Tell us about your large LabVIEW applications!

[tst]

OK, I see how your points are relevant to multi-developer-teams (You should still be able to use a conditional probe), but the icons and documentation tools are not THAT bad. It would be nice to have "hidden" documentation (you float your mouse over a certain area and your documentation appears, like the context help window).

There is no specific place where you can find out about LV8 features because they're being kept unpublished. I just picked up things along the way (for example, I found [I honestly don't remember where] a HTML help file which shows how to use VIs with an ActiveX interface to place an icon in the notification area, which came from 8.0). You can try applying for the beta program if you're interested or you can try looking around. Brian Tyler's blog is an option (search this site for a user called Lycangeek and you will find the address).

[Jim_Kring]

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@RoSt wrote:
I´m not mistaken Jim. We had problems with this in the last big LabView project. You are talking about removing a file from the VCS system, I´m talking about remove or rename of a file in my sandbox, where I can do anything i want before a commit. LabView will then find the file in the hidden folder.

I don´t remember that much more the problem as it was about two years ago. But it was a real problem for the development team at least!

/ Roine

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Roine,

One thing that I have noticed is that files deleted from disk (but not removed from the VCS system) will reappear when you do an update of the sandbox. I haven't seen any instances of VIs appearing inside the CVS folders, but I might have simply not noticed. Also, maybe the CVSNT client has changed in the past couple of years, in the way that it handles meta data.

-Jim

[AvernaFrca]

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Michael N. a écrit:
Hello all,

From time to time, I've heard non-LabVIEW users describe LabVIEW as a development tool that can't be used to create and manage large applications. I don't agree with this view because I've seen customers with incredible applications containing large numbers of VIs, but I'd like to learn more from you. What are some of the large applications you've built with LabVIEW? What do these applications do? How big are they (number of VIs, nodes, etc.)? How did you manage the development of these large projects?

Depending on your applications, we may even follow up with you directly to learn more.

Sincerely,

Mike Neal
National Instruments

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Hi Michael

One Averna's customer has developped a huge solution.

This company have some yards that are being used to sort wagons. Few of them are Hump Yards, meaning that the wagons are dropped from the train at the crest (top of hill) and the gravity is "pulling" them down. Physical characteristics are then acquired (weight, speed at specified point, etc.) in order to adjust the speed (break the wagon) to "couples" the wagon with previously sorted wagons on the appropriate track. The destinations of the wagon is retreived from the system at the beginning of the process and the routing, as well as the breaking, is fully-automated.

The solution
Replace the all-custom hardware solution (developped in the 80's) by an off-the-shelf hardware/software real-time product. The old Main Server stays in place for the moment so the new system must interact perfectly with the legacy. Most of the communication are serial.

The first of the five subsystems is now fully operational and it is running more than 1200 VIs. The next subsystem may also be that large, even bigger for some of them.

The technology
The signal acquisition and treatment is performed through conditioners and most important, FPGA cards.
The application is an RT executable running into an Embedded Controller.
A second executable running on a host PC allow the operator to monitor/interact the system via the network. The UIs includes the complete and/or detailed view of the field sensors states. This layer exchanges the data with the RT executable via VI-Server.

NI products used
LabVIEW
LabVIEW RT
LabVIEW FPGA
Drivers: VISA, Serial, RIO, etc.
PXI chassis
PXI RT Embedded controller
FPGA PXI-7831R, 7811R
Multiple ports Serial Cards
etc.

This solution is being used all year long, 24h a day.

The team went through a complete design architecture, producing many documents (detailed low-level design, multi-layer test plan, etc). Robustness and code reusability were the most important aspect they had in mind when designing this first subsystem.

Francois Castonguay
Software Developer

[Bush-Man]

Hi Ben...

How can I contact you directly, I want to know (PLS.) more details about the large work you have done.

Eli

[Ben]

Hi Bush-Man,

bar@dsautomation.com

Make sure you mention about the Exchange in your topic. I delete 80-100 e-mails a day.

Ben

[shoneill]

Oh ben,

I'm surprised. A "naked" email address in a forum. Methinks your deleting may inflate from 80-100 to gazillions soon.

Am I the only one who's totally paranoid about letting anyone know my email address. Kind of counter-productive isn't it?

Sorry for the wierd post, but I'm a wierd kind of guy (today).

Shane.

[tst]

That's why you should keep more than one address - one for people you trust not to accidentally (or unwillingly) send you junk and others for everyone else.
I wrote an email address in the breakpoint and recieved no junk on account of it, so I guess Ben's in the clear.

[shoneill]

Ah, that's a relief. I've kind of given up on the idea that an email address "released into the wild" will survive for long.

It's nice to know it still works sometimes. This has restored a little faith in modern IT, or more appropriately, those who use it.

Shane.

[Ben]

Thank you for the concern Shane but that e-mail address is already "on-the-web".

Ben

[James_R]

My senior project in college was a 200 vi to test an industrial LCD module with single board computer. Once placed in the test fixture the program would prompt the user for the sales order and serial number of the unit then run a simulated environment test which via commands put the unit in various states to record correct responses, Next it would generate the actual environment conditions like heating up and cooling down the temperature sensor with a thermoelectric, various ambient light brightness. Then a battery of commands were sent to test software functionality. After the hardware test was sucessful the system would look up the sales order number in the database and retrieve all of the configuration data to program the unit with and then reserve the serial number in the ERP database.

One person can man 5 of these stations at a time 30minutes faster than one person could configure one unit before this system.