Sebus,
I'm not sure what you mean by an "independent vi".
If you have a VI that TestStand calls, the post entitled
In TestStand, how to pass data to LabVIEW will probably be very helpful. In addition, there are Getting Started guides that explain this concept and with TestStand 3.0, there is a whole manual called "Using TestStand with LabVIEW" that walks you through step by step how to use TestStand and LabVIEW together.
If you have a VI that executes your test, this VI would be considered an Operator Interface. For this situation, you can use the TestStand concept of UIMessages to pass data from your sequence to the operator interface. This is described in more detail in the TestStand help. UIMessages are a TestStand object that you can pass from your sequence to your operator interface. Since the engine actually executes the sequence, you do not have access to the internal sequence characteristics mid-execution. By using the UIMessages, you can have your sequence automatically send data, and then your Operator Interface will retrieve these messages.
The third scenario is where your VI is not connected to TestStand at all. In this case, if you truly have no connection to TestStand, this is not possible. However, if there is a common shared application then you can use that to pass data. For instance, you could use Datasocket (see
DataSocket Overview
for a brief synopsis) and have TestStand pass the value of the local variable and have LabVIEW read from Datasocket. There is also an ActiveX server that TestStand has called the Synchronization server. This is used internally with the Synchronization step types. However, since it is based upon ActiveX you can use each of the methods and properties that are available; the functions just are not documented. You could use the queue synchronization type to pass data from TestStand to your independent LabVIEW VI.
If this does not answer your question, please let us know and clarify what you mean by an independent VI. Also, the versions of TestStand and LabVIEW would be helpful.
Regards,
Shannon R
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
