peteski

I recently had some issues installing Labview RT ETS on some "standard" Pentium 4 based PCs, and found the following: 1) It appears as if hard drive partitions of >32 GB are not supported, even though FAT32 can be formatted to >32GB. (This had me chasing my tail for a couple of days) 2) I once forgot to make the harddrive "boot" partition a "primary partition" via FDISK. (This had me chasing my tail for a day or so) Hope this helps, -Pete Liiva

I've had to deal with sychronization quite a bit, and usually the best solution is to have all of the systems running off of a common clock. Most of the PCI cards I've delt with can use external clock sources to trigger their A/D conversions, and its possible the DAQPad and USB-6009 have that capability. If they can, then you might be free and clear for RELATIVE sychronicity. ABSOLUTE sychronicity (to the rest of the world) might be a different matter though. And don't worry if you don't have an external source handy. You could just use a counter timer on the PCI-6224 and feed the output of that into the A/D clock source pins set on the other equipment. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now to check whether the DAQPad or USB-6009 can use external timing sources, so hopefully you can look this up in your documentation Good Luck! -Pete Liiva

A very "quick and dirty" trick I've played on Windows based machines is to give a tab delimited text file an .xls extension. This causes Windows to automatically open the text file through excel when the user double clicks on the file. It DOES mean that if the user makes some modifications to the file through excel, they must be wary as to whether they save the file back as a text file or as an excel file. Excel does inform them of this when they attempt to close or save the file, but sometimes the user might not bother to read all of the information in a dialog. Of course, inserting data directly into Excel through activeX has its advantages (e.g. formatting, formulas, and other fancy stuff!), but its just not as "quick" or as "dirty." -Pete Liiva

Just a comment. It has always seemed to me that efficient programming in Labview (algorithm wise) is somewhat akin to "Akido" (though I'm no expert on martial arts :ninja: ). Whereas variables, arrays, pointers to variables and pointers to arrays are explicitly declared in those other "text" based languages, in labview we have to "imply" such things by how we "flow" the data. BTW, I once had a colleague refer to Labview as looking like programming in hieroglyphics. I don't know why I liked that comment, but I did.

Ayumi, In the user manual, Page 3-26 (page 45 of the pdf document) has a short discussion on the DIO. It appears that if you are doing only input, you don't have to configure any PFI lines, just use PFI0 through PFI31. It also seems to imply that it treats the DIO lines as a single port of 32 bits, but I haven't tried to do anything to verify this. The manual also states "It is necessary to specify whether a PFI line is being used for counter I/O or digital I/O only if that line is being used as an output." Hope this helps, -Pete Liiva

Ayumi, Here is a link to the PCI-660X pdf manual. On page 4-10 (or the 61st page of the pdf document), there is the information you are looking for. It looks as if you need to use PFI0 through PFI31 if you want to use all 32 lines of DIO, since the documentation seems to imply that PFI32 through PFI39 can NOT be used for DIO. You may have to specifically assign each DIO to each PFI line, which might not be a bad exercise to go through. I tend to like to set my own defaults in my programming, instead of relying on preset defaults. This seems to imply that it may not be possible to simultaneously use the full functionallity of the 32 DIO lines and 8 counter/timers on a PCI-6602, but this is just a first impression I get with a quick glance at the problem. I have only been using the counter/timers on the PCI-6602 recently since I don't have a need right now for the DIO lines. Good luck! -Pete Liiva

I suspect that the NI staff member you talked to was probably wrong - perhaps they misinterpreted your application. I know that I have had a wide range of experience with support from staff from NI, sometimes excellent and sometimes bad, and just about everything in-between. It's a big company, so I would expect it to be impossible to expect brilliant tech support every time for every situation. Without more description of the digital signals you are reading, it is hard to answer your specific questions. I assume you are reading multiple parallel digital lines, but at what rate? At first glance, it looks like the PCI-6601 and PCI-6602 both have 32 digital I/O lines. I have more experience using the counter-timers on the PCI-6602 then using the DIO lines. -Pete Liiva

NPR also covered it: Weekend Edition - Sunday Morning Edition

Congratulations!! Children certainly add a whole new dimension to a person's life... That's generally a good thing, by the way... -Pete Liiva

Another "quick and dirty" method I've used in the past is to place a picture on the front panel, then to put a "rectangular" button over it (matching the picture's height and width) and then give the button a transparent color - at least when in the default state. I've attached an example, which has a subtle change to the above instructions such that I make the non-default state a color of red, and changed the "mechanical action" to be "latch when released". This causes the button to flash red briefly before it goes back to its default "transparent" value. Most important for this to work! The picture MUST be behind the "transparent" boolean control, not in front of it. Otherwise, at run time the picture will block the user from pressing the boolean! -Pete Liiva Download File:post-2931-1129051239.vi

Maybe this is what can happen if one gets paid by the wiring node! , then again, maybe I'm the kettle and I'm making remarks about the pot over there... -Pete Liiva

One thing that should be noted when passing data from G to C when using a Windows based machine is the expected "endian" style of the sender and the reciever. Labview is Big Endian (due to its Mac roots) so the byte order of any data type with more than one byte (i.e. every data type that is not U8, I8, or string charaters) is backwards to what the rest of a Windows machine is expecting (which is little endian). Macintosh users and Unix users probably don't have to worry about this, unless they have to interface to windows based machines. -Pete Liiva

