CLED, any tips?

[MarkCG]

I took the CLED and was surprised just how much you were expected to do in a 4 hour test. I did not use a template project as the project file is provided to you.. should I have?

 

I have used cRIO on four different projects and gotten nice reliable systems that keep ticking along for months at a time.

This includes writing custom FPGA code. So I was disappointed that I didn't pass.

 

Any tips out there from people who have done it?

[Neil Pate]

It's been a while since I did mine, so my memory is a bit rusty, sorry.

 

I think I did not use a template as it would have required too much changing in the heat of the exam (I don't really like the templates shipping with LV), but I did borrow some elements from some of the templates though. The one thing I think I did re-use was the queue handling mechanism as this was neatly wrapped up and easily copied out a sample project.

 

Don't beat yourself up, the CLED was one of the toughest exams I have done. Three and a half hours in I honestly felt like getting up and going home (to sulk), and I am pretty sure ten years ago I would have done that. Instead I managed to knuckle down and passed.

 

In the exam I also had some weird connectivity issues with the RT target, and spent way too long trying to get my build to deploy properly. I probably wasted 30 mins doing this before saying screw it and just leaving it.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Neil Pate

[crossrulz]

Matt Pollock (an NI SE) has a really good presentation of what is expected for the CLED.  He is free with hints as well.  I also failed my first attempt, but I also was unable to test my system due to the sbRIO going into a constant reboot mode.  NI found a defect and is letting take the exam again for free.  But my main takeaway from that experience was to keep things as simple as possible.  Do not make this as you would a real life system.  Use Network Published Shared Variables to send update information (tags).  Do not make a complicated communication scheme.  Don't even worry about getting all of the functionality in there.  You only need about 70% of the functionality to pass.  So get the simple points.

[MarkCG]

Thank you very much for the advice ! I too had issues with connectivity-- for some reason the sbRIO was connected to the test computer with some weird usb to ethernet converter that kept flaking out. Really annoying and wasted valueable time. I had to bypass it and set up a link-local connection the normal way.

 

The grader claimed that the " The User Interface is not adequatly developed for the UI message Handler, Network Stream to RT,
Communication intilization, and error handling."

 

Not really sure how so, as the usual pattern of an event shandler was there, network stream connected when you press the connect button to the correct IP, network stream commands get forwarded, and shared variables are read (programmatically based on IP) .

 

Not sure what they are expecting as that is how it is done in all the examples, and in most people's real world programs.

 

Anyways, I'll contain my frustration and try again. Thanks!