Additional NI Software Idea Exchange

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Hello,

 

For custom FPGA personnality, it is possible to use PWM scaling: in the system definition, you can define the PWM period (in Ticks), and then at execution, you can play with the ratio (channel value in %): 

 

PWM Out Configuration in System ExplorerPWM Out Configuration in System Explorer

 

I guess the "native" FPGA scaling inludes the conversion between pulse ration specificed by the channel and the period in ticks to get the high and low time used in the FPGA (_High Pulse x and _Low Pulse x in FPGA example project) :

 

DMA Read operation and High/Low Pulse split in FPGA exampleDMA Read operation and High/Low Pulse split in FPGA example

 

 

PWM out loop in FPGA examplePWM out loop in FPGA example

 

 

I am facing for the third time (at least) a customer need to adjust this PWM out frequency at run time. I already adress this need by exposing high and low time in a Custom FPGA Personality. But that's not really convenient (I used to build a display template to get an easy way to configure the whole PWM generation - I'm not sure I even wan't to know if and how is possible with UI Manager).

 

My proposal : expose PWM period or frequency as an additional (and optional) channel, in order to allow the change of its value at run-time. The FPGA "interface" in VeriStandStand could take in charge the computation of high/low time according to this new channel value. This way, existing FPGA personnality do not have to be changed (backward compatibility).

Cherry on top of the cake, you can even imagine to set up the expected PWM Loop rate and express the frequency in Hz, instead of the PWM period in Ticks (scaling, one more time).

Under the System Explorer, a right click on the PWM out channel could expose a new entry in context menu, allowing the user to Add PWM Frequency Channel (just like Add Information Channels for XNET frames)

 

Regards,

Hi there,

 

several years ago I wrote an instrument control package for a set of specialized lab equipment controlled from a Linux PC via GPIB (NI PCI card). The need to frequently update the kernel driver turned out to be an issue for the daily work, so we switched over to a GPIB-ENET/100, which at that time came with a lightweight 32bit interface library libgpibenet.so with very little system dependency - so it was portable between different linux systems.

Recently, I was trying to upgrade the package to a more recent 64-bit linux variant, using up-to-date drivers from NI. Unfortunately, the current offering requires me to install some 30 rpm packages including kernel drivers (causing extra problems when the kernel requires signed modules). My GPIB application now crashes in nipalau.so if kernel modules are missing - which I don't need anyway! - or some startup scripts have not been executed. Even worse: the latest packages have sadly dropped support for the GPIB-ENET/100, probably due to too much maintenance overhead, and the GPIB-ENET/1000 is now the only available package that does not required kernel support.

 

However, purchasing a GPIB-ENET/1000 as an upgrade is no option if I cannot get rid of the runtime-dependencies on unneeded software.

 

Currently, my only choices are using an outdated linux system with the full package NI package version 2017, or an even older system with the original 32bit driver library.

 

Question: would it be possible to provide a 64bit-variant of the original GPIB-ENET Linux package to gain full advantage of the very low system requirements? I could even live without the fancy graphical configuration tools...

 

Hello,

 

R&D community across the globe is moving toward FAIR Data Principles. More and more funding agencies are requiring that data created by and used for research need to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). NI already has made great strides towards metadata-rich data, such as industry-standard open source TDM/TDMS formats. 

 

The next logical step is to help NI customers to comply with FAIR Data Principles requirements. The best way to support NI customers will be the development of TDM/TDMS API for  major public data repositories, such as Harvard's dataverse.org etc. 

with NI ADCS 20.0, it's not possible to open diagnostic session on multiple LIN Slave (Open Diagnostic on LIN). Add this functionalty on next version please 🙂

 

We can currently write data to Ethercat slaves using WriteFoEData and the Industrial Communications for Ethercat driver 20.0. However we cannot read data using FoE. I would like Ni to add this capability.

When adding a Licensing server especially from FlexLM there is no confirmation message that a valid server has been added. This would be nice to avoid confusion of users connecting to this type of licensing Server.

NI License Manager is a really good tool to check in a visual way in which products are licensed and connecting to the Server License.

 

However, in case you need to request access from NI License Manager to the server through the "Manage" button on the Network License tab, you need to go specifically to each machine physically or set up a remote third party tool to request the access with that button.

 

Therefore, it will be a great solution to create certain options for the NI License Manager and set up some Master License Managers to make these requests from a few selected computers. Adding value to the security of the server as it will not be accessed very often.

 

Thanks.

Add option to Project Explorer->Tools->Options->Workspace for UI Manager and Workspace:

 

  • Close on Undeploy [to automatically close one or both when project is undeployed]
  • Open on Deploy [select whether to open or not on deployment - after Calibration is complete, I do not use Workspace again and would prefer that it would not open on future deployments.  I can open it manually from the Project Explorer window, if necessary.

ATarman_0-1593452134016.png

 

Just want to share a calibration proposal for VNA.

 

Please note: this is just for one model Filter IC production test, different models or different ICs test may have different calibration approach.

 

Below is the calibration proposal flowchart:


NICommunityPublished.png

 

When migrating to a new server with an updated license File I loaded a large backup files from a server with a 1000+Computer based licenses. The process of loading the back up took around 1 hour, which got me unsure if the process of restoring the backup was going correctly or not. It doesn't has a loading progression bar to see how much time left is needed for the backup to finish, or even just a progression bar of the percentage left. In the end the process was successful, but very stressing... I think having a progression bar would be an excellent feature to have.

