NI refuses to write about LabHSM in NI News, afraid of competition with SDK

[H View Labs]

This is official now: NI acknowledged LabHSM is a competition for its State Diagram Kit and refused to put even a couple of lines about LabHSM in its NI News email bulletin. It's not our guess - we were explicitly told that the competition with SDK WAS THE reason. This is despite they did publish information about third party products in NI News before!
It's a great honor for a small company like H View Labs to be recognized as a competitor by NI itself. However, we were never going to compete with NI. We love NI and LabVIEW and strongly beleive that LabHSM would actually promote the use of LabVIEW itself by making the life of the LabVIEW Developers easier and, hence, increase LabVIEW and related products sales! Well, unfortunately, NI doesn't seem to share this view. This position obviously doesn't match their claims about supporting efforts of the third party developers and we think the community must know about this.

About LabHSM: LabHSM is a professionally designed toolkit that allows creating complex event-driven LabVIEW application as an easily maintainable collection of asynchronously communicating active objects ( actors ) based on a universal Hierarchical State Machine ( HSM or statechart ) template. The LabHSM toolkit enables the programmer to work on a higher level of abstraction and utilize agile software development methodologies combining design and coding in one highly flexible process.
Please see http://www.labhsm.com for details and a FREE UNLIMITED PERIOD TRIAL download.

Stanislav Rumega
NI Certified LabVIEW Developer
H VIew Labs

[waldemar.hersacher]

Look at the LabVIEW Zone and you can see that NI is promiting LabHSM directly as the article of the month on the top page.

[alkazaa]

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@H View Labs wrote:
This is official now: NI acknowledged LabHSM is a competition for its State Diagram Kit and refused to put even a couple of lines about LabHSM in its NI News email bulletin.

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At least in NI's official labviewzone you can still find a reference to your product: www.labhsm.com ...

[H View Labs]

Yes, we deeply appreciate the efforts of one man at NI (we are not sure that he wants to be mentioned here) whose efforts made it possible that LabHSM is featured in the Zone. Unfortunately, far fewer people visit the Zone than receive NI News. Both NI and we know that.

[tbob]

I've looked at your demo. It is NOT self explanatory. Your website does not give detailed information on how to use it. Do you have a user manual available?

[H View Labs]

Sorry, we don't have a manual yet. To learn about HSMs in general we highly recommend the works of Dr. Miro Samek (please see his site quantum-leaps.com), especially his excellent book Practical Statecharts in C/C++. As far as using LabHSM itself, we are going to offer a "My first HSM Project" introductory text soon. For now, we recommend the following approach: first get at least the basic understanding of HSMs and active objects by checking out quantum-leaps.com. Then, read the article and study the examples that come with LabHSM. Please feel free to email us with your questions if you feel you are stuck at some point.

[WireWorker]

I don't really see how this post even belongs in these Discussion Forums. If you've been highlighted on LabVIEW Zone, then they're obviously helping you promote your toolkit. IMHO, it doesn't seem like it's NI's responsibility to promote your products through NI News. Are you an Alliance Member? If so, I believe they already help promote Alliance Member products through their website. If not, it doesn't seem very fair that you should have your products promoted in NI News when Alliance Members don't. It seems like you're really just trying to get attention by blaming NI.

[Ben]

Hi H View Labs,

Boy, you are really taking a beating on this one!

I am devoted user of the State Diagram Editor and have used and promoted it since its first release.

I think I understand why it is concidered competition for your product. Aside from the user interface, the functionality looks quite similar.

In my case, I favor the graphic interface that allows me to visualize my application as I go. Text just makes my eyes cross!

What you have attempted to do is comendable. If you look at PJM's Bird's Eye View you will see another case of outsider's code being replaced by NI code.

On a similar note, I spent alot time about 5 years ago developing an architecture that allowed data paths between dynamically configured modules be defined "on the fly". In my case that idea was ahead of the technology (400 MHz cpu) so it ran like a dog! Two month latter "control references" were introduced.

Oh well.

Now in your case;
NI has not updated the State Diagram Editor (aside from bug fixes) since LV 7.0.

It is great but has some short-comings. If you develop a graphical interface that "blows away" the current SD Editor, then you will have something.

Things that need fixed/improved in the SD Editor;
1) Add ability to select multiple objects and allign
2) Ability to resize baloons
3) Hide default names
4) Set color of baloons
5) Add "float over" help to each baloon
6) Automaticly transfer text from #5 to the diagram itself.
7) Print the diagram
😎 Include diagram in VI documentation
9) Allow groups on diagram be selected and do a "create sub-diagram"
10) Automaticly wire through shift registers when a new state is added.
11) Add ability to do "execution highlighting" on more than one diagram at a time.
11) Allow pre-written SD's to be placed in other structures.

I could probably add more, but my point is that it is not to late for your competing product to "blow away" the SD Editor.

If your product did all of the above and the SD Editor did not, I would probably be breaking out a credit card!

With all of the above now in the public forum let me close by saying,

"May the best developer win!"

Trying to prompt constructive conversation,

Ben

[Ben]

While I am at it...

13) Un-do
14) Save
15) Cut-n-Paste (one diagram to another)

would be nice additions as well.

Ben

[tbob]

Ben, you've hit the nail on the head. This kind of product would soar miles above the rest. Most of us where I work would use such a product.