pallen

Wow. So much new stuff out there. I should be sticking to trying to wrap my head around all the new stuff in LabVIEW 8.5 But I keep finding other new toys software to play work with. TightProjector: TightProjector is a software that can transmit the screen of a particular Windows computer to other computers in the same local-area network. The data is transmitted continuously, in real time. I could see this as being really useful for our programming meetings at work. Might also be good for other classroom type settings. PicLens: PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. I installed this at home while enjoying my morning coffee and I was pleasantly surprised. Combined with the new Firefox 3b4, it was very impressive. (and fast) Back to LabVIEWing.

This went out to all our programmers yesterday. I heard a few chuckles. I wanted to print it out. But after the de-motivational poster swapping fiasco I have to be careful.

NI has just released a patch for the new Statechart Module. This is a patch for the LabVIEW Statechart Module 1.0. This patch resolves the following behavior: LabVIEW hangs after sending an external trigger to an asynchronous statechart 2^20-1 times. http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/1017/lang/en

QUOTE (jlokanis @ Mar 13 2008, 06:58 PM) Maybe it's just me, or my limited customer base; But I've never really had a problem with LabVIEW applications looking like LabVIEW applications. Since our customers are usually the ones specifying LabVIEW, I wouldn't think they have a problem with that either. (Especially considering what UIs used to look like with Visual Designer) That said, I do really like some of the examples in the gallery. Looks like a number of them might be borrowing graphics and backgrounds from Linux distros.

Although we have 8.21, I personally never used it myself. That upgrade came at a time when I was more or less in the middle of a number of projects that I had already started with 7.1 All the reports of initial problems with 8.x versions made me a little nervous. I have however just started my very first 8.5 project. This time instead of another automotive related test/control fixture, we're making our first move into the aerospace industry! No USB-6009s in this rig. It's PXI goodness all the way. :thumbup: I'm really hoping to take my programming up another notch (or three) on this one. I've looked into State Charts, and I think I'd really like to go this way. But I'm worried about trying something so completely new with what is going to be a very important first impression. I've been through a couple of the tutorials. But the light hasn't quite snapped on yet. If anyone has any suggestions for me, I'd be most grateful. :worship:

Hi Ben, I actually just installed LV 8.5 on Linux this past weekend. In my case I was using PCLOS 2007 Final. (http://www.pclinuxos.com/) PCLOS was originally based off Mandrake 8.2 But has since taken on more of a life of its own. The basics are that it does run as a LiveCD and it uses KDE as the desktop manager and Synaptic as the package manager. Over the last seven years or so I've taken a crack at dozens of different distributions to see how well they'd fare as a desktop system. Played with various forms of BSD, QNX, even one written entirely in assembly; Menuetos. So far I keep coming back to PCLOS.

I'm not positive here, but what about copying the LabVIEW .ini file? (I'd make a backup first though)

In an attempt to market a new solution to an existing customer, I will be installing a "demo" vision system onto an existing PC at their facility. Because I'll need to create a Template and do a bunch of debugging while I'm up there, I need to install the development tools onto their system. I don't want to license the software on their system. I really only need it to get things setup. Then I want to let them try the system out for a couple of weeks. If they like it, they'll buy it and we will purchase the Run Time license for the Vision application. If they don't want to buy it, I remove the system and the software. My understanding of how license activation works is that I've got 30 days to activate the software before it stops working. What I need to be sure of though is that if they chose not to buy the system and I remove the software, that it won't mess up the existing system they have. I'm hoping that if they chose to buy the system I can just apply the Run Time License and the executable file will continue to run as normal even after I completely remove the development tools. Is this correct? Thanks.

Yeah, I just noticed my RSS feed in Thunderbird is dead too.

QUOTE(venkatesh @ Dec 31 2007, 04:38 AM) The simplest way I can think of would be to use the Simulate Signal Express VI. Add controls for your required inputs and that's just about it.

A little background: We've been putting together a couple of machines that use Compact DAQ NIcDAQ 9172 chassis, populated with a 9425, a 9477, and a 9239 on each. Each tester also has a pair of Xantrex XDL 35 programable power supplies that are also USB. There were no problems during development. But once an executable was built and run, it would only run for a little while before the dreaded BSOD would show up. We tried all kinds of things. Got an AE at NI involved. Sent dump files. Yada Yada. Nothing seemed to fix it, and there didn't seem to be a solution coming from NI either. Evenutally after reading about some problems others were having with a simlar DELL PC, we decided to try shutting off the second processor core in the BIOS. Lo and behod we're not crashing anymore! I can't say I'm exactly happy with this "solution". Obviously our new PC took a pretty serious performance hit when we shut off the other core. But the code still seems to run fine, just with a higher load. This was our first time using Compaq DAQ and I think we might be a little leary about using it again. I'm wondering if anyone else has used these DAQ devices in a production enviroment and what their experiences have been.

*cries*

QUOTE(crelf @ Nov 8 2007, 10:07 AM) If that's the case, then the alcohol content is all the more important. They're obviously not drinking it for the taste. Of course for shear power in beer, I don't think there's much that can beat a local favorite of mine found at the Trafalgar Brewery in Oakville, Ontario Canada. http://www.alesandmeads.com/ Unfortunately the super beers aren't listed on the website. But you can find a few reviews here and there on the web. http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/765/32222 The Korruptor is the "middle" strength beer at 15%. Critical Mass and Black Bullet straddle it by 1%. Not for the faint of heart.

