ASTDan

Have a look at this. It is an API to interact with MAX. I like the idea of pinging the system to see if the needed drivers are installed. Then prompting the user to download. I have used installers. I find them very large and they take time to set up. However customers are familiar with installers and they do have their place. There are also core versions of DAQmx that are smaller file size. These look to be promising. However in my experience there seems to be always one little feature I use that is not supported in the core and I need the full. Good Luck!

You have an opportunity to do your passion, or work on somebody elses mess (reverse engineering for legacy system) Follow your passion my friend. Life is to short.

I have never tried this, but you specify a url to a stylesheet in the Easy Write XML File

Have you looked at JKI's Easy XML toolkit http://jki.net/easyxml

I would only recomend TDMS for a customer who needs the high streaming, and is very comfortable with NI tools. I recomend for the most part saving data in simple ASCII files. The reason I like ASCII files. 1. Human Readable 2. Can be read by anything (Excel, Diadem, Matlab, any data viewing program worth its salt) 3. Been around for forever and will be around forever. 4. Non engineer follks feel comfortable working with ASCII files 5. VERY easy to use. The knock on ASCII files is they can be slow and big. My usual answer is hard drives are cheap, and I can design the program to save data in a managable amount. That being said I have seen data requirements where TDMS would be a good solution. The cons for TDMS 1. NI propiatary. NI can change the format when they want. We have already been through TDM, TDMS version 1, and TDMS version 2. I think the format is stable for know, however it is something to be aware of. 2. Non Human Readable 3. Outside of the NI ecosphere who has heard of TDMS? 4. Only works with NI Diadem and LabVIEW (Can download a free plug in for Excel, but that is a pain for folks. You will get a phone call everytime somebody wants to open the data) 5.Learning curve In short my default file format is ASCII. If you need the high speed streaming, lower footprint, and are comfortable using NI tools TDMS could be a nice fit.

I think you will like the humor in the book. I should re-read it. The first time I read it wasn't what I was expecting, and I was not in a good place at the time... Those are great. You also have to include Fahrenheit 451 in that list IMHO Check out Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and The Handmaid's tale. They are all by Marget Attwood. Great dystopian yarns! Thanks for the recommendation! I really liked Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead. I do have to admit I skipped over the 100 or so pages when she was talking about the philosophy...

I read both Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead soon after I started my business. Those books made me feel I was on to something... I couldn't make it through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Most of the time I was thinking "Get to the Freeking point!" The worst time to read a book in a bad situation IMHO is Catch 22. I was working at a crappy job at the time. Made me feel hopeless... It's a good book, I read it at the wrong time..

I just went though this for my business. I am based in the USA, and I am a small LabVIEW consultant. There are 3 types of insurance you generally need for a business. General Liability, Workman's Compensation and Professional Liability (aka Errors and Omissions). General Liability protects you if someone on your premises falls and wants to sue you. Mine has an additional rider called Baily's insurance. This covers equipment not owned by you. If you drop it, and break it, your Baily's will cover it. This is not expensive insurance and is great value for the money. There is also some product and data loss protection in my general liability policy. Workmans Compensation is if you get you hand chopped off at your customers site or someone working for you. It will pay for your (and employee) medical costs, and protect you from some liability. This is generally what customers want to see you have. Having this insurance protects the customer from getting sued by you if there is an accident (that is why they want to see it). This insurance is based on your payroll. It is not that expensive because computer programmers are at a low risk to get injured. (I got into the accountants category). In the US Workman's Compensation is by state. Michigan workman's comp laws are different than Ohio. If you have employees you MUST have workman's comp Professional Liability (aka Errors and omissions) protects you if you mess up and somebody wants to sue you. The thing you really want is the insurance company to pay for the lawyer. Legal fees will KILL you. I am more concerned about the cost of litigation than the amount somebody would potentially sue me for. Professional Liability insurance is expensive, and most folks in the insurance industry don't understand what we do. I went through IEEE. They spent the time to find an insurance company and explain the risks of our job. That means better and cheaper coverage for us. IMHO it is very rare to get sued. The costs of litigation for both sides usually causes cooler heads to prevail. However it only takes 1 a**hole... Reason does not exist in a legal situation. The judges, jurys, and lawyers have no clue on technical matters, and don't care. You could be totally in the right and be liable. Having a big bad insurance company with an army of lawyers on staff who don't want to pay claims is what you are paying for. Using a building contractor analogy, having LabVIEW certification and insurance you are now "licensed and insured". IMHO this is a very marketable thing.

