BobbyCee

NI Week 2017 is about 10 weeks away - seems odd saying that in March.

Any news on the LAVA BBQ?

Yes, in fact I haved looked through those - it was the first thing I did. The heaps of results on Google resulted in several Blocked sites(corp Internet filters), others that had advertising for shareware, a couple that directed me to NI Forums that said that EXIF wasn't supported in LabVIEW, suggesting finding a 3rd party API to access the data would be the answer.

Since, time is money in our business, I thought I'd pose the question in LAVA to help the cause as well. I guess I'll just go back to the heaps of Google results - I'm sure that I just overlooked the project saving link...Thanks!

Has anyone been able to read/write EXIF data via LabVIEW or should I look at using some other API?

OK... I got intrigued by this whilst waiting for an installer test to finish running and came up with a little something that works:

Hope this helps,

Shaun

Thanks for the code snipet, Shaun. I did try out your method and had a User Account Control popup appear. I did some futher MSDN reading and it looks like via impersonation I may be able to run my administrator account elevated so as to not need to acknowledge the UAC popup. This system will be used without a monitor and will not have user interaction. I need to keep standard permissions on the box because the system will be on a network and I want to limit people running scripts that could affect system operation.

I will post this code as soon as I get it tested successfully. Thanks again for showing me another way to access Process Start Info processes!

I've not communicated with the PCS 7, but I've communicated with a couple of different Siemens PLCs. We've used OPC through PROFIBUS (Siemens card) and Ethernet (KepWare) to the PLCs and both worked well. OPC is a process control communication method and not really suitable for machine control (though you can make it work). I assume you're performing process control, though.

Tim

Thanks Tim. I do use OPC quite often, but mainly for monitoring tags. As you said, machine control is possible, but it's not a can o' worms that I want to open. I noticed that NI does sell a Profibus card, I just haven't ever heard of anyone using it. My goal would be to connect to the Siemens Profibus Master and use LabVIEW to communicate with the Siemens symbols - I was also curious to find out if using LabVIEW profibus drivers was a cumbersome activity or not.

I am interested in finding out how many of my fellow LAVA lovers have had success interfacing LabVIEW with PCS 7 and what method was used to communicate - i.e. Profibus, OPC, etc

I believe that in order to start and stop a service you need to have administration privileges in Windows 2000 higher. Windows Vista and higher might even require specifically elevated privileges that an administrator account doesn't automatically grant to an executable, but requires an additional explicit User Authentification as administrator.

It would be strange that CMD.EXE itself is requiring elevated privileges but it is the service manager start and stop command you try to execute in CMD.EXE that is barking on the to low privileges you have as normal user. .Net can't circumvent the privilege level control for the service control manager but it might have extra support to allow temporary privilege elevation for the current executable for execution of service control manager commands which would require at least the according admin login credentials somehow (and if they care about security it won't be a programmatic login but an interactive login).

You are correct, higher administrative privileges are needed to control services. I have found that the .NET architecture is more flexible than simply using System_Exec.vi with string commands and therefore I will be pursuing the .NET method to handle querying, starting, and stopping my local services. However, I will have to talk with the system owner regarding the removing the User Access Control level that prevents interaction at the service level. I am fortunate to have a number of in-house resources to offer expert advice on .NET coding and will share my findings with the LAVA community.

OK, Wiki sounds like a good idea.

I am also experimenting with a .NET assembly to perform the same task as the System_Exec.vi. I think I may be able to write .NET code that will allow Win7 application control to maintain higher User Level Security and still Start and Stop my desired local service.

Looks like I found the solution to my problem.

After changing the User Account Control settings to 'Never Notify' and rebooting, I was able to run System_Exec.vi with my Start / Stop service commands successfully.

Has anyone been able to run the 'System Exec.vi' as Administrator using Win7?

I have a service that I need to start and stop and can do so with the following cmd line: cs start mxchange OR cs stop mxchange

The catch is, in Win7 I need to be running CMD as Adminstrator

Any suggestions?

I am trying to programmatically scroll the entire Front Panel vertically, after programmatically resizing a window.

Any suggestions on how to access the vertical scroll position would be great!

Does anyone know of a LabVIEW user group in Mid-Michigan? If not, would anyone like to start one? I live in Midland and know of several developers living in the Mid-Michigan area. It would be great to have a centralized group. So, if there are any wireworkers interested in getting together from the Mid-Michigan area, let me know!

Have you considered using GOOP in your design? Treating the "stations" as objects will afford tremendous flexiblity in your design.

Also, what type of daq hardware are you considering/using for your application?

QUOTE(crelf @ Dec 19 2006, 07:03 PM)

It's funny - I sometimes feel like I should be putting [W] at the start of my topic titles

I'm using the LabVIEW Context Help window in my built application to guide users around my GUI, but I'd like it to stop floating. I've tried using the VI below - it finds the right window (you've got to put "Context Help" in as the window name to get the window handle hWnd), but it doesn't change the floating property (which, as http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/windowing/windows/windowreference/windowfunctions/setwindowpos.asp' target="_blank">this MSDN entry suggests, would never have worked anyway). Has anyone got any ideas?

Using the "update window" User32 function call following your "float on / float off" mode change will do the trick. Glad you are my boss :thumbup:

Hello All,

My name is Robert Cummer and I just recently joined the fabulous VI Engineering family, located in lovely Farmington Hills, MI. I have been using Labview since the mid '90s. I have been a test engineer for most of my 13yrs and an "dedicated" software integrator for the past 2. I look forward to sharing experiences with you all - whatever that means!?!

Later

Bob