topic Re: Interesting Stuff in BreakPoint

Interesting Stuff

tst — Thu, 26 May 2005 07:38:42 GMT

Since Ben also wanted the interesting stuff collected, here's a first, very respectable, contribution.
In this thread Damien Gray suggests a data encapsulation technique (single element queues) which, according to his benchmarks, is 6 times faster than LV2 Globals!
If this works properly in all cases, that means you can easily dynamically create and call globals simply by using queues. Hmm...

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 06:49:48 GMT

Here's another interesting one. Not particularly technical, but definitely interesting.

Re: Interesting Stuff

LV_Pro — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 12:10:46 GMT

Yes, but unfortunately without any real information, other than salaries/income for LabVIEW developers varies widely (and wildly). I remember seeing a Monster posting for a LabVIEW developer in New Mexico where they wanted to pay $15 - $20/hr. I want to fid the clients that I can say $120/hr without subsequently having to perform CPR! My problem tends to be that they (the prospective customer) has been to a LabVIEW demo and come away with the belief that it will solve their problem (it may) and that it will be both easy and cheap, the big expense being buying LabVIEW and the needed DAQ hw. When I go in with my estimate of 4 weeks effort at X$/hr, on top of the LabVIEW and HW purchase, they frequently start having breathing problems, their eyes roll back, and the next thing I know there are a lot of ambulances, etc. Well maybe not that dramatic, but they really do have problems with the idea. More than one has decided to send their own engineers off to LabVIEW training (Basics 1, 2) and all too often I get a call many months later saying that they have decided to call me in. I probably should then hold out for a higher $ (Bill G. would), but usually go in at the original rate. Most of these companies are not "high tech", nor large, so their experience with building test systems or hiring technical consultants is limited, but it does make for a tough sell.

Putnam Monroe

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ray.R — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 20:25:59 GMT

You described it in a nutshell.

Most companies think that by buying LV that it is all done. And yes, I have seen and heard of places where they think they should only pay $20/hr for a developper. And they FIND one!!! Well actually... they found someone that used LV and said was knowledgeable so they hired that person. 😄 😄 😄 😄

I stay away from those.

And as for salaries, yes, it is W-i-d-E and W-i-l-D..!!!

Most people do not understand that LV is a programming lanuage, as any other. The main difference is that it is graphical instead of textual. People think that all the pictures do everything.. Actually a contract 4 years ago, I had to deal with that issue. The top guy thought that I should be able to tune & test RF products in less than 30 seconds, while taking less than 1 month to develop the code. He didn't believe my MS-Project forecast for the entire project.. Oh yeah... the project was to conduct production tests and system configuration at a contract manufacturer.

It did pay well, however. and there were other sw bugs to help fix!! 😠

WHat fun experiences have you guys had??

Re: Interesting Stuff

LV_Pro — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:13:44 GMT

And when they sometimes do understand that LabVIEW is a programming language they think that those who program in it are "just" programmers. I had to repeatedly sell a customer (who had a big enough investment in LabVIEW that NI held user group meetings onsite limited to employees/contractors of the the company) on staying with LabVIEW vs. VB or VC (I guess it could have been worse I could have been defending against VD!) They seemed to think that the fact that they could find a bazillion VB programmers would mean that they could find a bunch that would/could develop complex automated test systems in VB for the photonics industry. That is the other part that I run into. At that previously mentioned customer I had been there for two years (originally for 6 mo. contract, but they renewed it) when I got into a technical "disagreement" over some measurements with one of the staff engineers. He made some offhand comment about "what does a programmer know about spectrum analyzers". To win my arguement I talked the HP (now Agilent) sales engineer that had a desk there (they were a big account!) to give a technical seminar on Optical Spectrum Analyzers. It didn't hurt that he and I were neighbors about 140 miles away from this customer. During the Q&A at the end I made sure that a hypothetical measurement question was worded to be exactly like the parameters of my debate. But I run into that about 40% of the time. Of course, coming in as the expert sometimes results in the expectation that I can look at a customer's product, instantly tell them the best way to test it, divine all the possible design errors that haven't been found yet, and oh by the way we go into production in 2 weeks!

