Bryan

I work with those CURSED USB to RS232 adapters nearly every day and have had a whole range of different issues with them. I won't get into it all here, but here are the troubleshooting steps that I typically do in no particular order: 1. Jumper the Tx and Rx pins on the connector closest to your device to form a loop back (pins 2 and 3). 2. Use PuTTY or some other method to send data out, you should get the exact same data back. If you get data back, then you're communication is making it round-trip to at LEAST the connector of your device. 3. Try a null-modem cable/adapter, which swaps the Tx and Rx pins between one end of the cable to the other. Sometimes manufacturers don't make it easy to figure out if it's required. 4. Double-check to make sure your Baud rate, data bits, stop bits, parity and handshaking have been configured to match what the UPS is expecting. It looks like you're specifying a termination character for READ (For the initialization, 0x0A), but not enabling it. If the UPS requires a termination character, you'll have to explicitly send one with writes, it doesn't automatically append. If the UPS is expecting it, you may have to add an "0A" to the end of your hex string. 5. Look in the documentation to find out if the UPS requires any special termination characters, start/stop, etc characters - I.e. is what you're sending properly formatted? I've had devices which required unusual starting and termination characters before, with or without the common "0x0A termination character. 6. Your VISA Open timeout is zero, try adding something a little longer... possibly 50ms to 250ms or so.

@Chris Cilino It's working for me now... It wasn't before. Sorry for the false alarm.

I had a TI-85 that I had to buy for college. Loved that thing. Lent it to a friend of mine where I used to work, who accidentally left it in a conference room and I never saw it again. They gave me their TI-83 as a replacement, but I had a lot of programs I wrote on my 85 that were lost.

Linky no worky for me...

It works for me just fine on latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Stupid question: have you tried clearing cookies and cache? On a side-note:

Ditto! It's bitten me a couple of times since I started at my current employer. I've found instances where developers (who are no longer here, or were contracted by a certain NI Alliance Partner) have configured global tasks and channels in MAX and called them from LabVIEW/TestStand code. Also, I've seen where they've defined custom names for devices in MAX and referenced them in LabVIEW executables. I don't now what's been causing it lately (Win-blows updates?), but several of our factory testers, which use the methods above have been "forgetting" their custom MAX-defined names in recent weeks. Backups of the MAX config aren't always there, so I don't know what the names SHOULD be. I've had to try to find the source code for LabVIEW executables in several occasions in order to figure out what the MAX configuration should be, but have found that either the source code was "lost", or not all dependencies are there. I won't mention the name of the NI Alliance Partner that did some of the testers. It was actually a company that I was thinking of applying to when I was in danger of losing my job due to reductions in force, but I will say that if an operator tells me that there's a problem with a tester, and that it's a __________ tester, I always *sigh*.

Sorry to revive an old topic, but I'm currently looking for a solution to this as well. I had found something on the NI forums, but it looks like it only works for TestStand 4.1.1. : Runstate.Root.Locals.DatabaseOptions.ConnectionString However, I'm using TestStand 2013 and 2016 and this expression doesn't appear to be valid for these versions. Edit: After some digging, I found that it can be found at: RunState.Root.Locals.ModelPluginConfiguration.Plugins[ARRAY] This will return an array of configured plugins. I'm assuming that this is going to vary for everyone, but I was able to find mine at: RunState.Root.Locals.ModelPluginConfiguration.Plugins[1].PluginSpecific.Options.ConnectionString I'm far from a TestStand guru, but I'm sure that I can write something to parse and find the connection string as I'm assuming that the array position may change in the future. But I'm hoping that someone has a simpler, more robust method of getting the configured connection string.

You could add additional I/O to the Pi by connecting Arduinos to it. If you install LINX on the Arduino(s), your deployed LabVIEW application can control I/O on the Pi AND on the Arduino(s) using the LINX toolkit. I haven't done this personally (I'm using another home-grown method), so I don't have a "How To" for it. However, I know that I've stumbled on the above idea in one of my recent Google searches.

As an individual of alternative-handedness, I find this thread and its comparison to my suffering by the majority in a right-handed dominated world to be offensive. 😁 Nah... we lefties improvise, adapt, and overcome. <Insert meme featuring Bear Grylls here>

I'm attempting to get LabVIEW 2018 along with DAQmx and VISA installed on a machine (virtual) running Centos7 and am wondering if anyone else is doing similar. The main problems I've run into, by following NI's instructions for DAQmx and LabVIEW 2018 support is that it appears some of the DAQmx tools don't install (e.g. "lsdaq") and the additional NI software doesn't appear in the "Applications >> National Instruments" Gnome GUI menu. I can access serial devices once NI VISA is installed (after adding myself to the "dialout" group), but cannot see or access any DAQmx devices using their method in the link above. I have had some success using previous versions of DAQmx for Linux, but ran into issues and conflicts between modules used VISA and DAQmx. At any rate... I'm wondering if anyone has gotten something LV2018, VISA and DAQmx to work on Centos7 or RHEL7 yet... and if so, what issues/fixes/workarounds you had to do in order to get it to work.

What type of serial communication are you using? RS232, RS485, RS422, I2C, SPI, ETC? The type you are using will determine whether it's physically possible to have multiple masters/slaves on the same connection. If you're using a compatible serial connection, yes... LabVIEW can do what you're asking. As far as how... there are already lots of examples built into LabVIEW and on the internet.

Your request is too vague. Please provide more information as gb119 had stated, otherwise we won't be able (or willing) to help you. Your request reads like: "Hey, I want you to help me come up with a thing that does stuff for free by the end of the month. Okay? Bye-bye!" Otherwise, it seems like you're (vaguely) asking for either free labor or trying to get someone to complete a homework assignment for you.

