jcarmody

May I suggest the LAVA Code Repository?

I was going to float it around here and see how it was received first.  If it's useful I'm hoping that I get some suggestions for improvement before submitting it.  I'd love to have it there; software in the LAVA CR is like a pretty feather in your cap .

I wrote this little utility that presents a list of all running VIs in all contexts (except NI.* and JKI.*).  Clicking on one in the list will give you the option to abort it (it's useful if your VI is stuck). Someone released one on the other forum but the diagram was locked and I was curious...

I put it in my LabVIEW 8.6\project folder. Perhaps it'll be helpful to you.

*WARNING* Being that I put this in my project folder, I set the top-level VI to run when opened. Take appropriate measures if you don't want this behavior.  It also closes its Front Panel when it's done.

Jim

*EDIT* the latest file submission is in the Code Repository.  Don't download this file any more (unless you like looking at obsolete files ).

Abort.llb

I am horrendously jealous of folks like you - really makes me wish I had been raised bi-lingual.

Me, too.  This reminds me of a joke.

Q: What do you call someone that is fluent in three languages?  A: Tri-lingual

Q: What do you call someone that is fluent in two languages?  A: Bi-lingual

Q: What do you call someone that is fluent in only one language?  A: American

I'm not ignoring your point.

I'm sorry for implying that; I wasn't clear. I meant that the study ignored the effect of a controlled economy. No study can learn anything about what an open market could/would do as long as the market isn't open (there are extremely high, legislatively caused, barriers to entry into the market). Let me suggest that there are many "Health Care" demands that don't require specialists or special equipment, but there are no low-cost-no-frills options because the law won't allow them.

• I worked along the Tex-Mex border one summer and took a trip into Mexico where there was a thriving over-the-counter trade in prescription drugs. These were very inexpensive, and presumably good because the trade had been thriving for a long time. There are also, oddly enough, dentist offices on many streets offering various services at deep discounts to rates north of the border.
• There was a blip in the news in the past few years about people buying prescription drugs from foreign websites and legislators jumped up and down screaming about safety and suggested new laws were needed to prevent this "dangerous" practice.
• Another example is the practice of flying to a different country to get a medical procedure. I'm thinking about an article I read where people flew, at their own expense, to India to get a surgical procedure that they couldn't afford in the US.

So, you would reasonably expect that something would cost more if you had to travel to get it, but these examples show things costing less. Call me cynical, but when someone that gets paid by folks that sell expensive drugs/treatment/insurance/whatever tells me that they're only limiting my options because they're concerned about my safety, I don't believe them. Now, if someone isn't comfortable with the low-cost option they can choose a different provider (just don't plunder my salary to pay for it ).

Call me cynical anyway; the shoe fits.

(PS - This thread is MUCH more fun then the ATE I'm debugging, although the progress I am making has increased my confidence that it will be done in 2009.)

[...] (and favourite is British English spelling  ) [...]

I know  .

[...] I still would like to know if such a think is possible in LV - just for knowledge base.

From the AutoIt website:

Also supplied is a combined COM and DLL version of AutoIt called AutoItX that allows you to add the unique features of AutoIt to your own favourite scripting or programming languages!

(Look, they misspelled "favorite"!   ) 

Be careful where you take this argument.  There have been several studies [...]

Arguments based on data from studies conducted in a centrally planned economy don't invalidate my point, they ignore it. 

Typically while debugging, we will be looking to someones code. We will not be really familiar with their naming convention of the State and also the way they organize the states. It will be time consuming and painful to find the states in their state machine. I always felt if there were search in the case selection it would be really useful for quickly navigating the cases. I had to debug very large state machine which had more than >30 cases.

Now I understand.  Stay tuned...

So it's not the healthcare system that's the issue per se, it's the lack of doctors.  That's a pretty common issue irrespective of what country you're in [...]

Lack of supply is a common issue irrespective of what commodity you're talking about, when artificial price controls exist.

New Feature Request:

It will be nice if we can have a search state Control on the top. [...]

It should be easy enough to implement; I've added it to my list.

How many states do you have that you even thought of this?  Do you use the JKI State Machine or state headers?  The tree will separate into sections if your states have headers like "---------- Section ----------".  You can collapse/expand the states under these headers in the CaseSelect window.  This makes it easier to find the state you need.

Regards,

Jim

I have a problem with the concept of a jury of my "peers." Who, exactly, are my peers? My neighbors? Coworkers? College classmates? Correspondents on LAVA? Do any countries use permanent, professional jurors? I wonder how that would work out here.

I remember some comedian had a bit about a person accused of hitting people on the head with a hammer.  The joke was in asking if we really want twelve of his peers in the same room . 

Wow.  This is pretty powerful stuff.  And certainly not what I learned in Civics class in highschool.

I don't want to start another emotionally charged topic, but I'll suggest that that's part of the purpose of public education. 

[...] Do I get dragged off to jail?

It has happened before...

