Using watchdogs in labview and windows

[Fat Controller]

Hi folks,

firstly I come from a microtroller programming background and this is my first project using labview, its been going a while and I've finnished an initial version ready for field tests. The unit is a PXI based system designed to run in remote areas, I've already set windows to automatically start the program however I'm concerned that if a fault occurs that stops labview or windows and stalls, I want to have a watchdog to restart not only labview but the computer. so that it can start fresh. i haven't been able to find any conversations about physically resetting the computer if the labview fails.

thanks for the help

[xseadog]

If you already have set windows to restart your program what is problem ?

You could use error entrap to restart  labview. There is a restart labview package downloadable from Open G

Possible idea

If you could access windows task manager performance dll reference CPU usage so that if surge over 90%

then reboot labview or PC.

chow

xseadog

[LV_Pro]

As to monitoring the CPU usage, the SimpleTaskMonitor.vi  .NET example that came out with LV7.0 would give you that information, but I question its usefulness. I had CPU up to close to 100% when a utility, written by someone else in C++, kicked in briefly. I understand what you are concerned about, and actually in most "mission critical" situations they resort to a hardware watchdog timer. If you base it on Windows and it goes on a walkabout ..., similarly, unless you have another piece of non-LabVIEW code being "tickled" every so often by LabVIEW how do you know when LabVIEW hangs? There are watchdog timers on some NI PXI boards, which would provide you with a method to do a hard reset in case of a failure. I haven't used these (have used watchdogs in other non-LabVIEW, non-NI instances). A search of the NI site with "watchdog" and "PXI" turns up a lot of hits.

P.M.