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Here is a little snipit from an old thread on LabVIEW sequencing mechanisms:

crelf wrote:

I know I'm chiming in late on this, but I can't agree more - I could sooooooooooo use something like this! I can't count how many times I've seen LabVIEW developers create their own "TestStand Lite" to do simple sequencing, only to fall on their faces when they need to do anything remotely complex or really reusable. I think that a real NI-produced "TestStand Lite" would be an excellent conduit to get current LabVIEW programmers into TestStand! :thumbup: Anyone from NI like to comment? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?!? :(

My recent reply:

Teststand Lite, that would be an excellent idea. It also makes me wonder what happened to the promising OSTE that was abandoned on SourceForge. I myself use a rewritten Table based version of the original NI Test Executive for basic sequencing and a 'Test Manager' API for managing excel based test specifications, results and report generation. I am looking into creating a new version that would have a better test sequencing API with extended features such as subtests, vi template based parameter editing, script variables and conditional looping. Personally I would rather just buy a 'TestStand Lite' if it was under $1000 with free run-times if using NI hardware.

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Teststand Lite, that would be an excellent idea... Personally I would rather just buy a 'TestStand Lite' if it was under $1000 with free run-times if using NI hardware.

Mike Holmstrom from NVSI and/or Endevo was writing a TestStand Lite - I tried it out a while ago, and whilst still in its infancy, it had a lto of potential. I wonder what ever happened to that...

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This is a difficult move for NI to make. It's also a marketing issue. The only way to justify a $995 price point would be to cripple the existing Teststand somehow in order to lower the price. Then you would have two levels, but what do you take out? I've used Teststand and I must say, I don't think I could live without most of the features. Also, I don't think NI will invest R&D just to develop a secondary product which competes against the flagship Teststand. The only option is for someone else to move forward on something. That however requires too much organization with too many players. I'm afraid that from what I've seen, the existing LabVIEW open source community cannot support that type of endeavor.

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That however requires too much organization with too many players. I'm afraid that from what I've seen, the existing LabVIEW open source community cannot support that type of endeavor.

I can't argue with that!

The only way to justify a $995 price point would be to cripple the existing Teststand somehow in order to lower the price. Then you would have two levels, but what do you take out?

How about (all these prices are pulled out of my... well... you know):

Base Components

TestStand Base Price: $895

TestStand DLL Adapter: Free

Optional Components

TestStand LabVIEW Adapter: $99

TestStand C++ Adapter: $99

TestStand VB Adapter: $99

TestStand SQL Adapter: $99

TestStand (...n) Adapter: $99

TestStand Process Model Editor: $99

TestStand User Interface Editor: $99

That'd get most users a working copy of TestStand for around $990. Run time licenses, debug licenses, etc, are, of course, extra.

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I also would put my hope in a 3rd party offering, but I would not so completely rule out an open source effort. Anyhow I think a dialog about what a 'OSTE' would be like might be fruitful in itself. I myself have puzzled over whether it would make sense to use an existing scripting engine like Lua or IronPython and add TE api features for managing test specifications, results and reporting as well as common UI components to support intelligent editing, vi template parameter generation, test sequence displays, report display, etc. I would also be interested to explore alternate scripting interfaces that present the user with clickable parameter selections as opposed to text editing. You could still write text based scripts but many use cases could be addressed with a simplified tree like script presentation.

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Hi guys

I came up with the name TestStand Light, when a customer (Ericsson Mobile Platform, Sweden) needed a test-executive

that was based on readable test sequence files. They wanted the sequence files to be read and modified by notepad.

I made a ScriptRunner application that parsed the text files and executed the tests.

E.g.

TEST

{

SetVoltageApp(20)

$Result=TcCurrentConsumptionsApp(21)

if ($Result.TestStatusResult=PASS)

{

println("TcCurrentConsumptionsApp Result=PASS")

for each $Temp in {85,-30,-20,25}

{

SetTemperatureApp(28)

for each $Volt in {2.5,2.7,2.75,2.9}

{

SetVoltageApp(31)

$XO=TcXoFrequencyApp(34)

TcTxPowerVsFrequencyApp(35)

}

}

}

else

{

println("TcCurrentConsumptionsApp Result=FAIL")

}

SendMailApp(41)

}

But too make it easier to create scripts like this, I made a GUI for that. "TestStand Light"

Have a look at this ppt Download File:post-941-1170712458.ppt

(It's a quick swedish to english translation, just for you guys ;) )

The problem is that Ericsson owns this code, but if I have time I might be able to recreate it (not copy) and share it.

