protection of vi by mac address

[Wenshu]

Hallo,

I am new to labview. I am trying to protect a VI by mac address so that it can be used on a single PC only. I searched for tutorials, but I got nothing. Is there any tutorial or example VI from where I can get some help.

Thank for your support. 

[GerdW]

Hi ,

read the MAC address using SysExec ("ipconfig /all"), then compare with a pre-defined number.

What exactly is your problem? Where are you stuck?

[Wenshu]

For example, consider any simple vi . How can i protect the VI with mac address of specific computer so that it runs only on specific PC. and when other PC tried to runs the same VI, it shows error or does not run on other PC. I am stuck how to do it because there is no tutorial regarding this. 

[GerdW]

Hi Wenshu,

despite changing your alias my answer from message #2 doesn't change.

Have you tried that?

Can you attach your approach in your VI? Where are you stuck?

(Btw. when you search the LabVIEW board for "read MAC address" you find a lot of related threads.)

[thols]

If it is a a computer specific ID you are after and no specifically a mac address, you could also use generateComputerID.exe from <Program Files>\National Instruments\Shared\License Manager\Bin\ and run it with System Exec.vi.

[Wenshu]

Yes, I just want to protect the vi so that it can run on only one computer and it can't be run on other PCs. 

I will look at the example of generateComputerID.exe with System Exec.vi and will return to you. Thanks for the help. 

[XM43]

Would this approach work on a MAC?

[RavensFan]

It would as long as you find similar commands on the Macintosh that will give a network adapter's MAC address.

[XM43]

Thanks you for the reply. This helps.

I am new to coding and LabVIEW. I wrote a program using approach (assuming that I would not have to worry about read MAC address based on OS) shown on this page:

How Can I Get The MAC Address From My RT Target? 

What would be the drawbacks of using this approach?

It takes up to 2% of CPU usage

[cbutcher]

If it is continuously using 2% of your CPU, then you should reconsider your architecture. Why do you need to repeatedly check the MAC address?

Probably you can check it once at the beginning of your application, then either continue or stop/abort (assuming the same requirement as the OP).

If you have a different requirement, maybe you can describe it in more detail.