LabVIEW Idea Exchange

I like constant folding. LabVIEW says "this is going to be a constant".

There are some times that I want to see the actual values of the constant. In the middle of a large VI it can be a pain to de-rail to make a constant, then come back. It can be easier to look at an array of values for troubleshooting.

I wish there was a way to right-click and either show what constant-folding gives, or even convert it to an actual constant. This is going to change the development side, not the execution side.

While it doesn't have to be reversible, it would be nice to know I got it right, then revert it to code, in case I want to vary the generation of values at a future time.

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When using the waveform datatype in my applications I noticed that the T0 field of this datatype is getting out of pace with the system clock of the machine of where it is running on.

The origin of this behaviour is that time synchronisation only takes place at the start of a measurement session after which waveform timestamps are derived from the measurement device's clock and not from the system's clock. Small differences in clock accuracy cause the clocks to run out of phase.

This effect is especially noticable on applications that are running 24/7 e.g monitoring Industrial continuous processes for weeks at a time.

When this happens and data is saved for analysis afterwards there could be problems synchronizing this saved data with data of other sources because timestamps are different.

The only way to prevent this is stopping the task and starting it again but this is not always possible due to the nature of the processes monitored.

It would be very nice to have an option in the AIread function that can automatically synchronizes waveform timestamps with the systemclock on a timely basis.

Funtionally this would be something I programmed in the attached VI.

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With the release of labview 2016 the issue of cross-platform support for video becomes critical.

As stated in the "features and changes" page: "NI no longer provides the 32-bit version of LabVIEW for OS X."

Up to now it was possible to use Christophe Salzmann's QTLib to work with video. This was great software because the very same "universal" VIs ran on Windows and OSX systems. However, this tool relied on QuickTime. QuickTime is 32-bit and will not evolve to 64-bit (it has been replaced by newer libraries), and so does QTLib.

Thus all the code developed with labview including cross-platform video handling cannot be maintained and developed!

On the other hand, video is becoming an ubiquitous feature in computer technologies, from mobile apps, to IT, to big data and deep learning. It is a strategic time to push for video on labview across all platforms. It is time for video handling VIs to appear in the standard dev package, just as jpeg or png read/write VIs were added after photos massively entered the computer world.

I propose the addition in the "Programming/Graphics&Sound" palette of a subset of VIs for handling video (open video file for read or write, read file frame by frame, append one frame to file, grab frames from webcam). There is no doubt that such feature will be valuable in a future labview release!

If you create a strict type def of a numeric control and select radix visible and say change radix to Hex. When you drop the control on a front panel the radix is visible and the number is in Hexidecimal format. However if you drop this control onto a block diagram as a constant, the numeric constant defaults back to Decimal format and you must then right-click toi show Radix and change to Hexidecimal format.

If you strictly define the control to be in Hex format, the 'strict' type should be applied for the constant as well as for the controls and indicators. Cuurnetly it will default as Hex format for control and indicator, but not as a constant on the Block Diagram.

Using LabVIEW 2014

In Front panel and Block Diagram when we place a control (Graph) over another control (Numeric) everything is fine and we don't have any clue that an object is overlapped. The only way to find the control (Numeric) is by going to the BD and navigating to the FP by using the Find Control menu. So it would be nice if we get a shadow for the object which is overlapping any other object. This is also applicable to the BD objects where there are chances where the VIs gets duplicate when we try to create a copy by using Ctrl+Drag.

Using the "Find Control Option" in BD

This would be simple if we come to know that an object is overlapped by a shadow

During the run time this shadow can be removed like how we use controls over the Tab container.

Please ignore if it is already suggested.

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When adding a control as a cluster constant it's important to see what's the controls name in order to use the constant correcty.

As you can see on the right side of the image there's how a control will be added when you drag&drop it into the block diagram.

To show every label it's quite a lot of work to click on each single item (it's hard enough to hit the control correctly!) open the contect menu and select "Description" to show up.

It'd be a great relief, if you can simply select "Show all labels" to perform the same operation with 3 but 20 clicks.

Also there should be a function to automatically select if the text should be upper, lower, left or right to the constant.

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A value change for the autoscale setting of a graph / chart scale is currently not registered. It can only be detected by polling for the scalefit value. The range of detectable events on charts and graphs is currently incomplete. The scale range change event and the autoscale range change event trigger at the same time in unpredictable order. This makes it hard to detect whether a user manually adjusted scale minimum and maximum or adjusted the autoscale settings value in the scale attribute. Different user actions all trigger a scale range change event without any way to discriminate the cause of this event.

How often do you find the need to orginize data into a table format while documenting your vi? I for one, could & would use it all the time! Creating a resizable table free label we all use in word & excel seems like a simple task and would aid in organizing and documenting data into a more readable format. A ctrl+double-click or shift+double-click could serve as an easy access method, tab through the contents, and resize rows and colulmns vis a cursor change while hovering at the specific borders. Free Label, New type, table format, organize data, rows, columns.

I sometimes need to add (paste) text documentation to the block diagram. This often results in a single line of text that can stretch, as a single line, for what seems like miles off to the right of the text-block insertion point. I then need to make multiple drag-edge/shift-block/repeat adjustments to beat the text block down to something that will fit on the screen. It would be nice to instead be able to select the text block and either specify a width or else say to make it the same width as something else on the block diagram.

Scroll bars in text blocks would be nice too, as long as I am wishing.

FPGA code allows I/O references to be used so that code can be re-used/abstracted, like this

This could/should be extended to cRIO C-modules so that code can be re-used on multiple modules. This would require the 'cRIO Device' property node to return an array of I/O Refnums that could then be passed to subVIs or other modular code.

For example, if I have code for an analogue input module (say, NI 9205) which filters and processes the data, and I wish to re-use that code in multiple experiments I have to manually change the module name in each IO constant or node (Mod1/AI0 to Mod3/AI0) if the module moves or I need more than one of the same type.

Conversely, if the cRIO Device property could provide the I/O references, the code could accept a cRIO Device constant and the reusable code extract the I/O references. The code would then adapt from Mod1/AI0 to Mod3/AI0 as the cRIO device was changed from Mod1 to Mod3.

It would be added to these properties.