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I think it is very difficult to make a UI that runs on Windows and interacts with targets. Here are two suggestions to improve this:

1. We currently can't have \c\ format style in a file path control on windows. It would be nice to allow user to specify the OS syntax to use instead of assuming it should always be the local sytax.

2. The icing on the cake would be to have the File Path Control support a property node for an IP Address so when the user clicks on the browse button, it automatically browses the target (this is already an idea mentioned in the link below) and uses the syntax of the target. This becomes especially useful as we start to have targets that may have an alternative way of browsing files besides FTP. It would be a pain to figure out which SW is installed on the target and use the correct method to enumerate files/folders.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Path-control-of-VI-under-real-time-target-should-browse-target-s/idi-p/1776212

These two features could be implemented by having an enum property node for the File Path Control called Syntax which include options like: Local, Various OSes (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc), or IP Address. If IP Address is specified, another property Node called IP Address will be used to determine what target's OS to use (if it's not specified or invalid, we default to Local).

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Idea Exchange for NXG!

NXG needs an Idea Exchange. The feedback button is a lame excuse for a replacement. Why?

I can't tell if my idea has been suggested before. (And maybe someone else's suggestion is BETTER and I want to sign onto it, instead.)
NI has to slog through bunches of similar feedback submissions to determine whether or not they are the same thing.
Many ideas start out as unfocused concepts that are honed razor sharp by the community.
This is an open loop feedback system.

Let's make an Idea Exchange for NXG!

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Cloud based remote panel connectivity

Connecting to remote panels using LabVIEW is difficult if private networks, local private and external public IPs (under NAT), and firewalls, etc. are involved. It requires significant knowledge as well as external networking configurations (port forwarding, etc.), and possibly admin privileges to modify those.

There are plenty of companies that have found a way around all this. The prime example is chrome remote desktop, which seamlessly works even if target computers are in hidden locations on private networks, as long as each machine can access the internet with an outgoing UDP connection. The way I understand it, each computer registers with the Google server, which in turn patches the two outgoing connections together in a way that both will communicate directly afterwards. All traffic tunnels inside the plain Google chat protocol (udp based). Similar mechanisms have been developed for security systems (example) and many more.

Since the bulk of the traffic is directly between the endpoints, the traffic load on the external connection management server is very minimal. It simply keeps an updated list of active nodes and handles the patching if requested.

I envision a very similar mechanism where LabVIEW users can associate all their applications and distributed computers with a given user ID (e.g. ni profile), and, at all times be able to get a list of all currently running remote systems published under that user ID. If we want to connect to one of them, the connection server would patch things together without the need of any networking configuration. Optionally, users could publish any given panel under a public key, that can be distributed to allow public connections by any other LabVIEW user.

This is a very general idea. Details of the best implementation would need to be worked out. Thanks for voting!

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If you are using TCP to communicate to a different code environment, you may want to set some of the socket options. For example, for responsive control, you will want to disable Nagle's algorithm. There is currently no obvious or easy way to do this. TCP Get Raw Net Object.vi in <vi.lib>\utility\tcp.llb will provide the raw socket ID, but you then need to call setsockopt() on your particular platform using the call library node. You can do this with the code provide here. A much better way would be adding a property node to the TCP reference that allowed you to set and query the options directly.

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Support the iPad as an execution target

Currently the only way to set/modify Tcp socket options is by directly calling some system library, as done for example in this post.

This not only causes code difficult to understand ("what does that library call do again?") but also poses problems when you want to use your code on different operating systems: Currently the only way to do this is using "conditional disable structures", and then Labview still tries to load the code used for a different operating system...

Labview should have a standard way to set socket options within Labview code, at least for the most important options (Nagle algorithm leaps to mind...). This could either be done as additional inputs to the "Tcp open connection"-VI, or (much better) using property nodes for Tcp connections.

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Allow Custom Properties for VISA

So one can set many of the standard properties for VISA connections. However the serial port latency setting is not one of these. It can easily be set by a standard POSIX ioctl call for both linux and MacOS (who the heck knows how Windows does it). Many character based devices can be manipulated through these ioctl calls.

To be specific, the FTDI USB-Serial port driver chips used in MANY devices as a USB interface or just as a serial port have a slow default latency that is fine for preserving CPU cycles but not great for modern high speed custom communication.

1. Just add a a property that sets the serial port latency using an ioctl IOSSDATALAT property configuration.

2. More generally allow an interface that will call ioctl with a supplied property and the LV programmer can pass the correct property configuration.

3. Less satisfying but possibly easier to implement is to have the VISA property be the file descriptor number. This simplifies the programming where one has to now get the "Name" property and then search the process information table for that "Name" (or really path) and then extract the file descriptor. Only then can one set the latency for that device.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support

Hi Guys!

