NI-DMM Soft Front Panel (16.0.0) crashes due to low memory

[johngardner58]

I find it difficult to get the NI-DMM soft-front panel to load unless I shut down everything. It seems unreasonable that  I can launch additional copies of Visual Studio, MS Office applications such as Word and Excel and yet can't load this simple soft-front panel for NI-DMM.  I am running Windows 32 bit with 4 GByte memory.  I have a PXI-4071 DMM in a PXIe-1082 chassis, an PXI 8108 controller,  a PXI-2530b matrix, PXIe-6363 DAQmx, PXI-4110

Most of the other soft-panels work fine.  I just have frequent issues with the NI-DMM.  If I unload everything then sometimes it works but I need it to work when I am debugging my automation software and as I said,  I can easily run more copies of Word, Excel and Visual Studio.   With this soft-panel I have to shut everything down.  See attached files for more information.

[scmave]

Hey there,

Can you tell us if you can self-test the device without error? What do you mean by "most of the other soft-panels work fine"? Do you see similar behavior on any other soft front-panel?

[johngardner58]

No self-test does not work.  Simulation will work but not if I communicate to hardware.   Other instruments like PXIe-6363 (DAQ) and PXI-2530b (Switch) front panels work under the same conditions as when the NI-DMM does not work.  In one scenario I shut down the NI DataFinder and the SFP worked again.  It always complains about lack of memory.

[scmave]

I'm guessing it is the same error when self-testing the device. By this error and behavior it is possible that a fuse is actually blown on the DMM card and may need to be replaced. You can follow the fuse replacement guide in Appendix C of the Getting Started Guide to test the continuity of the fuse with a hand-held DMM.

[johngardner58]

No the fuse is not blown this is a software issue as far as I can tell see the error messages.

The problem does not always occur.  I have nothing else running the SFP works and so does self-test.   Note C# automated tests have no issue at all under any circumstances and I use DC voltage, Current, Resistance and data acquistion (digitizer) on all my tests.

The only issue is the SFP needing an inordinate amount of free memory to function.  Shutting down the NI DataFinder seems to help

[scmave]

It may be that the DMM SFP does require more memory than the other SFP and that NI DataFinder is using a large amount of memory already. Did you notice a significant change in memory usage when shutting down the NI DataFinder?

[johngardner58]

I should check this but I don't think so.   As a software engineer I don't see why the DMM SFP should need lots of memory.   BTW,  I added a simulation of the PXIe-5105  and its SFP worked fine with 16 channels of simulated data being displayed.   No issue at all.   I could load Signal Express and use it.   All of this stuff functions fine.   So it seems like a local bug in the DMM SFP.

I suppose I should just come out and state it.   I do not think it is the amount of free memory that I have.   In the attached file I show plenty of free memory.   Many larger and more sophisticated applications load and run just fine including  NI SFPs  like NI-Scope, Signal Express and LabView under similar conditions.   Just the NI-DMM SFP runs out of memory and fails to load.  

[danniwithNI]

Hi John,

As far as memory recommendations, I believe Mathew was reffering to the specifications for NI-DMM: the soft front panel requires 128 MB of memory, and it's recommended that the computer/controller have at least 256 MB of RAM. I was able to bring up the SFP (version 15.2 that comes with DMM 16.0) just fine with a good nubmer of programs running though; does this error still pop up if you do a clean uninstall/reinstall of NI-DMM

[johngardner58]

I am not sure how to install / uninstall it individually as it doesn't show up in control panel as a distinct entity.  And I don't want to do a complete NI uninstall because it is huge.  Any help there would be appreciated.

Note the PXI-4071 FlexDMM does not have configurable memory (no options ) and my SFP says it is 16.0.0.  And it nowhere specifies its sample buffer size

[johngardner58]

I did find a buffer size it is 1024 kB or 1MB of buffer memory.  I don't know how the data is stored natively.  I get doubles which is 8 bytes so 1MByte / 8 

but the error looks like a system memory issue not internal storage.