Dear Colleagues,

customers need for directly importing the NI Veristand log files into third-party tools (as Vector CANanalyzer) and we found the following contrains:

- TDMS are very effective and open, but not directly manageable by other tools

- txt and cvs are potentially more suitable, but NI Veristand 2019 does not allow adding a native Time Channel, that's fundamental. I saw that System Time and Absolute Time are potential channels to add to a log, but there are no options to format the timestamp and to allow some kind of flexibility

 

Suggestion/requests:

- adding customizable time channels to txt and csv log options in NI Veristand (the limitation is still the files size bacause of ascii, but the multiple files option could help)

- whatever improvement are in the NI VS roamap logging?

- what about MDF4 support? It would be vey useful and well accepted: I recall it was in the roadmap evaluation but no news so far. In case, what MDF: signal and/or message format(s), BTW?

 

In case, concerning the roadmap, could you please contact me directly (davide.palandella@ni.com)?

 

Thank you very much

Best Regards

 

Currently error messages are quite vague - they say what failed, but don't say where. It might be fine in LabVIEW development, where error pops up in the exact location on the block diagram, but it's not well suited for Veristand, where all we have is the error message. Take this as an example:

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The VeriStand Gateway encountered an error while deploying the System Definition file.

Details:
Error -1074384704 occurred at Project Window.lvlib:Project Window.vi >> Project Window.lvlib:Command Loop.vi >> NI_VS Workspace ExecutionAPI.lvlib:NI VeriStand - Connect to System.vi

Possible reason(s):

NI-XNET:  (Hex 0xBFF630C0) A property value was out of range or incorrect. Solution: specify a correct value.
=========================
NI VeriStand:  NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine Wrapper (RT).vi >> NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine.vi >> NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine State Machine.vi >> NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:Initialize Inline Custom Devices.vi >> Custom Devices Storage.lvlib:Initialize Device (HW Interface).vi

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 

I'm trying since 2 days to figure out which property is invalid - I have 4 CAN channels and 2 LIN channels in the SDF... If there was an information about the channel/value that causes the error, it'd be far easier to sort the problem out.

Aside from the fact that most of the errors are just pulled up from device drivers which makes them vague and not at all related to the actual VeriStand function happens (so part 1 of this feature request is an overhaul of our error reporting in VeriStand), it would be great if it actually logged these or gave you the option to save to a file. This means that you can then send this to NI Support for assistance or at the very least, document issues.

It would be great if you could write to a whole digital port rather than line by line when attempting to write numerics over digital lines with VeriStand DAQmx

After running a compilation, the Functional Safety Editor produces several files, including the actual bin file for uploading to the 935x module, plus a compilation report and other compilation results. The FSE manual recommends reviewing these output files for correctness.

 

report_shorcut_manual.PNG

 

Problem is there's no quick way to open these files for review. So I think it'd be useful to provide a button to open File Explorer to the folder containing the files produced by the compilation.

 

fse_explore.png

LabVIEW has a nice feature allowing an arrow to be drawn from a comment and attached to a block diagram element. This makes commenting specific parts of code much more precise. The Functional Safety Editor lacks this feature (and is inefficient to comment in general). When adding verbose comments to the diagram, it can be unclear which comment belongs to which state or transition.

 

The proposed idea is to add the same comment/arrow functionality from LabVIEW to the FSE, so comments can be attached to a transition, state, compound state, etc.

Comments can be added to the diagram in the Functional Safety Editor, but only when dragged from the palette. It's second nature in LabVIEW to simply double-click a blank area of the block diagram and begin typing to add a comment, so the lack of this feature in the FSE is really jarring.

 

This idea is to enable double-clicking an empty area of the diagram to automatically insert a comment, without the need to drag it in from the palette.

The Functional Safety Editor lacks a pan tool for navigating the diagram view. The only option is to use the scrollbars + mousewheel.

 

This proposal is to add a pan tool, activated by a keyboard+mouse shortcut. This could be Ctrl+Shift+Click (like LabVIEW) or Space+Click (like NXG). This would make navigating the diagrams of larger safety programs much quicker.

LabVIEW provides access to a list of recently opened Projects and Files, which is handy for quickly resuming where you left off. The Functional Safety Editor lacks this feature. Combined with the default file dialog issue, it makes reopening user programs a time consuming exercise.

 

fse_recent.png

 

The idea is to add a Recent User Programs menu item to the File menu, listing the last 10 or so user programs (just like LabVIEW).

 

(Labelled this as System Configuration API, but the FSE is its own product)

Currently the Functional Safety Editor file dialog always defaults to the path %userprofile%\Documents\LabVIEW Projects\Functional Safety Programs when opening or saving user programs. This is regardless of where the user program was opened from, or where the program was last saved to. This is unlike LabVIEW, where it will always remember the last used directory and use that as the starting path for file saving/loading.

 

The default file dialog path for the FSE can at least be changed in %localappdata%\National Instruments\Functional Safety State Machine Editor 6.0\Preferences.xml (under the key NationalInstruments.Shell.ApplicationFeatureSetDefaultDialogDirectory) to a more sensible default path (the root of your preferred version control system). Even so, it is still tedious needing to change folder paths to a given project for every save or load operation.

 

A better UX would be to remember the last used file path, and use that as the starting path for any file open or save dialogs. Much less clicking and navigating required.

 

(Labelled this as System Configuration API, but the FSE is its own product)