Chris Davis

QUOTE (Darren @ Aug 22 2008, 10:23 AM)

P.S. - In his defense, though, given the huge amount of initialization required in the 3-button dialog VI, I'm curious how others would design it that it would look so different. Is the issue purely one of modularization? Would y'all be happy if he simply used more subVIs? Because regardless of how it looks, there's no way around the fact that all that code does need to run before you get to the event structure...

I was also thinking that perhaps a LAVA redesign is in order. After all, we all have a known working example to go from. Perhaps a LAVA Coding challenge?

For what its worth, don't forget that you are dealing with an ethernet device here. If the IP addresses on your camera and computer aren't on the same subnet the camera won't show up in MAX as a NI-IMAQdx device.

I've got a couple of Imperx cameras here, but they don't work with NI-IMAQdx. The Imperx cameras work with thier own driver based on the Pleora chips they are using to transfer thier camera data over GigE. Since the Pleora technology came out before GigE Vision was a standard, it doesn't comply to the GigE Vision standard. I haven't checked with Imperx about my cameras, but they may be able to provide a firmware upgrade to make the camera Gigabit Ethernet camera compliant with the GigE Vision standard. If you do check with them about this option, please report back to let us know if they have something like that.

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 23 2008, 04:04 PM)

Congrat's! We're evaluating switching JKI engineers to the 17" MacBook Pro too.

Perhaps it will help with http://forums.jkisoft.com/index.php?showtopic=674' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">this problem too...

BTW, Justin, do you have the mac version of 8.5 and windows version of 8.5 running on your new MacBook Pro? Is the volume licensing agreement still such that you have to purchase both copies separately?

Dany,

Take a look at this post from Norm, it might have what you need.

I was just trying to make my own version of the example work and after struggling for a couple of hours, I found the part I was missing. See my note about the code below.

REGEDIT      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.TON = tonfile      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile = My Ton Files      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile\shell\open\command = "d:\tonfile\application.exe" -- "%1"      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile\shell\open\ddeexec = open(%1)      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile\shell\open\ddeexec\Application = application      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic = System

Specifically the following line.

   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tonfile\shell\open\ddeexec\Application = application

In this line, the "application" at the end of the line is referring to the executable's name without the .exe on the end. Since this article is linked in the wiki, I wanted to make that clarification evident for everyone.

I personally don't have a problem with the liscensing process nor, in most cases the cost, for liscensing a runtime of IMAQ. If memory serves, the unsupported NI-IMAQ for USB requires a valid NI-IMAQ liscense. Which means using 12 "cheap" USB webcams means adding a $300 or $400 liscense, which is 50% of the cost (12 x $50) of the hardware. If there is no IMAQ processing going on, that adds to the cost just to capture the images. My assumption was he would probably want to purchase a seperate liscense to cover this setup, which may not be the case, if its only a short term project. Anyway, an ethernet setup certainly relives the issues with USB host bandwidth, that the OP mentioned.

Since snapshots are what you are looking for, you might take a look at this thread which mentions a DLink wired ethernet based camera. They are more expensive than decent USB webcams, but they may not be out of your ballpark. The beauty is that you can get the most current image from the camera using Datasocket as a JPG file so your snapshot capture code will be relatively simple to impliment. You haven't really mentioned what you are doing with the images, but it might save you from the 300-400 IMAQ run-time liscense that you would need to purchase for this project as well.

Chris

When I have a need to find information about a window I us a tool that ships with AutoIt (AutoIt Window Info). Consequently I made a blank VI with a 3D graph control in it and the 3D control does show up in that tool as a control, but without a seperate "window handle". It might be worth downloading AutoIt to see if it would help get you the information it needs to access the window handle for that control.

You may want to check out a "internet camera" type device (example). They fall within your price range (especially the wired ones) and your specifications. They often tell you how to connect to them via TCP and stream thier video, or get the latest picture snapshot as a jpg via http or ftp. I've got one at home and they are easy to setup and use, given a router or static IP address.

As Chris mentioned, don't expect miracles out of these cameras, but its probably cheaper than AVT.

If you choose to go with firewire, you can checkout Imaging Source as well, they have small low cost firewire cameras too.

QUOTE (jzoller @ May 9 2008, 01:09 PM)

2. Database: ideal, but I've many non-networked computers... anyone know a good sneakernet DB?

You might check out SQLite if you decide to go with a database. There used to be a LabView wrapper for SQLite on the NI web site, but last time I checked, it was gone. Rigth now I'm using the SQLite functionality built into AutoIt and I've built a standalone AutoIt executable that I call from the command line to query and input data.

The SQLite Database is a single file, which is cross-platform and portable, since its a single file on your hard drive, which might make it ideal for your sneakernet DB.

As for the rest of your question, I think you'll find that a database will suit your needs better than anything, but I haven't tackled a job like what you are describing (yet), so I'm interested in the responses you get too.