My idea is quite simple. What I would like to do is to use DAQmx Read and Write to accept a DVR as input so that I can read/write data directly to memory. This would be really appriciated if it could be applied on a TDMS read/write also (i know that there is a feature like this in TDMS now but it is only applicable on external dvrs).

Pros: Everything

Cons: None

🙂

Sincerely,

Andreas

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Currently the lvsound2 library -- the Sound Input and Sound Output VIs supported by lvsound2.llb and lvsound2.dll -- updates the audio device list from the operating system only when first being loaded into memory. If you change the device list (e.g.., pair/unpair a Bluetooth headset) the device IDs will not reflect the new configuration until all the lvsound2-dependent VIs have been unloaded from memory. After adding or removing a device, the VIs will generate error 4803 ("The sound driver or card does not support the desired operation.") for device IDs related to the new/removed device, even if the ID is still actually valid and points to something else. This is extraordinarily inconvenient for test systems focused on audio device testing, but understandably a niche issue, which may be why it hasn't been caught before now.

In the interim, the workaround is to dynamically call any of the VIs you're interested in to force them to load/unload as necessary. There are two appropriate solutions I can think of:

1) Update the Sound X VIs to implement the dynamic call workaround (preferably directly around lvsound2.dll calls so we can still borrow other VIs in the LLB).

2) Update the DLL to support on-the-fly changes.

The latter solution is ideal, particularly for performance. This reads both as a suggestion and a bug report so that anyone else who has this problem can find a public forum documenting the issue.

In the drivers (DAGmx,NI-Scope/Fgen,...)

If a value (usually as DBL) enters a config vi, it could be coerced by the driver.

That vi should directly output the actual value.

Most often seen in the Forum: A user declares a non valid DAQmx Timing Sampleclock and wonder why the wfrm(data) is not what he expected.

Yes, RTFM help, you can read the properties after configuration but it would easy to add an output to the config vi with the actual (maybe coerced) value. Making the user avare of that 'feature' (instead of popping an error 😉 )

Should not only cover samplerate , other values like FGEN standard funktion parameters (frequency, Phase), actual range, ...

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Recently, user cprince inquired why all of the possible Mouse Button presses were not available in LabVIEW. In the original post, it was not clear whether this referred to "normal" mouse functions (as captured, say, by the Event structure) or whether this referred to the Mouse functions on the Input Device Control Palette. The latter has a Query Device, which shows (for my mouse on my PC) that the Mouse has 8 buttons, but the Acquire Input Data polymorphic function for Mouse input returns a "cluster button info" with only four buttons.

The "magic" seems to happen inside lvinput.dll. If, as seems to be the case, the DLL can "see" and recognize 8 Mouse Buttons, it would be nice if all 8 could be returned to the user as a Cluster of 8 (instead of 4) Booleans.

Bob Schor

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LabVIEW for LM3S9D96 Development Kit

The LM3S9D96 Development Kit is a 32 bit ARM based microcontroller board that is popular and has several plug in boards. It would be great if we could programme it in LabVIEW. This product could leverage off the already available LabVIEW Embedded for ARM and the LabVIEW Microcontroller SDK.

The LM3S9D96 Development Kit costs $425 and is open hardware. The LM3S9D96 is an ARM Cortex M3 running at 80 MHz resulting in 96 MIPS of performance. By way of comparison, the current LabVIEW Embedded for ARM Tier 1 (out-of-the-box experience) boards have only 60 MIPS of processing power.

The LM3S9B96 Development Kit brochure (http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/spmt158e/spmt158e.pdf) already states, “The LM3S9B96 development board is also a useful development vehicle for systems programmed using tools such as Microsoft’s .NET Micro Framework and Embedded LabView from National Instruments”. So, the brochure already states that the board can be programmed using LabVIEW. Unfortunately, this is not so - not without a few months work. No one has done the Tier 2 to Tier 1 port and it would make the most sense for National Instruments to do this once for the benefit of all. Relatively little work to enable this interesting development board. And the marketing is already done!

Wouldn’t it be great to programme the LM3S9D96 Development Kit in LabVIEW?

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There are currently two NI toolkits which add a software layer on top of the automotive CAN bus.

The Automotive Diagnostic Command Set (ADCS) adds a couple of protocol standards like KWP2000 (ISO 14230), Diagnostics on CAN (ISO 15765, OBD-II), and Diagnostics over IP (ISO 13400). This is a pretty handy API when all you need is one of these protocols. But often when you need to communicate to an ECU, you also want have a normal Frame or Signal/Channel API where you get raw frame data, or engineering units on signals.

The ECU Measurement and Calibration (ECU M&C) adds XCP, and CCP capabilities on top of CAN allowing to read and write parameters based on predefined A2L files. This again is super handy, if the A2L you provide can be parsed, and if all you need to do is talk XCP or CCP to some hardware. But often times you also need to talk over a Frame or Signal/Channel API. And what if you need to also talk over some other protocol.

