crelf

As in awe as I am with all of these great prizes, there's one awe-ful flaw to the door prize system: LAVA Administrators and Moderators are exempt from winning prizes. I just thought I'd mention that so, as you gaze in wonderment of all these super cool things that will be given away, you'll remember the more unfortunate people that won't be able to go home with a one. *sigh*

Maybe I should resign my administrator position just before the BBQ...

Well I'm VERY sad to say that things have changed and I will NOT at the BBQ because I will not be at NI-Week.

As an administrator of this site, I do not accept this post, and am considering deleting it.

Justin, I wanted to let you know that Relf is paying for me again this year.

aHA! I knew you'd try to pull this one! Read THIS! BAM!

...and the famous LAVA T-Shirts are available. So check it out in the LAVAStore (and why not grab yourself some other fine LAVA related products? )

I strongly suggest you get a dedicated controller for the mission-critical tasks (think cFP or cRIO) and handle the non-mission critical tasks on the PC (like displaying data, logging to a database or wherever. This means that if the PC goes offline for some reason, the controller continues humming away at what it does best: determinisitc control. Then, you only really need to worry about infrastrucute support (eg: UPS) for the controller - it can continue to control and save data locally while the other system is offline. Also, if you go to the PC to get data off it (I don't expect you're going to run the system completely untouched for a year, right? Not even look at any of the data), doing so won't interupt the process.

have two PCs, and implement some sort of failover mechanism (but how?);

This is a common option in mission critical systems: we built a similar system a few years ago with 3 parallel controllers (PXI) that could take over from each other within 1ms of a detected failure (those specs are probably overkill for your application, but the technology remains the same). We achevied this using reflected memory (a PXI card with a fiber optic link between them, that all "shared" the same memory) - this worked really well. Another option is to stream reflective memory over a local LAN dedicated to the controllers.

Or should we ditch the idea of building this ourselves, and get some professionals to look at it?

I've never been to Amsterdam...

The answer to that question depends on just how important that determinism is. If you trust your engineers to make something that won't fail, then maybe do it alone. That said, if they misplace one bit, and the whole thing comes crashing down in the last month of the experiment, you might be cranky An even worse scenario (which I've seem many times) is when it *looks* like everything worked fine, but there's an offset or skew in your data that you don't find out about until you've published - *that* would be a nightmare!

...if the middle earth pole is at the lower end...

As an added bonus, the first 75 attendees will receive the most chic NIWeek fashion-wear available: A "LAVA Member" conference ribbon!

Stand out in a crowd and show your true colors as a member of the World's Largest Independant LabVIEW Community with this awesome ribbon!

In this case, I'd qualify "real" as the most cost effective solution.

More "sensible" than anything else. I'm wondering if this is a case of the IT department getting in the way of the business instead of supporting it. There may well be a legit reason for not opening up a folder internally, but I can't think of one right now. It surely can't be a security issue: the external customer would still access the folder via FTP...

Yes, these are all good suggestions, but the real solution is that your IT department should provide you with a network drive that's linked to an external FTP server. You said they're not willing to do that - I'd be interested to hear why...

Gotta love the poms!

Spring loaded terminals (similar to some stereo connections) would be the fastest way to get a good connection. The only other option I know of would be screw terminals, which would be a more positive connection.

I agree.

Rolls Royce - large corporation

Aircraft Engines - highly regulated product

I'd be willing to bet spending 8 weeks building a lego engine is the most satisfying thing those four engineers have done in years. It sure beats pushing paperwork and fighting red tape.

FWIW: I work in regulated industries for about 80% of my job - and LOVE it!

Relf: I expect you'll be skipping the NI Week keynotes, then?

Oh dear.

Remove Frame is not implemented at all, not even internally.

Sounds like this should go the Idea Exchange!

Maybe that's the case - maybe not. My guess is that no one uses it internally at NI, and that you've tried to use it will jog their memory to include it in a subsequent release.

Sorry to tell you this, but the 6501 doesn't have definable start up states. You could use an inverter, rewire your relays to operate oppositely, or replace the 6501 with an M-Series WSB DAQ device that does support definable start up states.

Do you want them to be in one quick-disconnect? If so, what other signals do you want in there too? How many are going to be in your cable assembly? I'm confused about you saying you're connecting to bare wires to test a cable assembly: shouldn't you just connect to mating cable assembly connectors? Or does the assembly have flying leads?

Is that lava flowing, or BBQ sauce?

Yes!

Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning

Not at all - I just cringe when I see obvious engineering talent wasted on marketing

I'm in too... Just bought my ticket.

This did it for me.

I know, right?! That's the most awesome prize we've ever had - AND EVERYONE GETS ONE!

Whilst I applaud the coolness of this effort, if I was an engineer on this project I can't imagine feeling particularly satisfied that I'd used my talents in a worthwhile way to make the world a better place.

I figured by now you'd have fixed those FP terminals. Who can tell what they are without the icons? ;-)

You don't need to know what they are - just trust that they work.

Just in case you don't know, there'll be fabulous door prizes at the BBQ too! All prizes are donated by your super-awesome fellow LAVA members, so check them out here (also, feel free to offer up a prize of your own - hint, hint)

CRELF, I thought it was AQ who said he was paying your ticket. Hmmm, maybe it was something about "punching your ticket".....oh well....

Ha! No, AQ and I get along just great - especially after a few beers and some 80s music Be sure to attend the conference party to witness this.

The handsome, wonderful, smart, humble and handsome administrators and moderators at LabVIEW Advanced Virtual Architects (LAVA) will be giving the first 100 BBQ attendees a free Asynchronous Avatar Advertisers Bumper Sticker!

• Show your pride in being an essential part of the World's Largest Independant LabVIEW Community!
  
• Make fun of colleagues that couldn't make it to NIWeek!
  
• Stick it up on your wall!
  
• Stick it up on your car!
  
• Stick it up on the outside of your laptop!
  
• Stick it up on your office door!
  
• In fact, you can stick it up wherever you like!
  

Find this prize, and other LAVA awesomeness in the LAVAStore.

I told someone to come to this page. "Just search for barbecue on LAVA," said I. They typed in "BBQ".

Our built-in search engine only indexes terms of four or more letters.

That said, you could always point them to this very convenient link: http://lavag.org/bbq

So how many CLAs and such do we have working on this?????

All of 'em! (or, at least they *should* be!)

Just tell them to go to www.lavag.org/bbq that is way easier

What she said.

Got my ticket. This time I am wearing shorts!

Thanks - we'd all appreciate that. It was pretty embarassing last year when you arrived with no shorts.

I'll be giving away one of these:

I object!

In the past I've used Inno Setup to make software installers...I've also used ISTool which is a piece of software that helps make Inno Setup installers.

Strongly agree - I use these when I find the NI installer lacking, or need to bundle several NI and nonNI installers together. Inno Setup is super powerful, and free (although I strongly suggest you make a donation if you find it useful to support continued development a support of future installer/OS versions).