Meeting Tuesday, February 23, 2016 Rusty Nails From the Attic

[JLSx]

Meeting Topics

• Topic 1: Xnodes - Treasures of Reuse in LabVIEW's Attic
• Duration: 45 minutes + Q&A
  
• Description:  In this presentation we will discuss LabVIEW Scripting, and XControls, and how their technologies are what XNodes are built off of. Then we will go over some of the XNodes NI has on the palette today, and some that were posted on LAVA, to understand what features XNodes can have. Then finally we learn the basics of what it takes to make XNodes and what they can do for making more reusable, modular, and scalable code.
• Presenters: Brian Hoover

• Topic 2: Open Discussion
• Duration: 45 minutes
• Description: Bring your questions, or topic discussions and we will discuss as a group.
• Presenters: All attendees

Meeting Logistics

• Location: Mopac C, 1S13 @ NI headquarters 11500 North MoPac Expressway, Austin TX
• Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2016
• Time: 6:00 PM Central Time
• Duration: ~ 2 hours
• Format: presentation and group discussion
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The presentation, along with the examples, and demos are attached and saved in LabVIEW 2015.  All examples that are found online have a Download URL

[crelf]

Excellent presentation - good depth of knowledge, well presented, and useful examples.

[jlokanis]

Well done Brian. Clear and concise.  This was an area I had never looked into in depth before.  Now I see how they could be very helpful in several areas.  I plan to put some of the exisiting Xnodes to use soon.

Thanks again for the great presentation.

[Hooovahh]

Hey thanks for the kind words guys.  This presentation always starts out a little slow, and then gets real interesting with the examples, and showing what is possible at the end.  Glad there was some enthusiasm and interest in the topic.

[David_Staab]

Now I want to play, too! It seems like there would be a handful of scripting tools or a set of templates for various abilities that could be reused in most xnodes. Is there a library of such things on LAVA yet? If not (and if my suspicion is right), I suggest that we start one!

[Hooovahh]

The only thing that is close, is the LAVA Scripting Tools.  This collection of code is a bit dated, but is a dependency for some of the XNodes on LAVA.  If you look at some of my XNodes there are some common functions I could try to package up. 

A few common things my XNodes do is with making an image that changes with the data type wired.  It starts with reading the template VI icon, and replacing a specified color, with one from a data type.

The function that does the scripting associated with inlining the template, and wiring it up to the terminals, is common in my XNodes.

Getting and updating the wired data types, could be reused.

And there could also be better tools for the get terminals constant that is used on a template.  I have one VI that helps but it isn't perfect.

[Terry_ALE]

I too enjoyed this presentation, thanks to all involved.  As mentioned yesterday, a centralized place for all this info is a good idea.

Maybe there should be an Xnode group on ni.com?  This can be the collection of all things xnodes.

[David_Staab]

There's already a lot of discussion on LAVA, and code/tutorials/content posted over there carries a more permissive IP license than anything posted on ni.com. I recommend sticking to LAVA.

[Terry_ALE]

Anywhere central works for me; I certainly appreciate the differences between hosting things on ni.com and lavag, both are well known enough!  For example until now I could not find the ini settings from slide 7.

[Hooovahh]

Yeah XNode stuff can go on LAVA in the scripting section.  There was a XNodes section, but I think Michael merged it with scripting due to interest in that topic being low at the time.  But personally I think a separate section for XNodes would be a good idea.  NI maybe understandably silent when it comes to this type of content.  Some at R&D are very helpful and do chime in, but don't be surprised if they don't.

And besides I sorta think of LAVA as more advanced discussions, that are a bit more focused.  We don't have 100's of new posts each day (like the LabVIEW subforum on NI.com).  So this type of thing is totally welcome over there.

As for the INI keys I don't remember where they all came from.  I know some are in the Crash Course presentation, linked to in the references section.