Nico, Assuming that nothing is getting confused as to which FIFO is which, you may want to step back and perhaps make sure that what you put into each FIFO is what you get out. You could, for the sake of debuging, write the U8 arrays straight to disk files (probably one file for each individual FIFO) during the writing process, and write the U8 arrays straight to disk at the reading process (again one for each individual FIFO), and verify that you have data continuity by comparing the "input" vs. "output" disk files. Make sure to take out the "Unflatten from String" so that it doesn't hangup the operation. If the FIFO's are doing there job properly, the input and output array files for each FIFO should be exactly identical. I still kind of think that the "Unflatten from String" is getting values that don't make sense to it for some reason, and this is the first way that comes to my head to debug the situation. -Pete Liiva

Nico, Are the three threads writing to a single FIFO simutaneously? If so, are you sure that the FIFO information is not getting shuffled - not unlike shuffling three decks of cards. I just checked and the RT FIFO call is reentrant, so if you have three simultaneously running processes writing to one FIFO, I think it is possible that they "walk" all over each others data, making a garbled mess that your "unflatten from string" might have problems dealing with. It is possible that when you had two processes, somehow they were never writing to the FIFO "over top" of each other, and adding the third has started to do so. If the above is the case, then maybe you really want the three processes to write to independant FIFOs, and then you sort them at your processing side. Hope this helps, -Pete Liiva

Version 5.1.1 definitely has this function. I've found it very useful for depicting the range of values seen in a 2d array (for instance, an image) into a 1d waveform graph, for the purposes of quickly illuminating to the user where the background level sits and whether saturation is occurring. -Pete Liiva

Folks, Here is a relatively simple wish - having the option when displaying integer or floating point numbers in controls or indicators to group the digits left of the decimal point into groups of three separated by either , (for some of us) or . (for the rest of us). For example: 12345654.012 would become 12,345,654.012 or 12.345.654,012 I know that in a pinch this could be done programmatically using string controls and indicators without too much effort, but it should be simple enough for NI to make it part of their numeric formatting options. -Pete Liiva

So, is the next Labview coding chalange going to be a "complete" suite of drivers to interface to the "Retro Encabulator (sp?)" -Pete Liiva

Folks, I've looked through all the documentation I could muster to look through, but couldn't find a "published" method to delete "obsolete" Execution Target addresses. I ran into this problem recently as I have been becoming familiar with Labview's Real Time ETS on PCs. I started by working with PCs with particular IP addresses and then decided to change all of the IP addresses - to protect the innocent Unfortunately, the old IP addresses remained in the list of Execution Target addresses, even though I had no use for them anymore. Eventually, I decided to roam about in the Labview.ini file - a neighborhood I don't often cruise through. I found the addresses hiding in there, and deleted them. This seemed to do the job just fine, although it would have saved me some searching if it was documented somewhere. Or maybe it is documented, but somehow I missed it. Has anybody else been through this? -Pete Liiva

Congratulations! I'm sure little Ethan is (micro) managing you and your wife's schedule about now! -Pete Liiva

Norbac, If you are using "Timed Loops", have a look at this. The "mode" you set for the timed loop in this case is critical and should be considered in light of your specific application. Hope this helps, -Pete Liiva Download File:post-2931-1126804296.vi

Fernandotid, For some "built-in" examples of axtive-x control of Excel, go to "Find Examples" from the startup Dialog: Then navigate through the hierarchy to come to the following examples: Good luck! -Pete Liiva

Fernandotid, The easy, but not necessarily the cheapest, way to do this programmatically is to purchase the NI LabVIEW Internet Toolkit (777343-01 for the windows version, $495 in the USA). Once this is installed you will have the following pallet: You can also (manually) use the Print... command and print to a html file, either as a jpeg or png. I don't immediately see an easy way to automate this using Labview 6.1, but that doesn't mean its not possible... Now, if you don't need to do this automatically/programmatically, AND only periodically need to do this on demand, AND don't have the resources on hand to purchase the Internet Toolkit, you can do this manually. Just simultaneously hit the <Alt> key and the <Print Screen> on your keyboard with the desired window selected and up front, then open a decent image/jpeg handling program (IrfanView is a favorite of mine), manually paste in the image, and save it as a jpeg. Maybe someone familiar with the OpenG project would know if there is an OpenG routine to do this without purchasing toolkits from NI? Regards, -Pete Liiva

Your company has probably been using Labview since '95, not '85. If they have been using LabView since '85, you should advise your company lawyers to have some discussions with NI's lawyers , or something like that! BTW, I'm ALWAYS doing the "decade off" type of math error - I'm unsure if I'm having more issues with my own age or the new millennium! I oscillate between C and D, but the duty cycle is NOT 50%. Actually, the function is probably most like a "sawtooth wave". For the sake of the original "spirit" of the thread, I offer the following: Desktop: Laptop: -Pete Liiva

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to show my engineering "roots" with this one. In developing many of the test systems I work with, some of them are operated in laser labs where the users need to be able to see the screen and differentiate the colors while wearing laser safety goggles. These goggles highly absorb particular wavelengths, so the usable color pallette is somewhat reduced. Often such labs are dark as well, so black or dark grey backgrounds become necessary as not to add too much to the background light that might find its way to detectors. The following is an example: In fact when the project manager stopped by and saw the screen he made a comment about not liking the colors. I instructed him of the purpose behind the color scheme and handed him a pair of laser goggles I had on hand. That changed his mind on the color scheme immediately (he was truly an engineer at heart!) :thumbup: -Pete Liiva

Nice catch! I didn't realize that, although I hadn't really worked with the native conditional probes much yet. It also now occurs to me that one advantage to the "old school" method over the "new native" is that you can save your breakpoint in the diagram and close up the sub-vi. As far as I've seen it in the past, probes always seem to need the diagram they are on to be open, which means their front panel is open, which can sometimes be less than desirable. -Pete Liiva