From the original post

William Penn's trial – of the courageous London jury which refused to find him guilty of preaching Quaker religious doctrine (at that time an illegal religion). His jurors stood by their verdict even though held without food, water, or toilet facilities for four days. The jurors were fined and imprisoned for refusing to convict William Penn – until England's highest court acknowledged their right to reject both law and fact and to find a verdict according to conscience. It was exercise of that right in Penn's trial which eventually led to recognition of free speech, freedom of religion, and of peaceable assembly as individual rights.

So, basically, we can't trust the average juror to use their conscience properly?

I'll bite!  I don't trust them.

It doesn't do well with VIs that contain more than one snippet

FWIW, it's fixed.

GetSnippet.llb

In the spirit of the recent popular political threads, I'd like to offer my opinion of something that we can do to effect our system of government. I live in the US; I know that not all of us on LAVA do, so please bear with me (and, don't get me started about voting ). I was prompted to post this after reading a news article of a woman that was arrested for videoing <4 minutes of a birthday party, in a movie theater, and getting some of the movie in the shot.  If her case goes to trial it will likely be before a jury of her peers, and that's the theme for this post.

An article I'd like you to read begins with: 

Is it true or false that when you sit on a jury, you may vote on the verdict according to your own conscience? "True," you say, but then why do most judges tell you that you may consider "only the facts" and that you are not to let your conscience, opinion of the law, or the motives of the defendant affect your decision?

and:

In fact, if you have doubts about the fairness of a law, you have the right and obligation to find someone innocent even though they have actually broken the law!

My favorite quote in the article is:

Despite the courts' refusal to inform jurors of their historical veto power, jury nullification in liquor law trials was a major contributing factor in ending alcohol prohibition. (Today in Kentucky jurors often refuse to convict under the marijuana prohibition laws.)

In order to offer a relevant example I'll explain a certain law that many of us have broken - "honest services fraud".  You can Google it or look here.  Anyway, here's a quote from the link:

Have you ever taken a longer lunch break than what you are supposed to do? Have you ever made a personal phone call at work or done personal business on your employer’s computer? Have you ever had a contract dispute with an employer or a client? All of those things can be criminalized by an enterprising federal prosecutor.

Now, imagine you're seated on a jury for a trial where the defendant is accused of something as ridiculous as these examples.  You will (probably) be instructed by the judge that you must convict if you believe the defendant to be guilty of the charges.  I'd vote to acquit, regardless, and think everybody should but doubt that they would because they don't know their right/obligation. The first article is worth reading. The problem with this attempt at improving the citizenry is that a person would be be rejected as a juror (and perhaps held in contempt) for expressing this belief. I don't have much confidence in our system of justice, but I don't have to be part of the problem. Remember: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Is it an integer?  There's no coercion dot at the add function.

Why not?

Let me think about that...  My first thought was "Because it's from a toy!!!".  It might be Ok if my DO can power the servo without any external circuits, I'll have to check. I guess it would be Ok even if I had to wire up a driver circuit. It just feels like a cheap way out of designing a robust system. It certainly would be an inexpensive solution.

Thanks for posting,

Jim

I like this a lot! 

Hi,

I need to select a small motor to feed string into a process.  I've looked at NI's offerings, but they're all rather large and I don't know where to look next.  I need to feed a light cotton wick (about 1/4" diameter) with very little tension so it doesn't need to be large.  I've got a servo motor from my Parallax kit, which I believe I can control with a digital output, but I'm not sure that's a good choice.

Could you suggest hardware I could use and control from my LabVIEW program?  I don't have any experience designing motion control systems but I have programmed using NI Motion drivers.

Thanks,

Jim

It doesn't do well with VIs that contain more than one snippet; it converts the first snippet in the VI and deletes the one you selected. I may fix it by having it convert all snippets rather than only the selected one, but I haven't decided yet.  I'm guessing that we won't often have more than one snippet in a Block Diagram.  Whaddayou think? 

I've posted it here.

I've gotten far enough on my JKI RCF plugin to post it.  Right-click on a snippet, select GetSnippet and it'll replace the decoration with the embedded code. I'd appreciate it if folks would reply with CCT-generated snippets from other versions as I've only tested it with LV 8.6.  I'll work on an 8.2 version this weekend.  Let me know what works and what doesn't and I'll do what I can to make it better.

Special thanks go to Ton and Yair for the CCT, to  Darin.K for showing me how to get snippets from a block diagram and to JKI for the framework. 

GetSnippet.llb

[...] Which leaves me with time on my hands to ponder life, the universe, and everything.[...]

I don't want to ruin your recovery plans, but the answer to that has already been figured out.  It's 42.

Jim

I've begun a RCF plugin that extracts the contents of a snippet made with the Code Capture Tool in LabVIEW 8.6, and it uses some SuperSecret stuff.  Is it Ok if I leave the Block Diagram unlocked?

BTW - this is only useful if folks use the CCT to make snippets in pre-2009 LabVIEW.  Do you think you'll do that?

 never mind

(I get so emotional, baby.)

 Does it make sense to add this to the end of the VI?  Is there a more appropriate way to open a VI for editing?