Cat

Hmm... lots of USB port -to- DB9 device converters out there, not so many DB9 port - to - USB device converters. Do you have room in your PC for a USB card (PCI)? You can get one of those for under $20.

My momma always told me it wasn't good to have a reputation...

That's what I'm hoping. I've coded up a vi that: 1) reads the number of elements remaining in the queue 2) flushes the queue 3) creates an empty array, size of remaining elements 4) enqueues array 5) flushes the queue I added step 5 in order to get those empty elements out of the queue since I'm going to need it again on the next data run. I'll only call this at the end of a data run, since I don't want empty data getting into the recorded data stream (yes, I could check for it, but I'm attempting to disturb the "real" code as little as possible). One of the issues with this design is that it's very possible that the # elements in the queue when I read it is not the max number that were ever enqueued. I would need to carry along a holder for the max value to implement this right. BUT, my real problem is being created by my disk not being able to keep up with my data rate. I am saving data in both it's raw form (data and lots of status info about the data packet) and in partially processed form, in order to decrease the post-processing time. This amounts to streaming to disk at somewhere in the neighborhood of 56MB/s. My disk can only keep up with that until it's about half full. My fallback position is to just save the raw data and spend more time post-processing after the fact. That cuts my write rate almost in half. I wrote a little vi to verified to myself that LV does indeed reuse the memory allocated for the queue. As I said in my original post, this doesn't seem to be happening in my project code. The queue backs up, lots of memory is allocated, the queue empties, no memory is deallocated, the queue starts to back up again and more memory is immediately allocated. Since this whole process also involves writing to disk, I'm wondering at this point if it doesn't have something to do with buffering before the write to disk. But that question would probably be for another post... Thanks for all the input, everyone, and AQ, I'm looking forward to whatever summary info you can give us on queues and notifiers. Cat

Hey! A queue-related post! So, I'm assuming: 1) just flushing the queue isn't going to deallocate the memory, and 2) destroying the queue will deallocate the memory. Are both of these assumptions correct?

I need some help with queue memory management. In my current project, it seems as though if a queue gets backed up, it grabs memory (obviously) but then after the dequeue process catches up, the memory is not released. I have an application that uses several queues to pass data around. One of these queues receives processed data and in another loop the data is dequeued and saved to disk. I am using a 1TB disk that is almost full and quite fragmented (purposefully). The closer I get to the disk being full, the slower the writes to disk happen. My write data queue gets backed up and starts gobbling up memory. Each elements of the queue is over 1.5MB, so it doesn't take much of a backup to use up a lot of memory All of this is understandable. What I don't get is that if the disk manages to catch up and the queue empties, all that memory that was grabbed to store the queue (I assume) is still taken. This becomes a real problem if more than a few of these slow disk cycles occur and it eats up all the memory in my machine. I spent a couple hours on the web researching, and while this issue has been raised before, I couldn't find an answer. I tried searching here on queue implementation, and got over 3000 hits. Many of those turned out to be unrelated posts from Aristos Queue... Any thoughts on this, or pointers to where to look for pertinent info? Cat

QUOTE (Michael Aivaliotis @ May 29 2009, 05:35 PM) I should go on vacation more often!

QUOTE (PaulG. @ May 28 2009, 01:02 PM) I'm sure it will be a great time. And, honestly, my mom is a wonderful person and one of the few people in the world who could put up with *me* for a week straight.

I'm flying all the way across the USofA tomorrow to San Francisco (and boy, will my arms be tired.) It's for vacation (yay! finally!) and I'll be sightseeing with my mom for a week. And drinking lots. Because I'll be with Mom. For a week... I'm letting you all know for two reasons: 1) I don't want anything interesting, illuminating, or even just entertaining posted all week. I don't want to miss it. 2) I'm getting tired of Alfa posts being the only ones in the Lounge. See ya! Cat

QUOTE (crelf @ May 28 2009, 10:52 AM) I agree. I read your comment: "I'm okay with scrolling, as long as there's a reason for it, and it's in only one direction. " and was thinking out loud that if we were stuck with one direction, it might be more intuitive to do it horizontally. I've read your tech articles on UI design and they've been very helpful. But they are for the FP, the actual user interface, yes? Tho, one might argue that while we're coding, the block diagrams *are* the user interface.

I'm definitely in the "keep it all to one screen" camp, but sometimes it just can't be done without over-artificially breaking up code. In that case, I much prefer to grow horizontally. Most of us do read from left to right, after all. And LabVIEW pushes us in this direction with its horizontal sequences. Maybe those of you who like to grow vertically should put in a suggestion to NI for a vertical sequence. However, I regularly deal with data files with large headers. My 70+ node clusters require a lot of vertical room (on my little laptop screen, anyway). Maybe I should put in a suggestion to NI for horizontal cluster bundling...

