Rolf Kalbermatter

This is a crosspost from http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?boar...ding&page=5. We finally did a definite release of the OpenG LVZlib library. There are no real changes to the library itself apart from some documentation updates and cosmetic changes but it is now official. For a more detailed list of changes in this new version relative to 2.3 you can refer to http://wiki.openg.org/Oglib_lvzip-2.4 The Windows, Linux and MacOS X version are all updated and seem to work just fine. Sorry for the Mac Classic guys but I saw no opportunity to recompile for Mac Classic targets yet and we do probably not intend to build for that target anymore unless there is some real demand. While support for VxWorks has been added it has not been tested on VxWorks targets yet as I still haven't one available to play with. The OpenG package can be downloaded here and is best installed using VIPM. For VxWorks support you should ftp the according lvzlib.out to the controller into ni-rt\system, from the correct subdirectory (vxWorks82 for LabVIEW 8.2.x and vxWorks85 for LabVIEW 8.5.x and 8.6) inside the lvzip directory created where you installed the package. As already mentioned this should now work for following targets: Windows, Pharlap RT targets lvzlib.dll VxWorks RT targets lvzlib.out Linux targets lvzlib.so MacOS X lvzlib.framework Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (lenny wintfeld @ Dec 29 2008, 04:53 PM) Basically it is meant as a library of template icons. You select the icon of your choice, then go to Edit->Copy or press Ctrl-C, then go to the icon editor for your own VI where you want to use this icon as a base and in there you make a Ctrl-V or Edit->Paste. Now you can start to customize your icon the way you want it such as adding the Instrument Prefix. The Icon256.vi in itself has absolutely no runtime operation at all and is not meant to have one either. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Tomi Maila @ Dec 29 2008, 05:50 AM) Only if Windows or whatever OS you are using is adding that leap second in its time base. Question is: will they do so or just silently ignore the leap second? Edit: According to http://www.meinberg.de/english/info/leap-second.htm at least Windows will not do leap seconds correction on its own. Of course if you do time synchronization you will see the effect anyhow, however if you do that your application should be prepared to deal with incontinueties in the returned time anyhow since the synchronization can cause jumps of more than one second whenever it happens. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (malani @ Dec 29 2008, 08:06 AM) What is inefficient about that? It's exactly how the Substitute copy for Original is implemented only without the delete afterwards as the original file remains on disk. You do need to think about feelings you have. Just because something does feel inefficient does not mean it has to be so. If it works and does what you want, why going to try to make a supergalactic solution instead? Not even a NASA budget could help you there Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (vugie @ Nov 17 2008, 05:42 PM) You didn't search good enough. It is documented in a few posts at least on forums.ni.com but probably even here, and quite a few times on old Info-LabVIEW although that may be a bit harder to search nowadays. It is an issue as far back as I can remember (LabVIEW 3.x or so). Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (romeo @ Dec 22 2008, 11:39 AM) A common problem and you will find many links here and on forums.ni.com describing that. The reason is that the image inside the ActiveX control is not controllerd by LabVIEW but by the ActiveX control. Simply put there is no simple way for LabVIEW to tell the ActiveX control to render itself into an offscreen context so that that context can be turned into an image and then send over the web. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (carlover @ Dec 24 2008, 06:18 PM) Well there always is but I doubt you want to go to that length. It would probabply mean to call the JPEG (or whatever format you have) DLL directly with two memory buffers to decompress from and into and then using the IMAQ GetImagePixelPtr function to directly copy the entire decompressed buffer properly into the IMAQ image. All this would be best done in an external code function written in C. You can of course also use the IMAQ ArrayToImage function instead so you have not to worry about getting the correct memory offsets into the pointer but that function is considerably slower. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (neB @ Nov 18 2008, 09:37 AM) Ohhh! I should probably look by more frequently . Only just now happened to see this. Thanks Ben and everybody else. I guess I moderated my appearance a bit lately. Seems like kids have that effect. But there are a lot others who are doing a better job than I could ever do in many of the more modern topics such as *OOP. I'll probably continue to contribute to some extend but the times where I could post daily are definitely gone. Happy Christmas and a happy new year to everybody and keep the wirework up! Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (xavier30 @ Dec 18 2008, 08:49 AM) I can't help you with that. Makefile creation is a rather tricky business even if you only want to target one OS. Cross platform is simply beyond my knowledge. The way I do it is using MS VC .dsw project files for Windows, simple Makefile for Linux, Xcode project file for Macintosh and last but not least a modified Unix Makefile.vxworks for VxWorks creation. Trying to figure out the perfect settings and everything to create a cross platform Makefile is a noble desire but I have better things to do with my time ;-) Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Wedge @ Dec 24 2008, 01:49 PM) Your XyzWpr class is probably not instantiable through a class factory of your DLL but instead only available as subclass of the main object hierarchy. Try to connect a property node to the CurPosition property of the main instance instead for instance. It could be likely the same class (big guess from my side though) and see what you get there. In order to be able to instantiate classes as top level classes they need to be supported by the class factory of the automation server (your ActiveX DLL). For many subclasses that makes little or no sense since they are only meaningful in the context of a higher class. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Ton @ Dec 23 2008, 01:01 PM) Most likely there will be no difference for a user of the library, unless you use the Mac or I do come across some bug until then. The Mac at least on newer OS X versions has an issue with long pathnames and until I had time to test that a bit more I did not want to create the shared library. Besides I do not have an x86 Mac so creating the shared library has to be done by others (Jim Kring will probably go to do that). For now it is mostly to give the opportunity to others to test the VxWorks version since the last changes to the library were in fact to support that based on very helpful feedback from Brian K from NI. So yes there is a chance that you could encounter a bug when using this version (but that is true for any software released or not :laugh: ) but I do not intend to change anything in terms of functionality, VI interfaces nor design of the library for the final release. Rolf Kalbermatter

I have personally only ever used my own ODBC based library. I can't really comment if it is fast as I have no comparison but it was never slow for what I needed it for. I have implemented some specific features in that library to fetch one or more rows at one time to reduce the network roundtrips the ODBC driver has to do for a query. There is actually still room for improvement in that part but the entire interface is written in C and this part is something that gets very messy very fast once you consider to support not just one specific ODBC driver but want to be compatible with as many as possible. If you are doing lots of updates however this library wouldn't help much as these have still to be executed as SQL statements since I haven't found time to add support for parametrized SQL updates and the priority for this is way low on the list. The fastest way to access an SQL server is quite likely through its native API. There is a DLL interface to the Microsoft SQL Server API that does avoid any issues with intermediate standardization software layers such as ODBC, ADO. DAO, ADO-.Net. I have no idea how easy if would be to interface to that API using the Call Library Node but suspect that there would be some intermediate code required or at least very helpful, to translate between the SQL Server API and a more friendly LabVIEW API. The disadvantage of this approach is that you will be tied to SQL Server for the rest of your life if you use its own proprietary API. Some remarks to some other things mentioned so far: LabSQL, the Database Toolkit and just about any other LabVIEW database support library out there does use the ADO ActiveX interface. They may implement certain things differently such as using the mentioned GetRows method or iterating through the rows instead, support certain operations or not but the basics of all them is in fact ADO ActiveX. As to the missing of the GetRows operator in .Net. I think John is using a technique he got from the mentioned blogs from Brian Tyler where he does the actual extraction in an external .Net component written in VB or VC .Net to avoid exactly the huge overhead of having to iterate through the entire rowset from LabVIEW which due to its dynamic interface to .Net has a certain overhead for each invocation of a .Net method. Rolf Kalbermatter

This is a crosspost from . This is a prerelase version of the newest sources from the sourceforge CVS repository. All public symbols should have been prepended with lvzip_ to avoid name collisions with the already defined functions in the VxWorks kernel. The Windows and Linux version are also updated in that way and seem to work just fine. Sorry for the Mac guys but I saw no opportunity to recompile for Mac targets yet and there is one outstanding issue with this new version that needs some more testing. This has not been tested on VxWorks targets yet as I still haven't one available to play with. The included OpenG package can be best installed using VIPM. Download File:post-349-1230024275.ogp For VxWorks support you should ftp the according lvzlib.out to the controller into ni-rt\system, from the correct subdirectory (vxWorks82 for LabVIEW 8.2.x and vxWorks85 for LabVIEW 8.5.x and 8.6) inside the lvzip directory created where you installed the package. As already mentioned this should now work for following targets: Windows, Pharlap RT targets lvzlib.dllVxWorks RT targets lvzlib.outLinux targets lvzlib.so MacOS X, x86 support will follow. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Minh Pham @ Dec 21 2008, 10:47 PM) Well said! Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Wedge @ Dec 21 2008, 07:30 PM) I'm really sorry. But I have not used the PCDK nor even seen it so I can be of little help here. Basically ActiveX has two different types of interfaces. one is the Automation interface and the other are ActiveX Controls. The first you have to instantiate using Automation Open and the second is instantiated at the momen it is loaded into an ActiveX container. At least under .Net you also have static interfaces. They do not need to be instantiated (created) as they are not an object in the normal sense but simply a collection of methods to do something that is not inherently tied to data that the object would maintain. For an Automation Interface, and I'm sure the PCDK does implement such an interface, you usually have an object hierarchy. The root object is usually something like IApplication or something like this. You always have to instantiate that object using Automation Open in LabVIEW. Once opened you usually have methods or properties in that interface that return among other things also references to subobjects from that object hierarchy. These objects you do not have to instantiate again since that would be the task of the object who returns an object reference. However just because you have opened a root object reference does not mean that you can add additional Automation Refnum controls in your application and connect them to subobjects interface types and expect them to be vallid. The connection to an interface only defines what methods and properties that refnum can provide but does not yet create a valid object reference. You only get a valid object reference from either Automation Open or another already instantiated object in the object hierarchy that returns an object reference. