I am in much the same position that you are. ME with no real
programming experience.
I even put together a project plan and sent an rfq to a local
consultant to come in and sit with me and give me a jump start. All
with an eye towards understanding the process no just getting some
black box code.
My boss wanted some concrete deliverables before he would hire any
help. The consultant dropped by to get a better idea of the what he
could actually deliver in order to write a quote.
I had to do enough homework just to write the rfq that I began to see
the pieces of the problem more clearly. I started calling the NI help
line with little pieces of the problem. I ended up eating the
elephant one bite at a time - without outside help. It took a couple
months, but I can function reasonably well now.
My advise is to start calling NI's help line (there are 90 people
manning the phones in Austin and they are pretty good). Ask them to
explain Task ID, etc. They are there to answer those questions and
more. I never have to wait. This is an unbelieveable service. You
will soon learn that they immediately turn to the NI web site and
search the techincal resources for pertinent info. I now do that
first, and if I have limited success, then I call NI. They will help
you find example code and frequently write snipets for you. Keep the
questions well defined and you will get well defined solutions. If
the question is nebulous it may be hard for them to solve the right
problem for you. I have asked general strategy questions and gotten
good answers.
Another good resource is all the example code that ships with LV. Go
to Help>Contents and Index. Find the Serch Examples pick and drill
down the the most likely code and try it out. If it doesn't do quite
what you need, monkey around a bit and then...call NI.
I found the Course Kits to be the best literature. In particular the
Basics I and II are really excellent. It is worth stepping through
the whole course because the slip in all kinds of little hints and
tricks you would miss if you skim or just use it as a reference. If
you can find the time to work through Basics I and II you can skip
going to the classes. But, unlike New To This, I had a very good
teacher who followed the course material closely. Hopefully, his
experience is the exception. I took my class at the Rockville MD
location if that is meaningful (it may not be).
Less speedy but useful are the forums on the NI website. I was trying
to use a Counter/Timer card (6602). There is very little info in the
course lit, or 3rd party books on counter/timer apps. THere is a
forum for speifice types of hardware. I got some good advise fromt
the forum. But it might be a few days or even weeks before you get an
answer. This could be a function of the counter/timer forum being a
slow forum, who knows? Actually I was advised to try the forums in
this newsgroup which tends to be more mainstream.
Anyway I remember how incompetent I felt a short while ago and I
sympathize. So much is left unsaid in the printed literature, it
seems like there is no clear path to anything at first. Once the
first hump is cleared though, it gets much better. Hope you don't
have a deadline.
Oh yeah, Task ID - Say you are prepareing to read in analog signals.
You will use various VI's to set up buffers and configure the DAQ
board (set attributes)to collect data, and clear the buffers when
finished. The Task ID groups the VI's to work on the same task.
Within one VI you can have your DAQ board first do a read operation
then a write operation. The VI's for these ops are different and the
Task ID organises them. Hint (I know you are wondering this) - the
error wires are used to sequence the operations of the VI as well as
collect error info. Once you get a feel for the data flow of LV
(which is different from the Fortran we had to learn) it becomes more
obvious how the Task ID and error wiring work. Try messing around
with the debugging tools. Hit the light bulb icon and run the VI.
Hit the Pause icon and use the step, step through and step out icons
to see how things proceed. Mess around with break points and probes
to see how things work.
This is a great tool once you get going.
Good luck,
Mike