Okay... I'll bite just because I'm curious. While I was reading your post on how you fixed it, I was thinking of all of the times that I've reviewed code and shook my head when I see that type of programming.

No Problem!

How specifically are you trying to create the folder? I'm using LabVIEW 2016 on Windows 7 and just tried creating a folder named "Blah 1.1" on my desktop. I did it using the "Create Folder" node located in the "File I/O" >> "Adv File Funcs" palette and it worked for me. If you're using Windows 10 and LV 2017, I'm not sure if one of those could be the culprit.

With good reason! We "y's" are pretty sketchy.

I think he'll be cool with it.

Thanks Michael!

I tried to log into the Wiki using my LAVA username/password and it wouldn't let me. So then, I tried to reset my password by specifying my username and email address. It said that there was no email address recorded for my username. Next, I tried creating an account with my username, and of course it won't let me since "Bryan" already exists. So, I gave up and went with "SouthPaw". But, I would still like to access the Wiki under my LAVA username. Would it be possible for a Wiki admin to make that happen? If it's too much of a pain, I can just stick with "SouthPaw".

Loving this central location of organized and searchable LabVIEW knowledge! (Just like LAVA.😁) I've made a couple of small contributions to this so far. Mostly clicking on "Random Article" and reviewing it for typos and broken links. I set somewhat of a personal goal of trying to do this at least once per workday. Every little bit helps, right? Granted, they're not contributions on a grand scale yet, (i.e I'm not creating articles, etc.) but maybe I'll get there. This is my first time contributing to a Wiki of any kind, so I'm a n00b at it.

Judging by the poll results thus far, it looks like there is a LOT of interest in having a LAVA code repository for those that are not using VIPM Pro. That's to be expected though. If a public repository were to be set up somewhere, I'm assuming that JKI would have the option of adding it to the list of canned repositories for the Pro and Free versions if they so choose.

From my experiences, TS seemed to be overkill for a lot of applications with which I have been involved, like "trying to swat a fly with a Buick" (to quote a friend). Add to that the additional cost of deployment/debug licenses for multiple test stations, the bill goes up quickly. Learning curve also comes into play as TS has seemed to become its own programming language and is not as easy to learn as LabVIEW for those without the budget or time to take the training classes. With a "roll your own", after the initial time investment of creating a test sequencer in LabVIEW, you can deploy to as many stations as you want without the cost of additional deployment licenses by just building EXEs. Where I'm currently working, TestStand is just starting to gain a foothold, but ease of deployment and cost of deployment licensing has been a source of contention. Now, my opinions are based solely on my experience with using TS on and off for several years without formal TS training. Ironically, a couple of my coworkers and myself are going to be taking a TestStand classes within the coming weeks, and I'm interested in whether my personal opinion (and those of my coworkers) will change. At my previous employer, we still had a system running the precursor to TS: Test Executive. We had kept updating it until we ran into an incompatible version of LabVIEW, then just "froze it in time". Nobody there was very familiar with TestStand and how much it would take to do a migration as the station tested a large variety of boards. Because there was only one operating station, the risk of downtime for migration was considered too great, so it was never done. Test Executive seemed so much simpler and a better match for the needs at the time. A second station was created to do the same as the one running Test Executive. Test Executive wasn't compatible with the newer version of Windows, and they still didn't want to go the TS route, so we ended up going with a LabVIEW-based test sequencer from CalBay (now Averna) called "iVVivi". I became very well versed in iVVivi and it was definitely simpler than TS. It also had an integrated LabVIEW OOP-based HAL, which was very attractive. However, in some respects it was TOO simple and required some creative LabVIEW routines to mimic some functionality available with Test Executive. I don't believe iVVivi is even supported anymore, so they may eventually be forced to go the route of TS. Or, beg NI for the password to access/update the protected VIs to recompile in later LV versions. EDIT (3/2020): After having had the training and applying what I've learned over the past year, I can say that I understand TestStand much more, including its quirks. I still think that it could be suited for some applications, but still way too overly-complicated for the majority of applications that I deal with on the day-to-day and the additional costs per seat/deployment are still a deterrent. It still fits the "swatting a fly with a Buick" analogy I used before.

Here's another quick and dirty example just using local variables and two separate while loops. I don't like using sequences and local vars in practice myself, but this is just a way to show you a simple way to control parallel loops. It's quirky, but I hope it gives you an idea. There are much better ways to implement parallel loop control and communication, but I just wanted to provide a quick example for you. The "Stop" button is set up to use latch functionality, which isn't compatible with having it used as a local var, so I had to create a separate indicator for "Stop All" to "hold" the value to be used by the second loop. Please don't use this as the best example as it doesn't really show good LabVIEW programming practice, but will at least show you what's needed for parallel loops. Again, I hope I've helped you out! Untitled 2.vi

You're probably going to have to implement a producer/consumer design pattern if you want truly parallel processes. There are many examples of them in the LabVIEW examples. I wasn't sure whether going into producer/consumers was going to be overkill for what you wanted, but you may want to look into going that route based on your description. For simplicity's sake (and my lack of time), and to illustrate what I was talking about in my first paragraph using a timeout case, I've attached a VI (in LabVIEW 2016) that uses the timeout case. The default timeout is -1, which means that the event will wait forever or until an event occurs. In my attached, it waits for 100ms. You can have the timeout be as long or short as you want as long as it's greater than -1. To keep the value in your shift register, you'll have to wire your shift register value straight through your timeout case. If you don't, it will be overwritten by a default value (normally "0"). This method is a quick and dirty way of allowing the event structure to complete alongside your case structure and not be dependent on it while being in the same loop and not have the while loop hanging. I hope this helps! Untitled 1.vi