Measurement Studio for .NET Languages
About the capacity of Measurement Studio
Dear Measurement Studio developers
I've got a software oscilloscope using the waveform graph component.
The graph typically has to entirely display 10 seconds of sample data acquired with 50 kHz.
Doing this, it seems to become the bottleneck of the system, not being able to plot the data in real time.
One has to play around with the configuration properties:
When the exposed button on the form is clicked, it appends 1000 times 500 values to the plot, just as much as the plot can hold. This will fill half of the window with white noise.
You can click once again in order to clear the left side and fill the right side of the window with noise. But this time, you are supposed to wait much longer!
I would appreciate it if there existed some "best practices" and similar guidelines and tips available from you who know Measurement Studio from the inside.
It is a tedious process fiddling around with examples in order to find the system's capacity and other limitations.
I also invite other developers to share their experiences in form of technical consideration notes at this place.
Btw, I'm using version 8.0 with VS2005.
I've got a software oscilloscope using the waveform graph component.
The graph typically has to entirely display 10 seconds of sample data acquired with 50 kHz.
Doing this, it seems to become the bottleneck of the system, not being able to plot the data in real time.
One has to play around with the configuration properties:
- Appending data above the history capacity thwarts the application. The attached example runs 9 times slower on my computer in that case.
- Displaying a big amount of data at once on the screen has its limits. The ranges have to be set accordingly. Appending many values to a plot with a huge capacity is no problem as long as only a small portion is displayed.
When the exposed button on the form is clicked, it appends 1000 times 500 values to the plot, just as much as the plot can hold. This will fill half of the window with white noise.
You can click once again in order to clear the left side and fill the right side of the window with noise. But this time, you are supposed to wait much longer!
I would appreciate it if there existed some "best practices" and similar guidelines and tips available from you who know Measurement Studio from the inside.
It is a tedious process fiddling around with examples in order to find the system's capacity and other limitations.
I also invite other developers to share their experiences in form of technical consideration notes at this place.
Btw, I'm using version 8.0 with VS2005.
Message Edited by Marrocco on 06-09-2006 09:15 AM
Hi there
I've altered the example and made an additional observation:
When appending several times big arrays of data of equal sizes to the plot, the time to draw it increases above average.
It seems like the whole plot is drawn everytime one appends to it.
What are the work arounds for this behavior? Or is it even possible to improve the drawing libraries?
I've altered the example and made an additional observation:
- Plotting a huge amount of data seems to result in exponentially increasing performance loss.
When appending several times big arrays of data of equal sizes to the plot, the time to draw it increases above average.
It seems like the whole plot is drawn everytime one appends to it.
What are the work arounds for this behavior? Or is it even possible to improve the drawing libraries?
Message Edited by Marrocco on 06-16-2006 04:10 AM
Thank you for the reference, Brock.
Unfortunately, my scenario cannot meet the key optimization requirement: I have to append the data in coincidence with a big HistoryCapacity.
I wonder about whether this should not be a common scenario that you guys already dealt with long ago.
Let's face the challenge
Unfortunately, my scenario cannot meet the key optimization requirement: I have to append the data in coincidence with a big HistoryCapacity.
I wonder about whether this should not be a common scenario that you guys already dealt with long ago.
Let's face the challenge
National Instruments support (Europe) recommended to use the ActiveX controls for such tasks.
I tried them, and the graph is reasonably fast.
Then again, if you have used the top of the art .NET components of Measurement Studio 8.0, you simply don't want to switch back to a phasing out technology (IMO).
For us, it is simply impossible.
But perhaps it may be the solution for some other developers out there.
Note that you have to purchase at least the professional version.
I tried them, and the graph is reasonably fast.
Then again, if you have used the top of the art .NET components of Measurement Studio 8.0, you simply don't want to switch back to a phasing out technology (IMO).
For us, it is simply impossible.
But perhaps it may be the solution for some other developers out there.
Note that you have to purchase at least the professional version.
Message Edited by Marrocco on 06-26-2006 02:50 AM
