control a VI remotely

[Nitrof]

I'm looking for an application note or ideas of people of the discussion forums.

What are the possibilities to remotely control a VI. Is there any API to operate buttons, initialize controls, read controls from an external application? For instance if I what to control a VI from a Python script, is it possible. And what are the limitations?

I know that it is possible to get call a DLL from LabVIEW. I also know that there is no way to register a LabVIEW function through a Dll call. Is there any way to have an event trigged from an external application to start any routine in a Vi...

I also know that TestStand is one of the possible options. Then could we control TestStand for an external application?

Please, any crazy ideas will be c
onsidered.

Thank you for your help.

Nitrof

[JellyBeans]

The only answer that comes to my mind is through using ActiveX/DCOM calls to LabVIEW. You can have VB or python or C++ launch labview on another machine on the network, initialize controls, operate buttons and read back the data.
If python can act as automation client you should be able to do that. DCOM generally runs good on NT machines OS (WinNT,2k, XP)


Check out the following example
http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/niepd_web_display.DISPLAY_EPD4?p_guid=B45EACE3E3D756A4E034080020E74861&p_node=DZ52051&p_submitted=N&p_rank=&p_answer=&p_source=External

Attached Example :Making calls to LabVIEW through MFC/C++ (migh require modification)

Good luck
ARafiq

[lumsden]

I've controlled VIs from python using ActiveX (haven't tried DCOM yet) and it works great - we use it to add scripting capabilities to our LabVIEW application. You can Set and Get control values, call subVIs, etc. There are a couple of tricks whenever you need to deal with "By Ref" variable types (for instance with the Call method) - languages like VB handle these well but with python you need to use something called "makepy" to get them to work. Feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions.

Good Luck,
Mark