tlerunner

Thanks for commiserating with me.  I am aware of the points system but unfortunately I find it difficult to keep on top of ways to earn them.  I did hear back from Certification and they acknowledged that this was not a good situation.  I asked to take the exam in person and am waiting to hear back.

I am going through the recertification of my CLA.  The online multiple choice exam did not suite me so I decided to take the practical exam again.  I signed up in good faith to take the practical exam online via PSI.  I registered under my name, Tim.  My test was scheduled for 2/4/2022.  After connecting and going through the check in procedure, the proctor would not let me take the test.  They stated my id did not match the name I registered under.  Tim vs Timothy.  They would not budge and I was unable to take the exam.  Laster that day I reached out to NI Certification and a few days later they sent me an email back stating the problem had been corrected.  To verify, I called PSI on 2/11/2022.  The representative told me the issue was not corrected and that in fact I would have to pay for the exam again.  I asked to speak with a supervisor who finally admitted that Tim and Timothy are the same, made the necessary notes, and rescheduled my exam for 2/14/2022.  When I tried to take the exam on 2/14/2022, the proctor would not let me take the exam because of a name discrepancy.  I spent two hours chatting with tech support before finally calling PSI again.  I talked to tech support for an hour before they transferred me to customer service.  This individual stated that the issue had to be escalated internally at PSI and they would get back to me in 2 to 3 business days with a decision.  He would not confirm that I would not be asked to pay for the exam again.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!  TAKE THE EXAM IN PERSON IF YOU CAN!

Implement your asynchronous VI as a DQMH.  Create API's that send messages to it.  Call the API's from TestStand.

Try setting the VISA input and output buffers to something like 1024.

Hi Craig, I was recently tasked with using a PicoScope (5000 series).  I got it to work but am puzzled by the interface with the DLL.  The DLL writes directly to LabVIEW memory and the data "magically" appears on a LabVIEW wire.

See: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/When-is-dataflow-not-data-flow-Updating-LabVIEW-Arrays-through/m-p/4020764#M1150779

and: https://www.picotech.com/support/topic40424.html?sid=

Are you using the same approach and has it been reliable?

Thanks,

Tim

We are looking for an individual with 5 to 10 years of good LabVIEW and TestStand experience who wants to live/work in the Fort Collins, Colorado area.  Local candidates will be given priority but we will consider other applicants if they are a good fit.  We are a consulting firm with a number of long term customers in Northern Colorado and across the US.  Most of our projects are automated test applications but we also do general automation.  Our specialty is LabVIEW/TestStand applications typically using National Instruments hardware.

If interested, and you love LabVIEW/TestStand, please send me your CV and resume via a private message.

Change the string input to a number and update the case structure and you get the behavior you expect.  Interesting that a string case structure with a range only checks the first character of the input.  Try 1234 in your VI.

I did not know this, been using LabVIEW for 20 years.  Learn something new every day, thanks!

Congratulations!  Good luck on the next step!

You have received some very good input.  I do recommend designing the RT portion of the application to be as stand alone as possible.  Losing network communication with the HMI will happen at some point and the RT application should be able to operate safely without any user interaction.  It is important that your data communication method between the RT and HMI allow for re-connection without having to stop either application.

Thank you for your replies.

1) We have decided to use MS SQL  Server.

2) We have decided to use the generic TestStand database schema with the addition of one table.  We want to store the report that TestStand generates in this table as a binary object.  Does anyone have any experience doing this?  We are leaning toward doing this with text reports but are wondering if the XML or HTML reports would work.

3) We have written a custom retrieval tool in LabVIEW.  It queries the database for all tables and their relationships.  The database schema can be modified (following a few assumptions) without having to modify the retrieval tool.  The table names are displayed in a tree view.  The user can select a table in the tree and retrieve the data from the table.  The user can apply filters to the retrieved data.  It is modeled after the View builder in MS SQL Management Studio.  We still need to incorporate the ability to retrieve and display reports.

Thanks again!

Hi,

I am curious how many TestStand users configure data logging to a database and if so:

1) What database do you use?

2) Do you use the generic TestStand database schema?

3) What tool(s) do you use to review the data once it is stored in the database?

Thanks!