LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Top Authors

User

Kudos

Post an idea

Inline "Space constant.vi"

I just used the space constant VI from the string pallet. (I don't really now why I use this one sometimes because you can easily create it by yourself, mostlikely because of the icon )

When I then checked the VI properties of "Space constant.vi" I noticed that the "Inline subVI into calling VIs" checkbox was not marked in the execution tab. I don't think it will do anyone harm to make this VI inline, can it? I also came to think of it that there are most likely other small VI's from National Instruments which maybe should have Inline marked, maybe NI should take a look threw the small VIs?

Maybe, maybe it is even an idea the LabVIEW check the contents of a string and if it sees that it is a constant space, line feed, etc it changes to its respectable constant icon.

Put Example Names in tags

Currently, you cannot search and find examples by name in the example finder, only by specific keywords which may or may not be in the name. Including both the file name and the non-abbreviated terms of its name would be much easier. It would both help people find the files, and make them easier to interpret the names, which are somewhat confusing at times.

For instance, if you wanted to find "Acq&Graph Voltage-int clk.vi" example which you couldnt search "acquire graph" or "Acq&graph" and find it which is unintuitive and confusing. It also makes it difficult to direct other users to.

Regards,

Kyle Mozdzyn

Applications Engineering

National Instruments

View All (5)

If my fingers have to leave the home row while using Quick Drop, a lot of the speed benefit of that feature is lost. When coding in LVOOP, I find that I often have to manually select the instance of a dynamic dispatch VI from a list of identically named instances. Right now, I have to use the mouse or the arrow keys to navigate the results list. Why not tab and shift-tab through them instead, allowing my hands to stay in place so I can use the appropriate keystroke (CTRL+I or CTRL+P, etc.) after selecting the method I want?

View All (3)

According to some engineers that I have spoken to in the prototyping industry, Windows 10 IoT is gaining some traction as a preferred embedded OS for developing ideas. Windows 10 IoT, as I understand it, is delivered in 3 different versions: Core, Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobile. Now where Core is built as a .NET application and lacks some of the system capabilities of Windows 10, the Enterprise version is built as a Win32 OS and is closest to Windows 10 as it is now.

If resources allow, it might be beneficial to see some future support for at least this version of Windows 10 IoT to meet the demands of a growing body of engineers who will want to integrate LabVIEW executables with their Windows 10 IoT powered devices.

Currently, the random number function in LabVIEW only generates a number between 0 and 1. More often than not, though, random numbers required by applications must be larger than 1. It would be really nice if the random number function were improved to allow random numbers to be generated within a user-specified range rather than just between 0 and 1. It might also be nice if the function were improved to allow the user to be able to specify whether random numbers generated were integers or decimal (floating point) numbers and possibly signed numbers (both integers and decimal numbers).

View All (3)

When a folder under source control is added to the VI analyzer the subfolder for version control is inserted too. Lets get around this by allowing patterns for folders (or files too) which should be ignored. So adding ".svn" would solve the problem of files of subversion being checked.

I see three possibilities to save the patterns:

- for each top level folder

- in the configuration file

- globally (not preferred, other users do not get the setting)

(There is a discussion about VI Analyzer and SVN under http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=290839#M290839)

Greetings,

shb

View All (2)

Crash report

It turns out that LabVIEW - like many other software product - happens to crash sometimes.

I think that's cool. Serious!

Why?

Because it makes room for a crash report feature of course, and there is a lot of fun you can have with a crash report.

Picture that : you've been working a bunch of hours on a project and voooooooooooosh... Crash. It's all gone. At this point, and unless you've been some kind of daredevil developper trying to do something you're not supposed to do (but there is no such lad in the LabVIEW community anyway), you would be fairly angree, right?

I honestly think that a crash report feature gives you the opportunity to let the steam out after a stressing experience, and therefore lower your chances to get a heart-attack. And if you're lucky someone will eventually read it and try to do something about it.

As for the feature itself, just get inspired : http://log.maniacalrage.net/tagged/cscr

View All (4)

"Is prime?" primitive

I am quite surprised not to find this idea allready here.

When you want to create a reference for many controls, you have to do it for each of them.

