Can NI-Spy be controlled programmatically?

[Alereon]

Interested parties:

Not sure if this is possible... be it sure would be useful if one could programmatically start, stop, clear all and filter data from say a LabVIEW VI or CVI function.

Any thoughts?

-rayodyne

[Chris_R.]

Hi Rayodyne,

Unfortunately, NI-Spy cannot be controlled programmatically. You can launch the NISpy.exe file programmatically from LabVIEW or CVI, but you won't be able to control the NI Spy functionality.  Let me know if you have any other questions!

Chris R.
Applications Engineer

National Instruments

Message Edited by Chris_R. on 12-06-2005 01:22 PM

[Henrik_Volkers]

Now I have a some  questions :

Where does ni-spy safe its options?  (capture at start, capture filename ..... )

Since there is no ini file, I assume somewhere in the registry.

So, how about using the reg. vis to set the options and then start the spy?

Stopping the capture and quit the spy will be another task. Maybe that could only be done with the windows api using sendkey.

[Chris_R.]

Hi Henrik,

Unfortunately, we do not release the specifics of the settings of NI Spy since it may change in future version releases.  It would be very difficult to support if registries are modified for applications like this one.  If that would be a useful tool for you, you are free to try it out for your applications.  Let me know if you have any other questions!  Have a great day!

Chris R.

Applicatoins Engineer

National Instruments

[ChrisHawk]

I think it would be a very helpful and powerful debug feature to allow the programmatic control of NI-SPY through an API.  Many of our solutions use 3rd party drivers for instrument IO and therefore NI Spy is the only way to see what actually happened at the low level.

It would also add real value to see the addition of a menu in TestStand to Configure NI-Spy logging for each UUT.

Regards,

Chris Hawkins

[Song_D]

The latest version of Spy, 2.7, contains a LabVIEW API that allows you to start and stop captures. You may get it by installing VISA 4.6.

[husni h]

Song Du,

How does NI-SPY 2.7 handle parallel or batch model? Does it support separate capture log files for different instances?

Regards,

Husni

[Dennis_Knutson]

Parallel or batch model of what? And what does this have to do with programatically starting NI-Spy?

[Song_D]

husni,

NI Spy does not have the concept of paralle or batch model. In other words, it does not support separate capture log files for different instances. There can be only one capture going on at a given time. All process are essentially logging to the same location and Spy displays them as they come in.

[husni h]

Song Du,

Ok. Is it able to differentiate between data coming from different instances running in parallel or batch model even if it is in a single capture?

Rgds,

Husni