Control a remote application by Web Borwser

[FM82]

Hello,

I'm a software Engineer struggling to create my first web application. To put it simple the goal is to create an application that control an automated production line. The automated line must integrate a web interface, accessed in local lan only, to allow the operator to manually control the line. Based on the above requirements i need three things:

1) Publish an HTML control Panel (this must not be the Front Panels of my VIs)

2) Publish on this HTML Control Panel the Status of the Automated Production Line

3) Allow the remote control of the Production Line from the operator (maybe after an authentication method)

My questions is:

1) Is it possible (think the answer is yes... :-P)?

2) Where do I start? Can you suggest me some tutorial?

Thank you very much,

Francesco

[Darin_G]

Hi Francesco,

Firstly let me apologize for the delayed response. The NI employee who used to watch this forum left the company and we simply forgot to assign a new moderator.

My name is Darin Gillis and I am the R&D Product Owner for the LabVIEW NXG Web Module. Your use case is exactly what we have been targeting with this product. Though we have only had a couple of releases, we already have successful reports back from customers building Dashboards for their production line that work on all types of devices (TVs, PC, Tablets, Mobile). I am confident this can work for you too. The module is a separate software product to purchase on top of what you likely already have access to with NI’s SSP plan.

The Web Module enables you to build a special kind of VI, called a WebVI, with the NXG development environment, that is transformed into a webpage composed of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 and viewable in any browser (without requiring plugins to be downloaded, as was the case with LabVIEW Remote Front Panels). Our mission is to empower LabVIEW developers to create well-designed modern webpages without requiring that developers learn the ins and outs of web technology. Watch a walkthrough of building a WebVI here.

How do you get your data up into the WebVI? As of NXG Web Module 2.1, we support two options. The first option is to create a LabVIEW 201x Web Service to publish data, and create an NXG-based WebVI that uses the HTTP palette nodes to query the web service (or any other interesting non-LabVIEW RESTful web service). The second option is to publish your data from LabVIEW 201x to a SystemLink server using Tags and Messages, and then read or write those Tags and Messages from a WebVI diagram. Watch a walkthrough on feeding data up to a WebVI here.

Once you have the data on the WebVI diagram, you’re free to use a subset of the G dataflow primitives you are familiar with to execute basic math, format data and wire up to your WebVI panel’s indicators. The library of functions we offer on the WebVI diagram to execute in the browser is growing with each release of the Web Module. 

If you just wanted to run on the local LAN, I would recommend you host your WebVI using the NI Web Server that comes with the NXG Web Module. This arrangement will still let you use the simplest data transfer mechanism, SystemLink Tag and Message APIs, without requiring you to purchase a license(s) needed for an on-premise SystemLink server deployment (which has other benefits I can get into if you've never heard much about SystemLink).

The NI Web Server will also allow you to create user profiles that can be set up such that only authenticated users can visit certain WebVI pages. You don’t need special server hardware or anything, this is just a software package you can run on the same Windows PC that is collecting your data, if you’d like. Walk a walkthrough on hosting a WebVI on a NI Web Server here.

 
Please reply if you have any other questions.

[Michael020]

Can I login to my Remote PC account from a web browser?

[cool_ranch_doRITAs]

If you are looking to remote desktop into your test machine from the browser, you can do that through Chrome Remote Desktop, among other tools. 

If you don't want to give someone access to the whole desktop and just want them to be able to access the web application that connects to the test system after logging in, then the answer in NI's case is yes. You can set up the login mechanism either through the NI Web Server, which is the option for locally hosting on a Windows machine, or you can use SystemLink Cloud, which handles the log in mechanism for you and is better for global/mobile access since you don't have to be on the local network to access the application. 

Hopefully that makes sense... I know the options can be confusing so let me know if you have questions.