QUOTE (Yair @ May 27 2009, 12:59 PM) I like that idea! :thumbup:

QUOTE (neBulus @ May 19 2009, 08:42 AM) Both you and crossrulz get lots of partial credit. The episode was, "The Devil in the Dark." The critter was a 'horta'. QUOTE I'm an old school Treker that never accepted any of the new versions. Netflicks offers a download service that we have set-up to be able to watch any of the episodes on demand. As soon as it was set-up we just had to watch the episode where Kirk makes gun powder to do batle with the Gorn. Boy are those costumes cheesy in high def! They were pretty cheesy in the original low def, too! QUOTE There few episodes where I remeber thee names but my favorite was (I believe) "City on the Edge of Forever" where the phrase "Edith Keeller must die." was used more than once and Spock used that wonderful line about using stones and bearskins to enhance his tricorder. My fellow trekkie cow-orkers and I often quote the stone knives and bearskins line to describe working here...

QUOTE (hooovahh @ May 21 2009, 10:32 AM) Doh! I forgot I knew how to do that. Thanks!

QUOTE (Black Pearl @ May 21 2009, 07:58 AM) I should look into that. The problem is (I assume) I'd have to redo it every time I move or upgrade LV. But, since I already have to mess around with the menu configuration every time I upgrade or install on a new computer (no 3-D controls for me! They were cute looking for about a week) I could deal with it all at the same time.

QUOTE (crelf @ May 20 2009, 06:10 PM) I have to agree. I use SGLs a lot more than DBLs (SGL save space with the large data sets I always seem to be working with -- I don't bother to use DBL unless there's a precision issue) and I32s a LOT more than either. So I'd be much happier if the FP numeric was I32. You can't please all the people all the time...

QUOTE (neBulus @ May 19 2009, 10:20 AM) Thanks for the link, Ben. I've been realizing from bits and pieces I've been picking up on LAVA that it matters where controls/indicators live. Intuitively, it's always seemed to me that I should put data (control) only in the case where it's going to be read. Greg's comment that: "the subVI can truly be inplace only if its terminal is owned by the top diagram and not placed into a loop, sequence, or case diagram" changes that paradigm. I'd never considered there might be different "layers" to a single block diagram. I'll need to look over some code (especially with large data sets) and see if I need to move some controls. Cat

QUOTE (PaulG. @ May 18 2009, 02:43 PM) That's true; within about 5 minutes anyone who knows ST cannon is going to be confused... QUOTE The only thing I liked about the movie were the inside jokes and references for us "old timers". "I'm not a physicist, damnit! I'm a doctor!" :laugh: My favorite episode is the first time (I believe) "I'm a doctor, not a fill in the blank!" was used. It was, in that case, "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" I guess the "damnit" part would have never made it past the censors. Extra points to anyone who can identify the episode without looking it up.

QUOTE (PaulG. @ May 18 2009, 09:16 AM) Them's fightin' words, mister.

QUOTE (ShaunR @ Apr 17 2009, 04:38 PM) What a great idea! I feel your pain about the whole IT thing. That's why my development computer is off the net, too. And why, if I have to reacvtivate LabVIEW (or read or contribute code to LAVA), there's lots of SneakerNet involved going back and forth between the Official Computer and my real computer.

Is this what you're trying to do? Download File:post-9165-1242300412.vi Just a note -- It's generally considered Bad Form to autoindex a for loop with more than one array. If they are different lengths the loop will stop at the end of the shorter array. Only do this if you know that ALL arrays will ALWAYS be the same length. Cat

QUOTE (Justin Goeres @ May 6 2009, 10:58 AM) I remember having this conversation on info-labview 10 or 15 years ago... It may be logical, but it's annoying. I generally work around it by doing a length test on the boolean array before sending it off to do whatever I want it to do.

QUOTE (ElijahRock @ May 9 2009, 08:56 PM) IMAX! I'm jealous! Yes, run, do not walk, to your nearest movie theater (even if it's not IMAX) and see this movie. This one does not disappoint. It had an actual plot (with only a one real artifice offered up via disruptions in the space/time continuum ), great acting (I was worried about watching Sylar, too, but after a couple minutes forgot about it; Simon Pegg was brilliant as Scotty), good special effects, etc. The non-ST fans I was with enjoyed it, and for those of us big Trekkies, there were plenty of obscure references to keep us happy. GO!

QUOTE (labviewnoob @ May 7 2009, 11:42 PM) Read the old text value and append the new text value to it. http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_05_2009/post-9165-1241782452.jpg' target="_blank"> Don't use all three methods!

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ May 7 2009, 03:16 PM) Learning little tidbits like this is why I try to read LAVA faithfully every morning. Thanks!

QUOTE (normandinf @ May 6 2009, 09:12 AM) You can hardly blame him if he does. QUOTE (for those who saw the trailers) I've been attempting to avoid the trailers. These days it seems like every good scene/line from a movie is in the trailer, and then there's nothing left in the movie. Still I go (did anyone other than me actually see the last ST in a movie theater? Or see it at all??). I have high hopes for this one, tho. Good director, good writers, and actually good reviews (not that that really matters). I'm keeping my fingers crossed...