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LabVIEW Coding Challenge NI Week 2010


jgcode

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Congratulations to Darren who won the NI Week 2010 coding challenge!

With a very impressive display of Scripting (and a little 2010 knowledge) in the final round.

Mark's Darren Defeater mouse was of no use...

Maybe the challenger could have thrown it at Darren to distract him??? :)

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What was the challenge?

Challenges really - multiple rounds where each round was a specific task

E.g. Code a LED display and show each number 0-9

Script a new VI that has Add primitive with inputs/outputs wired

Create a VI with a yellow wire and blue wire class connected to a build array that outputs a green wire

Create a race condition etc...

Best of 5, fastest person wins.

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The challenges weren't actually particularly difficult. They just required good knowledge of the environment and the ability to think on your feet and act fast under the competition pressure, and Rob was actually reasonably good. Had I realized there was an iPad as a prize, I would have participated as well, and I think I would have had a decent shot at defeating Darren. I actually realized towards the end that I have my laptop with me and I could test myself in real time, but by the time I opened it up and fired LV, they were already finished, so I didn't get a chance to actually test this theory.

Also, while Darren won that, that part was just a bonus. Rob did win the real competition, so he at least got the iPad, so congratulations to Rob Mortensen from MGI.

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Had I realized there was an iPad as a prize, I would have participated as well, ...

Same here. I wonder how hard it was to actually get into the finals, because I definitely would have coded wires around these two guys for these particular finals tasks. :D

Darren would have been a different problem. Since I am not a "scripter" I would have gone down in flames. That last problem was heavily biased towards Darren.

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It was a relatively simple scripting problem. I don't know if I would say it was heavily biased, but having scripting experience was certainly a prerequisite to winning that one if you're going against someone who knows it and a lot of experience certainly gives you an advantage. Just remember that it was best out of 5, so that was just one challenge. Rob was actually pretty close to winning on one of the others (even though he didn't actually create a 7 segment LED, I think his 3x5 array solution would have been accepted).

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Do we have our first, official, LAVA callout?

Nobody has ever beaten me, and nobody ever will. Now *that's* a call out... ;)

-D

P.S. - I need to have a talk with the judges next year about literal interpretation of the rules, because Robert's answer for the 7-segment display was NOT a 7-segment display. Thankfully he messed it up just a little bit, which gave me enough time to finish my real 7-segment display while he tried to fix his...

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...Robert's answer for the 7-segment display was NOT a 7-segment display. Thankfully he messed it up just a little bit, which gave me enough time to finish my real 7-segment display while he tried to fix his...

Hmmm. I would be curious to see the "NOT" 7-segment display. You would have to be fairly young to not know what a 7-segment display is.

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Hmmm. I would be curious to see the "NOT" 7-segment display. You would have to be fairly young to not know what a 7-segment display is.

Here were the two proposed solutions. I'm sure Rob knew what a 7-segment was, but he just tried another way that could look like it and beat Darren. His way was easier to visualize on the BD, but I agree that it would have been a hard decision on the judges.

post-10515-039353500 1281403609_thumb.pn

EDIT: Saw that last post by Darren too late. :wacko:

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P.S. - I need to have a talk with the judges next year about literal interpretation of the rules, because Robert's answer for the 7-segment display was NOT a 7-segment display. Thankfully he messed it up just a little bit, which gave me enough time to finish my real 7-segment display while he tried to fix his...

Speaking as a judge, I did confer with the other judge on this one, and we decided that it visually looked like a 7 segment display and that was enough. Honestly, we never imagined Robert's solution when we were brainstorming how each of these problems would be solved (we have to verify that they're actually doable in a reasonable amount of time). Once we saw it, we felt it was a reasonable approach to the problem. Consider this... he made a 3x5 grid. Had he made a 9x15 grid, using the same basic idea, you would have seen bars of LEDs, clearly visible as segments. I don't think there'd be any argument then. If the idea is generally valid, then I think we give it to him for having the simplest form of that idea.
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Thankfully he messed it up just a little bit, which gave me enough time to finish my real 7-segment display while he tried to fix his...

Darren, I could not believe how complicated your code was, with all these case structures and scattered diagram constants.

Here's what I would have done, maybe in less time, maybe not. ;) (I should have had my computer out...)

post-708-033200000 1281643621_thumb.png.

One cluster on the FP, one cluster on the BD arranged the same way(!), placed in array, and each element modified graphically (start with all TRUE, less to modify).

.... And yes, the new boolean constant in 2010 made that last step sooooo much easier!!! :D

It's also fully scalable, for example it would be trivial to expand it to a multi-digit display using an array of clusters on the front panel and a FOR loop on the diagram.

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At real time I was thinking of simply copying the cluster control on the FP several times, which would have made it even easier to edit.

That said, I did not think of using the array of clusters and I can't guarantee I would have thought of the same solution if I had been on the stage.

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