Custom VeriStand Steps for TestStand Feedback

[ElectricWraith]

Kevin,

I haven't had a chance to try the 2013 Custom Steps, and in all honesty it wouldn't do me any good as my workstations are all running 2012 versions and they're not going to migrate any time soon.

I actually ended up uninstalling the Custom Steps altogether, I ran into a really weird problem and uninstalling turned out to be the only fix. I have a LabVIEW application that was developed by a third party (I'm in the process of making a lot of modifications to it) that can create TS sequences to call VS stimulus profiles, which in turn of course call VS real-time sequences.

The issue (and it's tied to what kicked off my investigation of the Custom Steps in the first place) that made me uninstall arose yesterday. I was looking at the TS sequence my third-party application created, it uses all .NET calls for VS-related functions. I was in the process of attempting a one-for-one replacement using the Custom Steps (2012) and at some point none of the references seemed to open/set correctly, the project wouldn't open, nothing VS-related worked in either the .NET-based sequence or the newer, Custom Steps-based sequence. So, I closed TS, uninstalled the Custom Steps, and then re-opened the .NET-based TS sequence. Things started working again. No idea what happened or why, but I'm not trying to get the Custom Steps to work at this point.

I still want to use them as I think they're a much cleaner, easier to use implementation, but I don't have the time right now. If I can give you any more info to help get the 2012 version working, please let me know.

edit: I accidentally a word

[Kevin_F]

Sorry that didn't go smoother. I think we have the information we need. What we probably will need to do is port the new 2013 version back to the 2012 assemblies instead of the other way around since a lot of work has gone into them recently and we haven't been worried about previous versions as much.

[User002]

Holt,

Hmmm ok.  What do you have in Advanced?

[Holt]

I figured out the problem.  I was using version _v310 of the custom step types with VeriStand 2013.  Once I installed _v300 the logging started working.  Thanks for your help.

[Holt]

HandyAndy,

I've been playing with the logging and one feature request would be to expose a setting for configuring the time similar to the logging control in the workspace.  One thing that would be nice is to have relative time to the start of logging so the user doesn't have to post process the data to get relative time.

Thanks.

[User002]

Holt,

This is the dialog from the logging workspace control.

Currently, there is no option to do relative time from the beginning of the log.  Absolute time is the date/time of the controller, and System Time is the time from the deployment of the system.  Do I have dialog you're thinking of?  If there's something else that does relative time, I am not aware of it.

While I agree that it would be a nice feature to remove the offset from the beginning of the log, I'm not aware of this feature being in the API.  Because of how the gateway was written, I can't add that feature from my level without post processing or rewriting the feature completely.

I do want to add the option to choose, however, since in order to sync this log with raw CAN logs you need to use Absolute time.  By default now it does System Time, which I felt was easier to read.

With the DIAdem steps, it should be easy to pass the log file path into those steps and call post processing.  For that reason, I don't want to rebake that feature into these steps.    It is my thought that for HIL test, DIAdem would be the best place to post process and analyze the logs.

What are your thoughts?

[Holt]

HandyAndy,

You bring up some good points that I didn't consider.  I agree that the best approach would be to give the user the same options available in the workspace logging control.  This will keep things consistent for the end user.

Thanks.

[TylerJ]

Kevin,

Any word on when the custom steps for VeriStand and TestStand 2014 would be available?

[User002]

TylerJ,

I'm working on those with a couple other Systems Engineers.  We are trying to get TS 2013 support for VS 2013, 2013 SP1, and 2014 out there before we do the 2014 steps.  We are near release for those, pending a couple of bug fixes.  What is the time frame you are looking for?

[TylerJ]

Well I currently use the steps with TS 2013 and VS 2013 SP1, they are working fine for me.  Our operation involves the use of a J1939 Custom Device that hasn't yet been implemented for VS 2014.  This custom device is currently more important to our daily operation than the custom TS steps are, so once the custom device is complete we will want to switch everything over.  We have been told that it has been built, it just needs to be tested, but our hope is sooner rather than later.

So in summary, the custom steps won't become a "hot" item until the custom device is built and posted, but if you can get yours done first I wouldn't complain