Cheers,

Mikael

Ps But I'm now upgrading the LabVIEW UML modeller to be integrated in the LabVIEW project environment, and that will probably take all my spare time

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  • 1 year later...

QUOTE(MikaelH @ Feb 5 2007, 02:03 PM)

Hi guys

I came up with the name TestStand Light, when a customer (Ericsson Mobile Platform, Sweden) needed a test-executive

that was based on readable test sequence files. They wanted the sequence files to be read and modified by notepad.

I made a ScriptRunner application that parsed the text files and executed the tests.

E.g.

TEST

{

SetVoltageApp(20)

$Result=TcCurrentConsumptionsApp(21)

if ($Result.TestStatusResult=PASS)

{

println("TcCurrentConsumptionsApp Result=PASS")

for each $Temp in {85,-30,-20,25}

{

SetTemperatureApp(28)

for each $Volt in {2.5,2.7,2.75,2.9}

{

SetVoltageApp(31)

$XO=TcXoFrequencyApp(34)

TcTxPowerVsFrequencyApp(35)

}

}

}

else

{

println("TcCurrentConsumptionsApp Result=FAIL")

}

SendMailApp(41)

}

But too make it easier to create scripts like this, I made a GUI for that. "TestStand Light"

Have a look at this ppt http://lavag.org/old_files/post-941-1170712458.ppt'>Download File:post-941-1170712458.ppt

(It's a quick swedish to english translation, just for you guys ;) )

The problem is that Ericsson owns this code, but if I have time I might be able to recreate it (not copy) and share it.

Cheers,

Mikael

Ps But I'm now upgrading the LabVIEW UML modeller to be integrated in the LabVIEW project environment, and that will probably take all my spare time

Hi Mikael,

Sorry to ressurect this thread, but I am working on a project that is very similar to the idea of TestStand Lite and I'm just wondering if you ever got a chance to recreate all or part of what you had done. I would love to take a look at it and pull some of your ideas.

I am using the "sequence file translator" funtionality of TestStand to come up with a custom text based sequence file that gets translated to a TestStand sequence file. The idea is that not everyone in the company will have to know/own TestStand to benefit from what it can do. Eventually I would like to have some sort of GUI to aid in creating the text based sequence files, but for now I am working on getting the text file format defined and parsing properly into TS.

Any ideas and/or lessons learned that you can pass on to me would be helpful.

Thanks,

Toby

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  • 2 weeks later...

QUOTE(TobyD @ Feb 6 2008, 06:46 PM)

Hi Mikael,

Sorry to ressurect this thread, but I am working on a project that is very similar to the idea of TestStand Lite and I'm just wondering if you ever got a chance to recreate all or part of what you had done. I would love to take a look at it and pull some of your ideas.

I am using the "sequence file translator" funtionality of TestStand to come up with a custom text based sequence file that gets translated to a TestStand sequence file.

Sorry Guys but write from scrath a custom text based sequence languages is like reinvent the wheel!

We have a lot of scripting languages we just need to use it.

I had a great experiance building a scheduler using LUA, and i working on a TE also based on this.

I don't have the ambition nor the time to make a general purpose TE but with some collaboration could be possible.

Ciao

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QUOTE(Bjarne Joergensen @ Feb 18 2008, 02:44 AM)

Bjarne -

There are currently no concrete plans to develop a TestStand Lite product at National Instruments. While this could change at any time in the future, you should not make any plans assuming that such a product will be available any time soon.

I'm sorry to say that the information you received from your local NI Sales office was erroneous. We'd like to follow up with them to clear up the confusion. I assume that the correct office to contact is the Danish office. Is that correct?

David Rohacek

National Instruments

TestStand R&D Group Manager

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