htbasic adapter

[sumdumguy]

I'm looking for some feedback on using the HTBasic adapter to interface to Teststand. I have not used HTBasic with Teststand before, but am very experienced with both Teststand and RMB.

My questionis how well does this arrangement work, as a whole? Some background: We use a custom form of HP BASIC 1000D for our TPSs and these run on a Sun workstation. Very obsolete and enormously cumbersome. The hope is to port the old BASIC 1000D to HTBasic and then use Teststand for the executive. Typically, the TPS can make anywhere from 50 to over 1000 measurements. I want to keep the TPS as a main test program, ie, not chop it up into different segments. I only see a small handful of support subroutines to interface HTBasic to Teststand.

So the questions are:

1) Is it difficult to pass a measurement back to Teststand and have it logged-keep in mind the TPS may make over 1000 measurements before completing. Would the data need to be stored in array and then passed back at the end?

2) Are there reliability issues-does it crash?

3) Can a developer interact with the RMB program that is executing from Teststtand, similiar to the native HTBasic environment? (Pause, Trace, etc)

From the little I can find on this adapter, it seems like it should work, but I'd really like confirmation from experienced people.

TIA

[Kurt-P]

Hey TIA,

I have some answer to some of your questions but they are a dependent on the setup of your system such as the version of TestStand that you are using along with the operating system that you are using. It sounds like you found this note already but in the TestStand 2012 help file, here, it says that this adapter is not supported on Windows 7/Vista but, you can still perform the Edit Subroutine and Create Subroutine functions on the HTBasic Module tab in the TestStand Sequence Editor when you use a step configured to use the HTBasic Adapter.

With that said, here are the answers your questions:

1) It would be best to pass this data as an array into TestStand, and then index the correct values in your array to do the analysis. There is an example of accessing arrays using the TestStand API in this directory: 

C:\Users\Public\Documents\National Instruments\TestStand 2012\Examples\AccessingArraysUsingAPI\UsingHTBasic\AccessingArrays.seq

This is for TestStand 2012, there should be a similar example for TestStand 2010 at the very least.

2) The reliability issues depend on the combination of operating system, the version of TestStand, the version of HTBasic, and, the stability of the subroutines themselves. TestStand should be able to handle the data.

3) This question I need a little clarification on. Interact in the sense that you are debugging the RMB software? Or is the user interface for TestStand designed in a RMB application? This assumes that you are calling the TestStand ActiveX in measurement the RMB software. If so, you should be able to pause trace, etc through the sequence file. 

Best Regards,

-KP

[sumdumguy]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that it would be TS2012 and HTBasic 10. According to Transera, HTB 10 is supported under Vista/Win7. I don't know about NI support for the TS HTB adapter support.

I'm thinking that I would write a TS seq for each subsection test (such as 5.1, 5.2, etc). This subtest would certainly have more than 1 test measurement. Under this condition, could I step  from the TS seq step into RMB and keep stepping thru RMB. Once inside RMB, can I set a Trace Pause on a line and then continue. Is the active keyboard still available?

Ray

[sumdumguy]

Kurt,

I want to add that I'm trying to find out what, if any, debugging tools/commands are available when RMB is invoked from a TS sequence. If I need to wait until RMB returns to TS for debugging, that's no help. Most, or all, of the testing will be done in RMB, which is where I would need to pause and step. TS will be there to report the results, log data, login/logout  etc.

As for question 3: I am looking to be able to use RMB native debugging tools inside RMB, invoked from a TS sequence step.

From a design strategy point of view, can I have a TS sequence for each test section (5.1, 5.2 etc) that has a numeric evaluation step for each of the subsection tests. Then invoke the subsection RMB subroutine, which will place the measurement into the appropriate TS evaluation step for a pass/fail result. Will the RMB test be able to display or print any information to a console while the test is executing?

Just in case in you don't know, active keyboard allows a developer to execute almost any command from the keyboard while the program is still executing.

So many questions, so few answers.

Ray

[dug9000]

I think the quickest way to get the answers to your questions would be to download an eval copy of TestStand and try it.

https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/software-products/download.teststand.html

-Doug