Producer/Consumer Design Pattern with Classes

[JTerosky]

I'm starting a new project which involves acquiring data from various pieces of equipment using a GPIB port.  I thought this would be a good time to start using Classes.  I created a GPIB class which contains member data of:  Address, Open State, Error; with member vis such as Set Address, Get Address, Open, Close...general actions that all GPIB devices need to do.  I then created a child class for a specific instrument (Agilent N1912 Power Meter for this example) which inherits from the GPIB class but also adds member data such as Channel A power and Channel B power and the associated Member Functions to obtain the data from the hardware.  This went fine and I created a Test vi for verfication utilizing a typical Event Structure architecture. 

However, in other applications (without classes) I  typically use the Producer/Consumer Design Pattern with Event Structure so that the main loop is not delayed by any hardware interaction.  My queue data is a cluster of an "action" enum and a variant to pass data.  Is it OK to use this pattern with classes?  I created a vi and it works fine and attached is a png (of 1 case) of it.

Are there any problems doing it this way?

[ie.aleja]

Hello Jterosky,

I don't see a problem with doing it this way. It should work the same with classes.

[Ben]

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@JTerosky wrote:

I'm starting a new project which involves acquiring data from various pieces of equipment using a GPIB port.  I thought this would be a good time to start using Classes.  I created a GPIB class which contains member data of:  Address, Open State, Error; with member vis such as Set Address, Get Address, Open, Close...general actions that all GPIB devices need to do.  I then created a child class for a specific instrument (Agilent N1912 Power Meter for this example) which inherits from the GPIB class but also adds member data such as Channel A power and Channel B power and the associated Member Functions to obtain the data from the hardware.  This went fine and I created a Test vi for verfication utilizing a typical Event Structure architecture. 

However, in other applications (without classes) I  typically use the Producer/Consumer Design Pattern with Event Structure so that the main loop is not delayed by any hardware interaction.  My queue data is a cluster of an "action" enum and a variant to pass data.  Is it OK to use this pattern with classes?  I created a vi and it works fine and attached is a png (of 1 case) of it.

Are there any problems doing it this way?

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Including the error cluster as part of the  private data is something I have never seen done and ... well I'll have to think about that one.

Ben

[JTerosky]

I included the error cluster because it contains information specific to the object and I thought (maybe incorrectly...I'm new at using classes) that all data specific to the object should be kept within the object.  Also, since I use the class wire to maintain dataflow that I didn't need the error wire for that purpose....aaahhhh...but what if I want to establish dataflow between vis of different classes...like a signal generator and a power meter?  Then I would need to have the error cluster external to the class so that dataflow can be maintained between functions of different classes.

I think that I just convinced myself to pull the error cluster out of the object.

[Ben]

Socratic method at work.

Ben

[JTerosky]

Thank you both for your comments.

[Ben]

No problem. You made me think. That is a good thing.

Since you are just starting off on the LVOOP path, you may want to view the images I have collected in my LVOOP Albumn. Some of those images have links back to the original thread where they were posted.

They may give you some ideas and inspiration.

Ben