Norm Kirchner

WOW, am I glad somone finally lightened the tenor of the thread a bit . Yes, Mr. Baily has been banging the liberty bell a bit, but it's good to hear it ever so often anyways.

It is obvious that the comments expressed so far have swayed many peoples opinions of NI, and the lack of comments from NI has lead to an unbalanced argument. Has NI been overly aggressive in defending their patents ? Their track record leaves it up to personal opinion. Does it show poorly that NI hasn't said much as compared to MMC? Yes, but NI is a much larger company than MMC and the fact that we have heard from the head of their marketing department is promising.

Finally the $20 question is should NI have an exclusive right to graphical programming. I say no. Should they protect what they have and make sure no one tries to make another LabVIEW, of course. But I think we can all agree that if you look at MMC's software, it is not another LabVIEW. Neither was Simulink though. If you look at older versions of daisyLAB and ElectronicsWorkbench, two companies that are now merged / or something else, they really had the feel of LabVIEW minus the programming aspect. Did they get their ideas for their software from NI. Who knows? But for now they have evolved/upgraded/merged.

For now it is out of our hands and into the court.

-Norm

btw: when is the court date set for ?

A thought has occured to me over the past few days. This is actually an opportunity for groups like LAVA and Info-labVIEW to help provide even more support in the community. I feel that this should be brought up at everyones UserGroup. The knowledgebase and forums at NI.com are great but the community is so vast you move even further away from feeling of personal phone/e-mail support.

just my 2cents

don't blow it all in one place

:laugh:

-Norm

You're right about the lawyers. I know a few people, recent graduates who are trying to get into technical patent law. Lots of cases and not enough patent lawers $$$. I was hoping that viewing these might help me understand more. All I have now is, well more lumps on my forehead :headbang:

-Norm

Title edited by Michael Aivaliotis

was: Ni Increase In Sales = Decrease In Support

I just had my first run in with NI phone support since their re-organization on Jan 19th, 2004. Turns out that unless you personally own and are registered by name to a License of LabVIEW and a support contract, you can not receive voice support . I was curious to hear LAVA's thoughs and feelings on the matter.

The live support was one of the greatest things that drew me to labview as a student and an up-and-coming developer. It is unfortunate that they have taken this away from the general LV community. Thier web support is very nice, but there have been so many times over the years where no one has attempted what you are doing and it would take a 5 page essay to properly describe it over an e-mail.

There is a great chance that I am overracting, but I feel that this should be brought to the attention of the community before they call in and get a shock like I did. :headbang:

-Norm

It seems that this dispute places much weight on the fluke patents and software. For those of us who have never seen the software, is there any place where we can see the patent or old software :question:

-Norm

Well John I think there are a few things that Mr. Z will throw back in our faces with your reply. He is going to continue to use the Intillectual property shield to block any claims of NI bullying anyone around. He/NI feel immune to anyones attacks because they feel it is only moral to stand up for their legal rights to protect their "original idea".

I think the most important piece of information that we need to see is the letters from NI to MMC.

Also, I would like to hear NI's answer to this question, "Does any software that uses graphical wires to connnect one piece of information to the next infringe on NI's patents?" From NI's actions against other companies it appears that they belive so.

Until we ask these questions and get answers, NI will feel very righteous about defending their rights, againsts any company large or small, and that is how they protect us as customers.

After ftuzing around with the sub panel for a while too, looks like there are lots of things that can go wrong if you try. Does this warrant a CAR though?

Where can anyone find out more information regarding this issue and it's status. As in status of the lawsuit and any results.

Also it would be great to see even more input from the LAVA members, maybe someone at LTR.

Someone wise said once Involvement preceeds interest

-Norm

Sumanabich :headbang:

Here is the image

Hi Clara,

There is a more direct route to accomplishing what I think you are looking to do. The attached image should get you up and running.

• Create a "Call by reference Node"
  
• Right click on the Call by ref node and select "VI Server" and then "Browse"
  
• Select the VI that you are looking to throw in the sub panel
  
• Right click on the reference input of the Call by reference node VI and create a constant
  
• Disconnect the reference from the input and wire it to the input "Type specifier" of an "Open VI Reference" vi
  
• Wire the vi reference of the open vi reference Vi to the Reference input of the Open by Type Specifier
  
• The Image attached should show you the rest.
  

This solution requires you to learn a little about using the call by ref node if you don't have prior experience with it, but it is the most straighforward and clean way to accomplish sending inputs to a vi you are opening in a sub panel :thumbup:

What is the specific error code that it is returning?