There was no line at the bars I just waited (at bar) until everyone got their food. Really good BBQ. The potato salad was amazing. I want that recipe. Cuban food! Do tell..

I am there...not square

I have been a Lone wolf LV programmer my entire career. I have just kept showing up and learning what I can. I have read books, attended NI Weeks, taken classes, become a CLD, read articles, started LV user groups, started my own business, and most of all experimented and played around with LabVIEW. Strangely I now find myself teaching LabVIEW classes. IMHO becoming good at anything is a journey, and you need to acquire knowledge from multiple sources. Having a mentor is great, but waiting around for one could be a long wait. Jump in, try your best, fail and succeed. It's been a fun ride..

I tell my daughter fair to who. What she perceives as unfair to her is fair to me... Of course this line of reasoning doesn't work on a tired 3.5 year old when she wants to play barbies and doesn't want to go to bed. By the way does anyone know how to play Barbies? My daughter doesn't want to teach me... I don't think this is fair.

Oh boy. This opened a can of worms.... Mecurial looks AWESOME for what I want to do. I like the idea of everybody having a local repository. I was concerned how this works, but after reading this I am very intrigued. Bit Bucket looks really cool. My use case is I have customers who don't use SCC (bad bad). I need something that is easy to use, simple, and low cost so the customers who want to make changes can without blowing everything up. I like the mercurial model because we can both have local repositories. This I think would be an easier sell because the customer feels like they have control (i.e. the code), but it is still under SCC. We can both make changes and it is managed. MOST customers never want to mess with the code, but for those that do this looks like a nice way to handle it. Bit bucket looks cool because I can have issue tracking, wiki and all kinds off cool features that are web based. Great for customers, no installations, and I can manage this easily. Stay tuned...

I saw the open source disclaimer. Private Projects would be cool. I would be willing to pay.

Hello, I recently stumbled across this http://code.google.com/hosting/ It is a tool for project hosting. I think this would be a really cool tool to collaborate with customers and other developers. Does anybody have any experience with Project Hosting? Any recommendations? Thanks Dan

Thanks for the link. That is really helpful! After reading that I don't know if I would hire myself...

Hello, I am finding myself with more work than brain cells and am thinking of hiring an intern. I have contacted the University down the road (Michigan State) and they have a program to connect me with students I have never hired or managed anyone, and I am at a loss as how to interview, and pick a good intern. Does anyone have any advice on what to look for in a LabVIEW intern/minion? Has anyone had any experiences with interns that would be helpful? Thanks Dan

Cool interview about FIRST!! http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-03/neal-bascomb-new-cool

Funny! This is when you need a good kick in the a#*

I really liked this book. My copy the pictures are bad but the text is readable. I still program in this style, and need migrate to OOP. My expectation is that the transition will be a lot easier to OOP because of the concepts introduced to me in this book. Dan

Cheer up Crelf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtfQg4KkR88

I was reading that topic and it was like listening to some of the news opinion shows. Very mean. I had to come back to the LAVA nice and happy place. Whatever your opinion about LabVIEW, some of the nicest people program in it! So There!!!

SCC Rocks! I am a single developer and don't use a server. I have the repository for each project on my hard drive. See this blog post for more info This model works great for 1 person because the "server" is easy to set up. However if you have a team of developers I think you would have to use a server. Good luck with TortoiseSVN I have been using it for a while and am very happy with it.

I have been using VI tester and I really like it. !Warning! I don't use it to its full potential and I don't currently use an OO paradigm. When I am coding along I make test vi's that test the code (usually a subvi) I am working on. The test VI's usually provide the inputs to the VI under test and other setup stuff. When I get passed some initial testing I move it over to VI tester. When in VI tester I may add some boundary conditions, maybe move the setup to the test setup class etc. This has been working well for me. I have caught bugs that I wouldn't have caught using this method. It has also decreased debug time when the program gets deployed. So in short I like doing initial proof of concept testing just in LabVIEW. When I get a better idea of how I want the VI to perform I move it over to VI tester. Dan

I like Omega.com for purchasing thermocouple and thermocouple accessories. Thermocouples are the most popular sensor for temperature because of their low cost and they don't need power. They are however non-linear so you need some signal conditioning to amplify, filter, linearize, and provide cold junction compensation. Here are some tutorials on the subject http://www.omega.com/thermocouples.html http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/7136