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (iannicholson @ Dec 8 2008, 01:25 PM) This protocol is called SRTP and is indeed proprietary. However it is based on the older serial port protocol which is documented in the programming manuals and also through some unsupported Visual Basic examples from Fanuc itself. I have recently written a VI library to control Fanuc Controllers over the LabVIEW build in TCP/IP functions. It works well for what we had to do but is far from throughly tested. I really couldn't recommend anyone to use it who isn't well into low level programming including TCP/IP protocols and since there is no real documentation about it I will refrain from posting it here. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (AnalogKid2DigitalMan @ Dec 8 2008, 09:59 AM) They probably are but there will likely be some capacitive coupling. This can be sometimes problematic for higher frequencies. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Hurdus @ Dec 10 2008, 05:42 PM) Seems like a http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=373893&query.id=30448#M373893' target="_blank">cross post. It's considered polite to give a reference to such cross posts so that people are not wasting their time answering you with ideas when the whole problem might already have been solved on another board, which in this case is. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 21 2008, 09:29 AM) Alphabetical order is for many things completely useless. There may be many more "means" with something in front too and then it doesn't help. But once you know the term mean and use the online search (palette search, quick drop or anything like that) you will get them all. It's been years that I really did use an alphabetical list to search for something rather than online resources (google, online help, etc, etc). I find alphabetical lists mostly useless, almost like learning out of your head complete mathematical or chemical formulas. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Darren @ Aug 12 2008, 09:56 AM) Actually that is not correct. I happened to have an older application developed in LabVIEW 7.1 and Vision 7.1. After installing LabVIEW and Vision 8.6 I recently made a minor bugfix to the application in 7.1 and sent out the executable to the client. It wouldn't work anymore since the executable was complaining about various Vision VIs not being loadable. Investigating in an older install of LabVIEW I found out that various VIs were different where they were implementing shape to Region conversions in the diagram in 7.1 and were now calling the nivision.dll for these functions in 8.6. Of course the installed Vision 7.1 DLL did not contain those exports. It must be the 8.6 installer since I did only install Vision in 8.2 at the time 8.2 got released and had made other modifications in 7.1 on that application since and never installed Vision in 8.5 since I never used that version for much. The client had to download the Vision Runtime 8.6 from the Website and install it but then got an evaluation dialog despite that the Vision Runtime 7.1 was installed and licensed on that system. Not Good!!! Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Pollux @ Dec 19 2008, 02:46 PM) It's not just Romanian but in fact German and a few other European languages too. It's English too at least according to this: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/analphabet and this: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analphabet Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 15 2008, 10:56 AM) They still do that but not in paper form. It's all in the online help. I doubt there exist one single file or document, listing all of what you want. It's all buried in numerous knowledge databases, documents, internal release guidelines, build files, etc. etc. It could be compiled probably but I would hazard this to be a very time consuming job with little benefit as every driver release or even bug fix will change that again. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (test001only @ Dec 12 2008, 04:02 AM) Do you mean memory or disk space? For the first it obviously won't work as the file on disk is not loaded into memory unless you do an explicit file read. The later I'm 100% sure does work as I use that for instance in some data logger applications to make sure that the file is properly allocated without having to worry about disk full issues during the logging itself. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Irene_he @ Dec 12 2008, 09:49 AM) This is a bit of a nitpick but most Canon Cameras do support some settings over PTP. The problem is that the Windows WIA driver for PTP cameras only supports some generic PTP properties and methods. And there is no easy way to access that PTP interface directly on Windows machines. I do have a LabVIEW interface that goes through WIA to access a PTP camera directly through its PTP interface using the WIA passthrough operation. But this is both non-open source and also anything but trivial or for free . Even when you would have that interface you would have to have documentation over the actual supported PTP properties and methods in order to be able to do much more than just take a simple image. And setting those properties right is anything but trivial since they seldom mach the settings you would make on the control dials or menus directly but have different units/operations and often depend on other properties too. I have only used this interface with Nikon DSLR cameras (D series) also controlling vendor specific properties and methods not supported by the generic WIA interface so far and have no experience with the Powershot series of Canon at all. Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (Antoine Châlons @ Dec 18 2008, 06:08 AM) There is probably no way to disable this completely. At least the first time you really do want to have this security check as otherwise every virus could connect to Skype and (ab)use it for whatever it wants. MS had this in the past that any application could conenct to Outlook over ActiveX and that was a perfect way for a Virus to harvest the entire email address list as well as using the Outlook credentials to send out tons of spam mails. So they had to disable unnoticed connection to Outlook over ActiveX with a security patch. Maybe that Skype will cache a once given acknowledgement for a specific application somehow so it won't prompt each time again but the first prompt you do not want to give up ever! Rolf Kalbermatter