Michael Aivaliotis

You can download the LabVIEW 2010 trial and get another 30days from here: http://digital.ni.com/demo.nsf/websearch/14f9ce475127ade786256ac60070926c?opendocument

I guess I've been out of touch. When did this come out? http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/209015

Wow, frightening, and funny at the same time. it's definitely something Monty Python would have done if they were still on the air. I can't see how anyone thought that this would be a positive commercial for the environmentalist movement. It's highlighting the "if you're not with us you're against" us mentality.

I would try to keep it simple. You can easily detect entry and exit of the parking lot with any switch type sensor. This means you need a digital input (on off) sensing device. If you make some assumptions that all vehicles enter and exit through dedicated entrance and exit paths then probably two sensing devices would be required. The rest is only software. Do you have to manage the payment system as well; or just tracking parking space availability?

I assume you mean LabVIEW VI Scripting. I don't see any problems.

Depends on what you want to do with it and how much you want to spend. But if you are a casual user that also wants to do Skype calls, then go for something like this: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=006 I recommend anything with a USB connection. Forget the analog plug type.

Thanks. I should hang around LAVA more often.

This is awesome news. A couple of weeks? I want it now!

That's whacky ShaunR! What type of image is that? Is it an animated gif? I can see that it works but when I replace your image with my animated gif it doesn't work. So all I can think of is your animated gif is a different format. Untitled 5-Mike.vi

I have a feeling that what you are trying to do is more advanced than what your experience can handle. However, this is how we all learn right? An XControl won't help you. An XControl is just a nice package. You still have to figure out how to do what you want. Once you figure that out, you can then create an XControl out of it if you want, but not necessary. I could probably implement what you want in pure LabVIEW using 2 picture controls and some other tricks, so it's definitely doable. But it's not something you can do in 5 minutes. I suggest you study up on picture controls. Another consideration is that you might want to change your design. You can probably use an array of picture controls which allows you to scroll through the images. Then when you hover over the one image you can overlay another array of images slightly shifted to the right. Many creative ways to do this but not easy.

For me, I found that startup issues are related to a corrupt LabVIEW.ini file. Specifically seen issues with the recent pathlist entries. For example, a VI or project in your recent paths list is no longer available. As a first step try renaming your LabVIEW.ini file and then see if LabVIEW starts properly. By doing this however you will loose your customized LabVIEW Options. So you would have to redo them. Another approach is just deleting all the recent paths entries.

You should be running 2009 SP1 anyway.

Actually, making a VI overlay is not a bad idea. I also took a look at John's example and think this may be the way to go. This allows you to make the status code a nice reusable module. You can pass the VI name to the overlay and inside it will have smarts to force itself to always be positioned on top of the VI named (have it running in a tight loop). You would need to add code that forces the overlay VI to track the busy VI.

Ok, here is where i learn something. How can you have the gif animated if the front panel is deferred? Perhaps I'm doing it wrong? Yes, it would be great to defer the updates of a specific control.

Depending what your end goal is, you can also try these other suggestions:

If you set fit control to pane on the tab control, then only the tab control will resize. Not the contents. One possible solution is to programmatically resize the Image Display control based on the size of the tab control. You would have to put this code in a parallel loop so it always runs and feels smooth to the user.

I'd like to add that you should keep it simple. Animations are nice but not essential. A simple overlay with a message: Updating Graph... or Processing, Please Wait... should suffice. Adding a busy cursor will also re-enforce the message and will prevent clicking on the front panel. Also, don't forget that the busy cursor applies only to the front panel you want it to. In other words, the user will only see a busy cursor on the panel that is busy and he/she can still use the mouse on the non-busy front panels.

No idea how to fix it. But I can try to help you out. I looked at the code. I happened to have the 2400 driver installed because I was using it on a customer project a few months ago. You have a constant and a sweep mode for applying the voltage. Which mode is giving you errors? Have you tried running the Keithley examples that come with the driver? There is one called Keithley 24XX\Examples\Keithley 24XX Read Single.vi There is also another one called: Keithley 24XX\Examples\Keithley 24XX Sweep and Acquire Measurements.vi Try running each one stand-alone without your code in memory and see if it runs without errors. If those run fine then take a closer look at your specific implementation. Also. This is a bit obvious, but I'm not sure of your level of experience, so I'll mention it anyway. You should put breakpoints after each driver call and run your routine. Monitor the instrument behavior after each Driver Vi call. Then track down which specific call generates the error.

I appreciate that link Mark. My daughter is having some issues with 8th grade Algebra.

I swear she's saying: "My titties are OK" Oh, and I think that's a cameo by Jamie from Mythbusters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWhgBxb16Hs

Thanks for the feedback mje. I've added another package to the list that does not auto-renew.

Ya, but it gets kinda silly when I have to download a 1 Gb driver installer. Don't ya think? I know, I know. You pay for the convenience. But it's still insane.

Noticed this on twitter today: http://twitpic.com/2rb1st What do you think?

I've heard many stories myself. I think purchasing stuff is ok. It's the receiving money part that's kinda risky. For me, I always try to transfer money out from Paypal whenever I can and don't keep a perpetual balance with them. I'd like to know what percentage of their millions of users lose their money this way. Must be a nice profit for Paypal. I'm sure Tony Soprano would like to know how to get a piece of that action!

More details here: http://decibel.ni.com/content/groups/coding-challenge-2010 Let's get someone from LAVA to win this!