Every time I've had to use one of these toolkits, it has failed me in real world uses, because you generally don't want just one API you want severaal. And to get that kind of capabilities you often are going to close one API sessions type, and reopen another, then close that and reopen the first. This gets even more difficult when different hardware types either NI-CAN or NI-XNET are used. The application ends up being a tightly coupled mess.

This idea is to rewrite these two toolkits, to be as pure G implementation as possible. The reason I think this would be a good idea, is because with it you could debug issues with file parsing, which at the moment is a DLL call and hope it works, and it would allow for this toolkit to be used, independently of the hardware. Just give it some raw frames, and read data back. NI-XNET already has some of this type of functionality in the form of their Frame / Signal Conversion type, where it can convert from frames to signals without needing hardware. If these toolkits could support this similar raw type of mode then it would allow for more flexible and robust applications, and potentially being able to use these toolkits on other hardware types, or simulated hardware.

LabVIEW for Stellaris Launchpad

I’ve already put up ideas, about 7 weeks ago, for four development boards that could be LabVIEW targets:

1) LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi (current kudos 139)

2) LabVIEW for Arduino Due (current kudos 74)

3) LabVIEW for BeagleBoard (current kudos 49)

4) LabVIEW for LM3S9D96 Development Kit (current kudos 15)

I wanted to leave it at that to gauge LabVIEW community/user interest, however an exciting new board has just been introduced, which is too good to leave out. It’s the Texas Instruments Stellaris Launchpad.

It’s very attractive for three main reasons:

1) It is very easy to get LabVIEW Embedded for ARM to target this board (a Tier 1 port)

2) The microcontroller is powerful with many useful on-chip peripherals

3) The price is extraordinarily low.

The Stellaris Launchpad features are:

ARM Cortex M4 with floating point unit running at 80 MHz (100 MIPS)
256 KB flash
32 KB SRAM
USB device port (separate from the USB for programming/debugging)
8 UARTS
4 I2C
4 SSI/SPI
12 x 12 bit A/D channels
2 analog comparators
16 digital comparators
Up to 49 GPIO
and more

The most interesting feature is that it costs $4.99 including postage. Yep, just under five dollars! Including postage! I’ve already ordered two!

The Texas Instruments Stellaris Launchpad can be programmed using the free Code Composer Studio in C/C++ or the free Arduino IDE using Energia from github. Both great ways to program. It just needs LabVIEW as the third exciting programming option.

Wouldn’t it be great to program the Stellaris Launchpad in LabVIEW?

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Export Data To TXT , in the Graphs

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LabVIEW users should be able to deploy programs to the Intel Edison Module

The Intel Edison is a very small single board computer with a dual-core Atom processor, 1GB RAM and built-in WiFi/Bluetooth LE.

Functionality can be added by connecting breakout boards, so called blocks. Many of these blocks are already available, like ADC, GPIO, Arduino, PWM...

In my opinion the Intel Edison is very well suited for stuff like embedded control, robotics, the Internet-Of-Things, and.

Thats why I posted this idea to convince NI to support it in LabVIEW!

VDB

PPL for multiple target

Hello,

the current functionality doesnt allow to asynchronously call a method that has any dynamically dispatched inputs. This causes a need to create a statically dispatched wrapper around the dynamic method which then can be called.

This is a source of frustration for me because it forces you to have code that is less readable, and this doesn't seem to be any reason for having functionality like that. Since you allready need to have a class loaded in the memory to provide it as an input for the asynchronously called VI why not just allow to use dynamic dispatch there (the dynamic method is allready in the memory).

How it is right now:

Solution: Allow to make asynchronous calls on methods with dynamic dispatch inputs.

LabVIEW Idea Exchange

File Path Control Support Sytax for other OS than the local one.

Idea Exchange for NXG!

Cloud based remote panel connectivity

Support for AUTOSAR configuration and development in LabView

Property Node to Set Socket Options for TCP

Support the iPad as an execution target

Add better support for Tcp socket options

Allow Custom Properties for VISA

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support

Data Value Reference (DVR) implementation in DAQmx and TDMS

Update the lvsound2 library (Sound Input/Sound Output VIs) to support changing audio devices on-the-fly

In the drivers (DAGmx,NI-Scope/Fgen,...) if a value enters a config vi and it could be coerced, the vi should directly output the coerced value

Allow "Acquire Input Data" function to return all 8 Mouse Buttons

LabVIEW for LM3S9D96 Development Kit

G Implementation - ECU M&C and Automotive Diagnostic Command Set

LabVIEW for Stellaris Launchpad

Export Data To TXT , in the Graphs

LabVIEW support for the Intel Edison Module

PPL for multiple target

Allow Dynamically Dispatched Methods to be called Asynchronously