Can TestStand press buttons in LabView?

[Hillel]

Hi,

I'm considering migrating to TestStand. my main problem is this:

I have many LabView VIs that control all of my different instruments. These are generally Event driven, with buttons corresponding with the actual buttons on the test equip. (scopes, spectrum analyzers...).

I want to be able to sequentially press buttons and set/read values, from TestStand. 

Example:

open scope VI -> autoscale -> set trigger level -> acquire image -> read Voltage level...  (I have all these actions already implemented in LV)

I want all the results to return to Teststand (many data structures).

now, I know I can write many different VIs with many hard-coded preset sequences, but this would be inconvenient and require deleting the event driven structure.

I want to be able to do this dynamically from Teststand.  

Please help 🙂 

[Eric_B.]

Hillel,

You can develop a sequence in TestStand that can simulate button presses, but it involves changing your LabVIEW VIs to pass some information back to TestStand.  I created an example to demonstrate this and first uploaded it to the ni.com/community site here: http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-8666 .  Let me know if you have earlier versions of LabVIEW or TestStand and I can save the files back to those versions for you.  Also, if something in the example isn't clear or doesn't work, please let me know.

[Hillel]

Thanks a lot!

My goal is to design it, so someone with only little LV/TS experience can later create their own sequence, and run it. 

I'll try it and tell you how it goes. 

Hillel.