Resources for LabVIEW best practices

[NC_]

Hi there,

I'm working with LabVIEW for the first time in a long time. We'll be building a small-medium sized application:

• ~a dozen relays and actuators
• ~a dozen sensors
• logic to control the actuators based on the sensor readings, timing and process stage
• recording data to disc throughout the process
• the process is not particularly high speed, so a system tick of 1s or 5s would be OK.

Before I dive in and start making a complicated mess I'd like to get up to speed on best practices for structuring this kind of project in LabVIEW. Can you recommend a couple of short articles or blog posts that would help me avoid the most common mistakes?

Thanks,

Tom

[ZYOng]

What device you will be using to interface with the sensors and actuators? NI-DAQmx devices? The choice of hardware and driver API sometimes provide some built-in feature that can simplify the programming.

If it is just for the LabVIEW design pattern, State Machines and Queued Message Handler are a good start.

[NC_]

Thanks ZYOng - yes cDAQ for the most part, so hopefully that makes life as easy as possible.

Thanks for the links. I'm familiar with state machines and today I've read through a few of the message handler examples. The Continuous Measurement and Logging example looks the most relevant, and I think I have a good grasp of how it works. I'm planning to just build off this example project - I think my first step will be to extend the data queue so it uses a custom data type, and make sure I can successfully write/read that queue (I need to pass around several data streams, not just a single waveform).

Step 2 will be to integrate some of the hardware rather than using dummy data.

Thanks,

Tom

[Darren]

I suggest reading this article to become familiar with some LabVIEW concepts that will likely prove useful as you work on your application.

Design Considerations in LabVIEW