LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS and LabVIEW for Education

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LV4E LEGO 2014 repeatedly loads Brickreference.lvclass

Hello JLEGOL;

 

I am sorry to know that you are running into so much trouble with this. There is some information about this issue that is not totally clear to me:

 

Can you please tell what is the version of the NI LabVIEW Module for LEGO MINDSTORM ? Can you confirm if it is 14.0.1 ?

 

Also can you clarify if your LabVIEW is 32-bit or 64-bit  ?

 

Also and just to summarize, this issues are present only in the  machines running Windows 10 O/S. Is this correct ?

 

Please let me know this information.

 

Warm Regards,

 

Pablo Quesada

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Hi Pablo,

I am experiencing the exact same issues JLEGOL has been in this thread. We work together at our institution. In a hope to continue the discussion, and find a resolution to this issue, here are the answers to your last questions: I have a Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 10 O/S, which is the only system we have seen issues with (classes have just started so we haven't had time to see if this issue happens with our students). I am running version 14.0.1 of LabVIEW, 32-bit. Like mentioned in a previous post, when I turn off my wireless connection, connecting me to the school netowrk, the issue still arrises, but is much faster loading. Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

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HI JWSSM,

 

LabVIEW 14 and Windows 10 is technically an unsupported combination, but is this happening on all Windows 10 computers or just this one? 

 

Also as a possible work around, have you tried dragging a static reference of the BrickReferecne.lvclass from vilib. This should make LabVIEW load everything into memory and it should stay loaded into memory as you pull in other things to the block diagram.

A Johnson
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Message 13 of 22
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Thank you for your response.

 

I am a collegue of JWSSM who just happen to have the same problem I had last year

(I started this thread).

 

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, NI LabVIEW for LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2014 is the latest version available and new computers come with Windows 10, so this is really the only choice for us. We can't really keep all the Mac and Windows OS versions static as students use their own computers in class.

 

This does not happen on all Windows 10 comptuers. This has happened on a 4 year old HP Spectre ultrabook and a 2 year old Lenovo ThinkPad. It works fine on a 3 year old Surface Pro 2 and most students do not have this problem. That said, given it has happened to several computers I am surprised that I can't find more about it on the forum.

 

We are confused as to why turning the wireless off helps. Is there anything LabView would do over the network each time we do something? Is there some link to a cloud library that should be local?

 

We'd be happy to try "dragging a static reference of the BrickReferecne.lvclass from vilib" except I'm not sure what that means. Is it something we'd do in the file system or in the block diagram? 

 

Thanks again.

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Message 14 of 22
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I was able to find a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2015 version and a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2016 version available for download on our website, but there are a few other things we can check before we upgrade. 

 

The way you would "dragging a static reference of the BrickReferecne.lvclass from vilib" is by locating the BrickReferecne.lvclass on file and dragging it into your block diagram. Mine is located at the following path: C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2015\vi.lib\NXT\LegoClasses\BrickReference. If you installed to the default path yours should be there, if it is not let me know. That would be good insight to know. If it is not at that path can you let me know what path it is located at on your computer. 

 

Also, would you be willing to provide me with a screen shot of your paths screen in LabVIEW options. You can access this by going to tools-->options-->paths. 

 

I am honestly not sure why turning Wi-Fi off changes the behavior. As far as I know, LabVIEW doesn't do anything over the Wi-Fi with regards to loading vis . But I am continuing to look into it here and will see if anyone else knows something I don't

A Johnson
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Thanks!

 

I've attached a screenshot of the PATHS dialog box. Since there was a drop-down box, I copied the parts that were different for all the other thee options at the bottom.

 

My colleague, who is experiencing the more severe version of this problem, is away for a few days but I was able to load the brick reference class. The video here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzCks-xycNL5YldMUTFhRkNRUzA/view?usp=sharing  (72 seconds) shows what I experience after I drag the brick reference into the block diagram. Is the behaviour I am experiencing normal?

 

About the software: We started at this link and clicked on "Purchase LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS" which took us to this page that shows "NI LabVIEW for LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2014", which is where we bought a site license from last year. I thought the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2015 version and a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® 2016 were for people who had a "regular" license of LabView and who wanted to add MINDSTORMS functionality. We can't download and use them unless we have LabView 2015 or 2016. If I try to purchase a site licence for "NI LabVIEW for Education: Site License" (not just MindStorms) from this page, I once again am only offered "LabView for Education 2014: Site License". It appears to me the only way to get 2015 or 2016 LabView is to buy the full LabView (non-academic) license, which is cost prohibative for our high school. Even if they did have more current versions of the "for Education" versions, it would be expensive to have to upgrade every year. I know you aren't in sales, but if I'm poking around the wrong links, please let me know.

 

Regards

 

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Putting the Brickreference.lvclass on the block diagram should load the class into LabVIEW memory so it doesn't have to load it when you drop functions on the block diagram. I am continuing to look into both why this could be happening and the versioning issue. 

 

I was wondering, if you and your colleague that are seeing the similar behavior, is there a specific image that has been put onto both of those computers? Like an image from the school?

 

Lastly, have I want to try turning off your NI services one at a time to see if at some point the behavior changes because of the WI-FI behavior we are seeing. You can access these services by opening your Windows Services.

A Johnson
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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Message 17 of 22
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To be thorough, my colegue put the brickreference class in her program and it did not help.

 

Our computers are very different; her's is on the school's domain while mine is set up like a personal laptop. Mine is a Surface Pro 2 running Windows 10 (with Anniversary update) (but also had the problem on a HP Specra circa 2013) while hers is a Lenovo Thinkpad L440 running Windows 8.1. No common images from the school but we are a Google school so have some of those tools in common.

 

When our IT person turned off the printserver on the Lenovo, it acted as if the wifi was off and had faster (but not great) performance. 

 

She took a screen shot of services from Task Manager from the Lenovo and I've included that image. There are six different ones and several duplicates, as you can see.

 

We will try turning off services to see if it helps and will report back. I wanted to respond before then so you knew we were still interested in resolving this.

 

Thanks again.

 

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Message 18 of 22
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To be thorough, my colegue put the brickreference class in her program and it did not help.

 

Our computers are very different; her's is on the school's domain while mine is set up like a personal laptop. Mine is a Surface Pro 2 running Windows 10 (with Anniversary update) (but also had the problem on a HP Specra circa 2013) while hers is a Lenovo Thinkpad L440 running Windows 8.1. No common images from the school but we are a Google school so have some of those tools in common.

 

When our IT person turned off the printserver on the Lenovo, it acted as if the wifi was off and had faster (but not great) performance. 

 

She took a screen shot of services from Task Manager from the Lenovo and I've included that image. There are six different ones and several duplicates, as you can see.

 

We will try turning off services to see if it helps and will report back. I wanted to respond before then so you knew we were still interested in resolving this.

 

Thanks again.

 

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Message 19 of 22
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I see I included "processes" in the last message. This one has a list of "services"

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