I'm sometime think a threat I made to a former boss that I was going to "quit, get on my boat, go to the Caribbean and set up a booth carving and selling coconut heads to the sunburned tourists" was one I should have followed up on.

P.M.

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:28:53 GMT

Here is a discussion about creating a reference and casting it in order to control normally inaccessible properties of sub-controls.

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ray.R — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:30:19 GMT

I hear your pain LV_Pro!!

I had similar experience with RF and a close call with optical (photonics). As an EE, I do analog & digital HW designs, application & embedded sw on multiple platforms (incl. Linux), was a sw manager, and because of the downfall of Hi-Tech, now doing test engineering for any type of product (digital, RF, etc). Oh yeah, I forgot to mention programming LV, CVI & TS.. I don't mention VB because they think a high-school student would do a better job in VB.

Many think that "test engineers" deserve less $$ because they are not real sw guys.. they're not real HW guys, they're not real!! WOW! Gee. Now who catches all the bugs and suggests solutions? And who designs complex test fixtures? And who automatically configures the product?

I have a great deal of respect for test engineers. They are "jacks-of-all-trades". They should deserve more $$ because they typically inherit all the problems and have to create workarounds in the shortest delays..

OOOpps... wasn;t there a "venting" thread somewhere??

I'm just gonna upset our beloved tst with all this ranting.. 😉

Life is wonderful, though (or is that D'OH!!)

😄

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ben — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:25:33 GMT

This is repeat/update of the link tst posted earlier today. Thread can be found here.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=125040

CC has figured out how to programatically move the cursor text relative to the cursor AT RUN TIME!

Previous to this finding, this was an impossible task.

Ben

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ray.R — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 12:21:36 GMT

Definitely interesting!

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ben — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 18:02:43 GMT

I used to think I was limited to a 512X512 image using the OpenGL 3d Picture Toolkit.

I found out is is possible to go larger in this thread.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=126786#M126786

Ben

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ben — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 15:47:34 GMT

In this thread,

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=126822&jump=true

Rolf shares a tidbit to let you implement property nodes such that you minimize the impact on the UI.

Ben

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 18:33:50 GMT

I knew it was possible to play with a numeric control's digital display to get an extra control, but Altenbach has posted a cool example of how to do this repeatedly to get several controls in one control. Can anyone think of anything similar in any other control?

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:30:50 GMT

Have a look at this thread. It brings up an option of calling a DLL to use the graphics card to accelerate sorting operations.

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:20:39 GMT

The LV developers are going to discuss LV with the public. I have posted a suggestion to float the thread, but in case it's not done, it can be found here.

Re: Interesting Stuff

shoneill — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 06:04:11 GMT

Using Windows XPs remote desktop feature to use/debug software located on a totally different computer does NOT require a license for LV on the second PC (the one running LV remotely). This has been confirmed as not violating the normal LV license.

Shane.

Re: Interesting Stuff

Ben — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 22:08:48 GMT

In this thread

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=130492

Mike Porter introduces a novel (to me anyway) way of handling multiple error threads. Not only does it enhance error reporting>>>Tracking>>>troubleshooting, but it also harnesses just about every feature of the error cluster you could think of.

Ben

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:54:25 GMT

In this thread, Shane and Philip had a long discussion about what the run-time engine does with a VI. I believe I understood this correctly before reading that thread, but it seems that this isn't documented well enough, so here's a chance.

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 07:37:30 GMT

In here, Ben shows another example of control customization by replacing part of the control.

Re: Interesting Stuff

JeanPierre — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 15:29:11 GMT

Here shows how you can scale your numeric display using units e.g. units of cm/m scales the value by 100 and the control remain unitless.

Re: Interesting Stuff

tst — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 10:05:29 GMT

Some interesting control customizing.