Remote Front Panel Connections

[amorris]

Background:

I have a VI called GGS Manual Debug Screen.vi that is running on a real-time target all the time, i.e. from the time when my main RT VI becomes functional. When the user clicks a button on the host machine (running Windows), I use the Application invoke method "RP.Open Connection to Server" to view and control this real time VI.

Problem:

I want to password protect part of the functionality of GGS Manual Debug Screen.vi such that each time the remote panel connection is closed and re-opened, the user must re-enter their password. I can't figure out which property I should be looking at to figure out when a new connection to the VI front panel has been opened. All of my attempts thus far have failed. From the Application properties, I have tried remote panel Connections to Client and Connections to Server, as well as the VI property RP.Client Connections. I've also tried to look at when the front panel is loaded or opened, but that doesn't seem to work either.

Any suggestions or tips are welcome. The solution is probably right in front of my face, but I'm not seeing it. I'm running LabVIEW 2010 SP1 and Real-Time Module 10.0.1.

Thanks in advance!

Anna

[Neville D]

Why don't you add the password functionality in the calling Host VI instead of adding to the RT panel? When user presses a button to open the panel, force them to input a password before actually opening the panel.

[amorris]

Thanks for the reply Neville D! That was actually my first idea, which I implemented successfully. However, I only want to password protect part of the VI, not the entire thing. I suppose I could pass the password from the Host to the RT VI and then disable functionality accordingly, but the project is built on shared variable communication, and we are already having issues with this setup, so I hesitate to add any more variables to the library. Is there another better way I could do that?

The second option would be to split the functionality of that one VI into two VIs, but again, we're already using more remote front panels than we should, so creating an additional one is not preferable.

I didn't write this code, and unfortunately, there are quite a few bad practices that I have to deal with right now until there is time to overhaul the project.

[Neville D]

How many shared variables are you using? I have around 70 or so communicating with a PXI LVRT target, with no problems. What kind of target do you have? Hosting large numbers of shared variables on smaller/older targets cFP or FP might be an issue.

I haven't investigated this but:

you could put password protected indicators on a tab sheet and hide/display the entire tab or that particular tab on the RT front panel. Again, I don't know if those tab properties will work on RT. They might.