Monitoring aging of multiple similar processes using VISA

[mhaque]

Greetings fellow LabView users

 I am in the process of building a VI that monitors the aging of our apparatus in hours. There are a total of 2 banks (Bank A and Bank B) with 6 modules each. Each module has 4 ballasts and each ballast controls 2 lamps each with a total of (2*6*4*2) 96 lamps that can be aged. Each Module goes through a series of On/Off cycles and power level cycles (0%, 60% and 100%). Singular ballasts and lamps cannot have their own cycles. All the modules are required to run in parallel. Monitoring the aging of 96 lamps will no doubt need a whole bunch of SubVIs and SubVIs of the SubVIs.

Communication with the system is done through a desktop computer hooked up via a RS-485 Serial port to 2 CCB’s (communication control board) 1 for each Bank. In order to communicate a 28 byte hexadecimal string is sent and in return an 85 bit hexadecimal string is received. The sent byte can have 5 scenarios i.e.. 0%, 60% and 100% power level, module reset and enable/disable. A lot of the sent byte strings can be hard coded only a few need to be varied.

There can be a fault within the module itself, a ballast fault and lamps can be faulted too (burned out) in each case the LED should be in the false (OFF) state. For example a hexadecimal string of value 39 received in byte 12 corresponds to the binary number 00111001 which means for Bank A Module 1 is on, module 2 is faulted, module 3 is faulted , 4 is on ….. (read right to left)

I am fairly new to serial communication using LabView and even more inexperienced in using the correct design architecture to make the VI block diagram look as clean as possible. I have already been able to communicate with the CCBs using the following VI.

Any questions or clarifications, critiques, ideas, feed back is much appreciated. What would immensely help is an example VI where a similar process is run.