QUOTE (Cat @ Apr 23 2008, 05:08 AM)

Wouldn't that be nice! No, we are not allowed to do email forwarding from work. I have a ".mil" address, if that makes things any clearer...

I have a .mil address as well, so I feel your pain. I currently use Firefox and its built in RSS reader to check lava. I do have to "poll" it every so often, but having firefox has made it easy to check topics on lava several times during the day.

QUOTE (MicrochipHo @ Apr 21 2008, 09:40 AM)

I know I sound lame but I am terrible at programming...but i am trying =(

Show us what you have tried, then we can help you.

QUOTE (orko @ Apr 13 2008, 02:02 PM)

Thanks! This setting is *much* better!

Glad it helped.

QUOTE (Tomi Maila @ Apr 12 2008, 02:01 AM)

With my Windows XP safari seems to use anti-alialised fonts which are harder to read than fonts used by Firefox and IE :thumbdown:

This has been a topic of debate for people who prefer Apple's method of rendering fonts to Microsoft's. http://webkit.org/blog/168/gdi-text-on-windows/' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">This post from the Webkit blog might help you change Safari's rendering methods.

Perhaps it should be worried about a computer from a company that rhymes with Snapple?

So, should the DELL in the background be worried???

QUOTE (Michael_Aivaliotis @ Mar 12 2008, 08:14 PM)

That's a shame Jeff. I think 5 years old is kinda pushing it though. However, you never know until you try.

My six year old (he got the kit for his 6th birthday) can handle most of the projects on the nxtprograms site. I do have to help with getting some of the pieces together but he picks out most of the parts and follows the directions pretty good. You'll never know unless you try it with your 5 year old.

BTW, I've thought about volunteering to help kids learn about robotics and programming too. Perhaps something with First Lego League?

QUOTE(professor_rumsdiegeige @ Feb 19 2008, 01:42 PM)

Hi!

Suppose one creates a .NET DLL to use it from within Labview. Then I can use the external library call functions of Labview. But if I detect an error in the DLL, and decide to replace it, I recompile the DLL but I always have to close down Labview completely before I can exchange the file, otherwise it is in use.

Is there no other way than shutting down Labview completely to exchange an external DLL? Why does it keep references to the DLL open all the time?

Thank you!

Yes, you will have to shut down labview to replace the DLL. LabVIEW keeps a reference open to your DLL and won't let you replace it on disk.

If you are using LabVIEW 8.2 or higher you could try using the path input to the external code block. If you define the path at runtime you could easily LabVIEW load your DLL dynamically.

check out www.nxtprograms.com, its a great site that I found through Michael's blog (vishots.com) and I've been working the robots on the site with my 6 year old.

Chris

Anyone else notice the inclusion of TrollTech's Qt runtime software in LabVIEW 8.5? Anyone have an idea of how NI is using Qt?

Just Curious...

I'm going to reccomend this tool for a friend at work who is learning LabVIEW. He is a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, for physical reasons, and LabVIEWs (mostly) mouse driven is difficult for him to manage.

I'm not a subversion expert, but I have had some experience replacing a subversion server after a motherboard went bad. My experience went something like this. Everything working Friday afternoon, come in Monday and my subversion machine was not working. Couldn't get it to boot or respond in any way. Ended up pulling the hard drive and putting it in another machine. After installing apache and the same version of subversion on a new machine I was able to replace the default subversion repository directory with the one I had on another hard drive from another machine. I had to setup apache to use the same setup as I had before, but other than that everything worked fine. The moral is, have daily hotcopies of your subversion repository on some external media for safekeeping. The lesson that you might be able to take away is that if you are a lone developer you should be able to take a copy of your subversion repository on your laptop hard drive, setup your subversion system to sync to your laptop hard drive, then when you get back home, copy your laptop's subversion repository back to your "server".

I've also seen people try keeping thier subversion repository on external media (such as a usb hard drive or flash drive) you might want to investigate that too. If you are a lone developer it may meet your needs.

I agree with Rolf, if you figured out how to write a driver for the FPGA card on linux, you've probably got more inside knowledge than most of us. But I did think of a suggestion, and re-reading your post makes me think it could be done. What about making your computer dual boot using a USB hard drive / thumb drive. I know you said that the machine wasn't dual boot right now, but I'm willing to bet that you can make it dual boot with any decently sized USB hard drive/thumb drive lying around the office. It might be an option to try, since it probably won't cost you much time and money. Writing a driver to download the bit file from linux will probably cost you quite a bit of time, if you haven't already started doing it.

Good Luck! Let us know how it fares.

QUOTE(Justin Goeres @ Sep 12 2007, 08:17 AM)

Am I the last person in the world to learn this?

No, you're not the last person in the world to learn this. I am. Thanks for sharing the information, I didn't get to attend that session at NIWeek either.

I was contemplating adding a processor usage display to one of my CPU hungry programs. At NI week 2007, one of the demo's, specifically one on Tuesday demonstrating the new multi-core parts of the timed loop had such a display. Does anyone know how they did it, or how I might add such a display to my program?

Thanks