What version of LV are you using?

But just to get you going, if you dig in to the read from file, you'll see that there is a general error handler VI. There are 2 inputs to the error handler that you'll be interested in. The Exception Code and Exception Action. Modify this VI to ignore your error and save it as something different. :!: MAKE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A DIFFERENT VI and DO NOT UPDATE CALLERS.

-Hope this gets you running

It's apparent that the rep from NI refuses to confront the issue. His "marketing" language alone

"we don't think their products really are as good as ours (and we hope you agree!)"

MCC's "answer" to all this in its press releases and marketing

materials has been that NI really invented nothing at all

is a blatant diversion from addressing the issues that were brought up by MMC. Mr. Zogas is attempting to make NI look like it is the one under attack by a large threat. By his logic, any software that is ever created that uses a graphical wire to tie an output to an input is not simply riding on the coat-tails of LV but trying to steal their idea. It is difficult if not impossible to make a wheel that is not round, just as it is near impossible to make a graphical program/language w/out wires.

I agree that patents should be adhered to and fought for, but just observing the series of NI "acquisitions" over the past few years makes me wonder about their ethics. After hearing from Ben Bailey and his feelings on how they were treated from the beginning from NI raises my suspicion even more.

I would like to see a NI reply from someone not in marketing and who will be more forthcoming about the details of this conflict as MMC has done.

I would hope that this dialog continues between LV useres, LAVA, MMC and NI.

That sounds right. Take the two bytes merge them and you can wire them directly to a I16 indicator which should automatically coerce or manualy convert the type to I16. :thumbup:

What data are you trying to retrive from the string (Integer, float, 8bit, 32bit, complex,...).

I'm assuming that the data returned is in raw form and not an ascii string.

if you take the output which you say gives you an unsigned byte and wire it to an indicator that is a signed byte (U8 wired to a I8) you should see the converted data. To see this is very simple. Just place a numeric control and a numeric indicator on the screen. Change the representation of the control to U8 and the representation of the indicator to I8. Make the Control value 207, run the VI and you should see -49 in the indicator.

If you alread know this , I must have misunderstood the question. In that case reply with some more detail of the end result you are looking for.

If not than this should get you moving along the right path. :thumbup:

-Norman J. Kirchner Jr.

Engineering Specialists, Inc.

NormK@engspec.com

After sending the initial post I had some inspiration. I remembered the "User Input" set of VI's in LV7 and proceeded to do some creative work. I must have had more luck than Mike apparently because I came up with a very elegant solution. Unfortunately I can not post the code here, but I will attach an image of how I am implementing it, which might spark your creativity.

The long and the short of the functionality is I can now drop 1 VI into my program (external to any loop), Wire the reference to the array to be scrolled and another reference to a boolean that will signal the stop of the program (non latching). Once this is done, as shown in the photo, I have a front panel array which I can scroll with my mouse.

:thumbup:

-Norman J. Kirchner Jr.

Engineering Specialsits, Inc.

www.engspec.com

I just realized that it would be very useful to be able to capture the mouse scroll event. Anyone have a good starting point?

-Norm

I'm not sure that this will get you what you really need.

Use the Flatten to String function.

LV stores scalar data directly in the cluster, but cluster elements such as arrays, strings, and paths are stored indirectly by handles. The cluster contains a handle that points to the memory area in which LV actually has stored the data element.

A better trick is to make a new VI that has only the cluster item in it. Press Ctrl+I to bring up the properties of the VI and look at the memory usage. It will give you what the cluster itself uses, but neglects the amount of data in the arrays and strings. :thumbup:

I would like to make a peice of code that sends a LV app to the "System Tray".

I have found that the function to call is "Shell_NotifyIcon" in the "Shell32.dll".

It needs 2 inputs of type DWORD and PNOTIFYICONDTA.

The later data type is a complex data type containing many parts. :headbang:

I belive that it will be necessary to make a CIN in which the DLL will be called.

I have the documentation on how to do this.

What I need is to figure out how to manipulate the data into the data types so that I can send it to the DLL.

The MSDN doc on the PNOTIFYICONDATA type is

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....ifyicondata.asp

-Norm

http://www.OpenG.org

There you will find the openG toolkit which has LabVIEW Vi's for working with and creating zip files.

Also has a lot of other helpful VI's

-Norm :thumbup:

8) I have created the HSI.

Please e-mail me if you are interested still.