for some solution that might allow you to "reconnect" with the DAQ device without having to physically unplug it. There is probably a way to achieve this using Windows API calls -- but, I am not sure. A quick Google search and following the first result to a USB Developers FAQ brought me to a FAQ entry called "How can my application reset, disable, or restart a USB device?". The answer says that "The DevCon example in the Windows DDK is a command-line utility that shows how to enable, disable, restart, update, remove and query devices using the SetupAPI and CfgMgr32 API functions". I did a search on the Microsoft Support Site for CfgMgr32 and the second search result was to the DevCon command-line utility page. The DevCon command-line utility page has a link to... Download the DevCon package You can call this program (DevCon.exe) using SystemExec.vi to execute it from the command-line. Please let us know if this works, or if you have any other questions. I'm very interested because your problem might happen to the rest of us, and it would be comforting to know that there is a good work-around solution. Good luck,

There is no way to do this at run-time. You can probably use the Visible property to achieve the desired effect.

Scripting requires the editor and is not supported in the run-time engine. This will not work using remote application references to a LabVIEW Development Environment, either.

If you search NI's Intrument Driver Network, you will find that there are several DSA drivers. They don't seem to have one for the 35660a, but there is a driver for the 35670a. You could try that, and use the 35660a Programming Reference to resolve any issues that you are having.

Read the scripting README.

You might have seen the recent thread asking, "is it time to deploy LabVIEW 8.0 yet?" If you have started using LabVIEW 8.0 regularly, I have some questions for you about the project environment. Please answer the poll questions at the top of this thread, and if you have any explainations or questions then please feel free to reply. Thanks,

There could be a lot of things going on. It certainly depends on how you measure bugs. For example, you might look at any of the following: 1) Number of New Bugs Total 2) Number of New Bugs per Total Software Features 3) Number of New Bugs per New Software Features 4) Number of New Bugs Reported on LAVA Since the number of new software features in LabVIEW has grown significantly with the release of LabVIEW 8.0, I wonder about how much #3 has grown. Certainly #4 is growing rapidly. But, the number of posts in the LabVIEW 7.1 Buglist is 51, and the number of posts in the LabVIEW 8.0 bulist is only 25. So, maybe 8.0 is only 49% as buggy as 7.1 :laugh: Of course, there has been a lot more time to find the bugs in 7.1 -- it would be interesting to see the number of posts verses time in the bug forums.

Update >> Status: Fix targeted for the next LabVIEW version

You will probably need to ask your IT department how you can access your web server. If you are connecting from a computer on your companies network or over VPN, then yes, you will use an address like http://mycomputer/myproject.html, but if you are accessing your computer from the Internet, then you would need to use an address like http://mycomputer.mycompany.com/myproject.html. Probably your IT department will not go for this option, since there are many security issues.

Here's an update... There is no access provided to the 32-bit type descriptors in LabVIEW 8.0. NI recommends using the Variant API VIs (which are new to LabVIEW 8.0) located in: These are similar to OpenG's LabVIEW Data Tools library (but do not offer any where near the breadth of functionality of the OpenG library). The vi.lib Variant API will likely be extended to support more variant operations (currently there is not nearly enough functionality in this API to be of much use). And, the Type Descriptor interface will likely be phased out; but not very soon, due to the fact that there are a large number of toolkits and other VIs that use 7.x Type Descriptors.

There should be a README in the root folder of the LabVIEW PDA installer. And there are documentation resources on ni.com. You should also be aware that you need to install the Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools in order to use LabVIEW PDA.

I can't seem to find a way to get rid of the window title bar, for floating windows, on Mac OS X. Does anyone know a way to do this -- it seems that the "floating" window attribute forces the window title bar to appear.

make sure that you have the oglib_error package installed.

A while ago, I posted an example of using Callback VIs to handle Dynamic User Events. It seems that LabVIEW does not pass the User Event data, as it does for VI Server and ActiveX events -- basically my example is broken. Is this a bug in LabVIEW 8.0 or did NI take this feature away? If you open in LabVIEW 8.0 and (1) delete the broken wire and (2) right-click on the Register Event Callback node to Create Callback VI, you will notice that the newly created Callback VI is missing the User Event Data. Please, NI, tell me that this is a bug and will be fixed in 8.0.1. CAR#: 3TGB7CSQ Status: Fixed in 8.0.1

Jeff: This isn't an approach that I have tried. It might work, but I would need to see an example. On first thought, the communication seems a bit obfuscated -- I don't like datasocket much either. PJM: Thanks an interesting idea. Usually, I put the inputs and outputs of a user interface VI off-screen. Having them in a different page of a tab control would clean things up a bit. And, you would know where to find them -- when they are off-screen, you don't know if they are up/down/left/right However, the only trick part is how do you easily change to the tab that contains the input/output controls/indicators? I guess that you could double-click on a terminal, and it would hilight the control on the front panel, thus changing to the visible tab. Another option could be to have the VI programmatically hide the tabs when it starts running and make them visible again once it completes execution. Alan: I have done something similar once, but mine was for "locking" the user interface. When the VI was "locked" it displayed a tab, that contained a "password" string control and an "unlock" button. Once the user unlocked the VI, it switched back to the tab containing all of the VI's functionality.

Jeff: I'm in the same boat. I'm doing some research on how best to introduce concepts and conventions for new LabVIEW developers

Jeff: Actually, I was referring to plain old global variables, available from the Structures palette or by selecting New... >> Global Variable from the menu.

Jeff: I believe that adding/moving controls into the page of a tab is an editing operation (which means that you cannot do it while the VI is running). To do what you want requires scripting, using the "Create Contorl from Type Descriptor.vi" [sic] to create new controls or the GObj.Move method to move an existing control into the Page of the tab control (specifying the Page reference as the new owner). See the example, below:

Welcome the the LAVA community. We're happy to have such an enthusiastic contributor! Cheers,

Here are some ways that I use the tab control: Can you think of other good uses for the tab control?

By posting the phone number of the employer on a LabVIEW developer's forum, your odd's of getting the job might have just devolved.

I have edited my post, in order to accurately qualify my statement: "the development environment crashes on me periodically when editing VIs." I haven't had any problems with crashes, when simply running code -- only when editing code.

Personally, I am being very selective of which projects use LabVIEW 8.0. I have been using it regularly, and the development environment crashes on me periodically when editing VIs. And I have discovered quite a few bugs -- the one that I dislike the most is that Drag and Drop doesn't work in built EXE's. If you decided to convert a project to, or start a new project in, LabVIEW 8.0, make sure that you have tested to make sure that the critical functionality is present. FPGA, RT, PDA, and other LabVIEW modules got a big boost from the LabVIEW 8.0 project, and other, features -- I have tested PDA, and it is *much* better in 8.0. Regarding the license, it is my opinion that the LabVIEW 8.0 license is much better than the LabVIEW 6.1 or 7.x licenses.

Chris, it might be a little late, but I have added VI Global to the poll.

Yeah, I know that it is bad to use globals. But let's say you had too. What would you use as the file extension. LabVIEW will use the .vi extension, by default from the Save dialog. And, LabVIEW does not recognize the .glb extension. However, I have seen people use .gbl as a file extension for global variables. What naming convention do you use?