It would save a lot of time if, when selecting a collection of similar controls, you could get a more complete context menu.

Allowing to create a reference for each terminal with one clic. Actualy, even with LV2010, you only get "property" in the context menu.I'll be glad if i cant find there "create/reference" and maybe others as for a single terminal

View All (1)

OPC UA API as a stand-alone add-on

We were thrilled to see that NI developed an OPC UA API. We develop software for both VxWorks and Windows, so having OPC UA available on RT is great. But having to shell out for the entire DSC suite, run-time licenses and all, just to be able to use the same API on Windows is unreasonably costly and forces us to use a different API on Windows. If we could buy the API as an isolated component at a more reasonable price (and with easier licensing) we would jump for it immediately.

A generalized version of the idea:

The DSC can still function as a nice bundle, where the price for the bundle is lower than the total for each individual item, but when NI makes such packages please make it possible to pick-and choose amongst those components as well, so that in cases where you actually have a need for just one of them, you can get it at a price that is reasonable for that individual component.

Macro in LabVIEW

I'm missing the feature of using macros in LabVIEW like in other languages. In text-based

languages a macro is a text replacement before compilation so in LabVIEW it should do the

same with g code.
I don't like the idea to put every single code into a sub VI just to clean up the code.

There are enough reasons to create sub VIs but the goal is to build logical / programmatical

units.

Consider a situation you are using long text in string constants enlarging the whole code

through this.

Consider a situation you are using many property-nodes within a while loop.

Use macros to avoid this.

So how to implement?

Macros are unique in every VI. Every VI should have named extra block-diagram layers to define these macros, one layer per macro. These layers are similar to a standard VI except they don't need / use a front panel to connect the controls. All controls are connected within the macro block diagram. The macro is used like a standard VI. It has a icon like a standard VI and is placed on the block diagram like a standard VI.

The macro code will be embedded virtual before compilation so the code will not be touched.

That's it - I think 🙂

View All (4)

Most email server need authentication not only for POP3 to retrieve emails but also for SMTP.

This issue is coming up for a lot of years from time to time. In deed the SMTP Email library built into LV is unusable today.

Everyone is complaining about spam which often is send using open email servers without authentication so you have not the chance to find the real sender of unwanted emails. Since most of use are not this kind of senders we have regular account needing to authenticate.

A micro second wait VI

NI Community,

I have developed some applications where it was desirable to have a Wait, but 1 millisecond is just too long.

I came up with a method using the High Resoution Releative Seconds.vi, to create a delay in the microsecond range (it's attached). This works for the particular application I need it for, because I am waiting on an external buffer to be ready to accept new data (its rate it can process is 60 nanoseconds). Waiting for an entire millisecond in this case is just too long.

The downside to this method is it is tied to your processor speed and current workload. It would be great if NI supported a 'Wait Until Next us Multiple.vi (it doesn't Sleep).

Attached is my work-around. I'd love to see other ideas on this topic.

Thank you,

Dan

In the probe window it if you look at "value" it is just the 2D array flattened to a 1D array, which makes it very difficult to tell where one row stops and the other begins. I suggest making this work similar to how visual studio lets you expand teh elements of the array.

I also suggest the probe display array to have scroll bars on arrays so you can see elements a lot easier than clicking or typing in an index. Also showing more than one element would be beneficial.

View All (7)

LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Support for 64-bit linux

Inline "Space constant.vi"

Put Example Names in tags

Tab through Quick Drop results

Allow probes for strings to be resizeable and allow for the user to select the display format

LabVIEW Support for Windows IoT Enterprise

Random number function improvement

Let VI Analyzer ignore paths matching patterns

Default Arrays ( numeric / string / boolean ) - Not to drop each time into array

Crash report

"Is prime?" primitive

Give any open projects their own section under the Window menu

New VI Analyzer Test, check the "Separate compiled code from source file" checkbox setting

Shortcut key insert onto wire segment

Create references for multiples controls with one clic

OPC UA API as a stand-alone add-on

Macro in LabVIEW

Provide email authentication for the SMTP Email library

A micro second wait VI

Make 2D / multidimensional arrays show better in probe window.