Thanks for the pointer to this one Jack!

Hi Todd, Sounds like you've got a project there. If you're brand new to LabVIEW, you've got a bit of learning curve ahead of you. I see a lot of reading in your future. (As well as Lava posts that have too many smiley icons) LabVIEW makes a driver for the Daytronic System 10. It's here: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/niid_web_disp...p_model_id=1270 I've not used this myself though. So I can't speak to how well it works or how "easy" it is to implement. Although since most of the "work" in setting up all the acquisition is already done in the Daytronic unit, simply displaying the data in a readable format using LabVIEW isn't a monumental challenge. I didn't find any actual example code from a quick search. And although we've got a bunch of old System 10s on our shelves, we never used LabVIEW with any of them either. Hopefully the driver will have some documentation with it that can get you going.

I've got a frustrating one here. I'm trying to integrate a Xantrex XDL 35-5P DC Power Supply with LabVIEW 7.1 using the drivers supplied with the power supply. But MAX is not cooperating at all. According to the instructions, for USB control the Virtual COM (created when installing the Xantrex drivers) port settings must be set to 19,200 with Xon/Xoff flow control. I've tried setting this in the Windows Control Panel. But this gives me a conflict in MAX that no matter what I do I cannot get rid of. If I tell it to use the Windows settings, it's happy until I refresh the screen or restart MAX. Then there's the conflict again. It's like it can't remember the new settings even though I've hit the Save button dozens of times. I've also tried to return the Windows port settings back to default and changing the MAX port settings. But again this gives me a conflict. But oddly enough it's telling me that the Windows settings have changed and the VISA settings remain default. I've included a few screen captures of MAX. I'm using MAX 4.3.0f0 I'm guessing this probably has something to do with the fact that I'm using a Virtual COM port, and perhaps it's confusing MAX. But I'm sure I've done similar things in the past. Could it be that this version is broken? Thanks.

QUOTE(Ben @ Sep 27 2007, 07:49 AM) I'd second this one for sure. We've been pleasantly surprised a few times.

QUOTE(orko @ Aug 24 2007, 10:16 AM) I'm not sure why some companies choose to go this route with IT. I suppose if you've got users that manage to take their own (or other's) systems down every couple of days. But developers need access to tools, and the Internet is probably one of the most useful tools we have. Even back in the days when I was repairing televisions and VCRs, the Internet provided me with not only timely information, but access to a community of other people doing the same kind of work I was. Not to mention easy access to a little distraction when one was needed. A few years ago when I worked for a much larger corporate outfit, I used to pop a Linux CD into my desktop and tunnel out to my machine at home when I needed to access something the IT decided they had to block. Eventually I busted doing that and had to give in. At my new place I am the IT department. :thumbup: It's funny that with all the length some companies go to restrict access, that Microsoft itself is still breaking computers. I'm sure a few people heard about the Genuine Advantage Server outage that flagged everyone as a software pirate and "reduced the functionality" of bunch of machines. Some companies do end up making special concessions for software developers. One I know of keeps them all on a separate network and the IT department has nothing to do with their machines at all. Hopefully your company will realize they're not helping anything with bad policy.

QUOTE(tcplomp @ Jul 30 2007, 05:02 AM) Thanks for that! I was starting to wonder what I might have done to mess things up.

QUOTE(crelf @ Jun 14 2007, 02:08 PM) That's pretty much exactly what's happening here. Looks like we had a PC shutdown due to thermal problems, (really hot plant and zero PM on the PC) and Windows wasn't happy when it rebooted. Since they had no replacement and no skilled technicians on staff to handle the PC problem quickly, a production machine was down for a couple of days. The engineer in charge of that cell has some limited experience with Linux and figured it would be "better" and more "industrial" for their production machines. Of course we went with consumer PCs in the first place because they refused to spend the money for industrial hardware. If I had the time, I'd love to take a crack at actually porting this over. I think the hardware in the machine is a DIO-96, a PCI-6024E, and a PCI-7332 Motion Control card. I'm pretty sure that's where we'd run into problems porting things over. NI's website says NI Motion is compatible with Linux. But I can't seem to find any information on how to make that work. I'd love to see how the system would run under Linux though.

Today I installed DAQmx 8.5 on my "good" machine. And now I can't export MAX anymore. This is bad. Anyone seen this before? If I have to reinstall LabVIEW or worse on this laptop, my entire weekend is going to be shot. Is there anything I can do, or is MAX now busticated permanently? http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=6108

Yesterday we received a request for a quote from a customer that wanted to "upgrade" a Windows based PC system to a Linux based one. Cool! Unfortunately in this case I don't believe it's actually feasible, nor within their budget. But just being asked for it as an alternative is a sign that things may be changing. I can't wait to put out a Linux system!

QUOTE This forum will organize by conversation in Thunderbird's RSS. (Which I really like) So there's probably a setting somewhere for your reader as well. http://forums.lavag.org/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=6095

I'd like to know the opinions of other integrators; Is there any reason to choose the PCI-6221 over the USB-6221? In our particular case, the USB platform seems to be the better way to go. But there is some concern that even though the acquisition rates are reported as being the same, there may be some drawbacks to choosing the USB bus over the PCI. Could we end up seeing delays or "missed" data with the USB? What experiences have you had in the field with USB based acquisition? Your opinions are greatly appreciated.

Linux EVERYWHERE!!!!