NI TestStand Idea Exchange

Problem:

I create a model plugin and add some model callbacks to it.  Then I want to access those model callbacks from my client file.  I have to now add them to the process model so they show up in the list when I go to add callbacks.  I get that I can add it as a blue sequence and it will work   However, that is confusing to other developers if they don't know the plugin has the callback in it.  It is painful to change the process model every time I create a new plugin because the process model could be used on hundreds of machines whereas my plugin may only be needed for 1 or 2 machines.

Solution:

Option 1: Show all callbacks from any plugins in the callback dialog list

Option 2: create a configurable list of model callbacks.  Basically add any sequence files marked as model to the list and it will show all the callbacks from the sequence files in the list to the client, unless it cannot find the file in any search directory.  Then it wouldn't show.

Option 3: From the add callback dialog allow the user to browse to a sequence file which contains model callbacks

I think adding this functionality will greatly help in making the plugins more abstracted from the process models.  Just saying.

Cheers,

Recently I am trying to customize process model and found somethig that may be useful for making fast process.

Here is the Idea.

Suppose I have ~20 sequence(Engine callback, Process model callback etc..). If i want to edit any one of this  sequence than I have to scroll down and select particular sequence. Moreover, sometime if two or three sequence has same initial name than I have to increase the length of sequence column and find sequence of my interest.

but what if teststand has ability that i just give initial character and teststand redirect selection to the sequence starting with same character(like in windows or Step Type in teststand)

Greetings,

The current behavior of the Batch Synchronization options "One Thread Only (first thread executes step, remaining threads skip)" and "Serial (one thread at a time)" is that the threads wait at that step until all threads have gotten to that point before it executes using the selected behavior. It essentially has a rendezvous built into the step. There are many times when I want the first thread that encounters that step to perform the action immediately (and then continue, with other threads skipping that step) without waiting for the other threads to also get to that point in the test.

For example, I may have three threads running in the Batch model and when the first one gets to a certain point in the test I want it to perform some action (log activity, turn something on, etc.) that I only want to be done once. I can use the "One Thread Only" option, but this causes the test to pause until all of the threads have reached that point before it performs the action of the step (once). Additionally, the remaining threads also pause at that step until the first thread completes the activity. So the undesirable delay is twofold: the first thread doesn't run the step until the other threads have also reached that point, and the other threads now wait until that activity is completed before continuing.

It would be great to have the option to select how I want this to behave. If the rendezvous could be selectable then it would provide the desired functionality. I'm sure custom coding could create this effect somehow, but I don't see a straightforward way to have only one thread run a step (and others skip) without waiting for the other threads to arrive or the remaining threads to wait until the first completes. The "Serial" Batch Synchronization option can be implemented in a different way without major effort (using locks, rendezvous, etc.), but the "One Thread Only" with selectable rendezvous option is what is truly missing (and it may make sense to have it available for both).

Currently in TestStand, for a Numeric Limit Test, the "Numeric Format" applies to both the measurement and the test limits.  I would like to be able to have different numeric formats for the test limits and the measurement.  For example, I might want my limits to be %.2f (e.g. 1.23-2.34) and my measurement to be %.3f (e.g. 1.345) so that I can demonstrate a certain measurement accuracy.

Pulido Technologies LLC

Recently I tried to add in custom error handling to the NI_DatabaseLogger.seq, but because Plugin Sequence files don't support Engine Callbacks, this was difficult.

This idea is to allow model plugins to access Engine Callbacks, so that we can override their behaviour with customised sequences.

In TestStand you can create a comment in a variable, but that comment will be deleted even if the data type of the variable is changed. This does not make too much sense because it happens that the customer needs to change  the data type, and then he has to re-write the comment completely. This feedback comes straight from multiple customers and it makes sense that it should be so.

Thank you everybody. Best,

Corrado

This is the existing function:

returnvalue = AllOf(True,False,True)

But I need often this:

my_boolarray = {True,False,True}

returnvalue = AllOf(my_boolarray)

> Error: Expected Boolean, found Array of Booleans

There is a major flaw with packed project libraries in LabVIEW.  That is that they pull the dependencies in to the same folder as the PPL.  For example if you use advanced math functions then lvanlys.dll will be put in the directory.  The problem is that LabVIEW doesn't like it when you try to load multiple files with the same name.  So if I have a test system with multiple ppls that use the same dependencies I could potentially run into collisions.  There is a document here that discusses a solution for this:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Development-Best/Packed-Project-Library-Pitfalls/ta-p/3523762

I would like to see the option to prefix my dependencies for PPLs.  This could easily be added to the Packed Project Library Options dialog. 

TortoiseSVN is an easy to use Source Code Control tool. However, it needs a MSSCC API plugin in order to be integrated with TestStand. On NI web page, PushOK is listed as a tested plugin with TortoiseSVN by NI tech team. PushOK is made by a Russian company. Another AgentSVN plugin is made by an Australia company. From an end user perspective, the time zone difference will cause some difficulty to access tech support in case it is needed. I used TamTamSVN 1.4.9 plugin for TortoiseSVN integration with TestStand and it worked fine. TamTamSVN plugin is made by an US company located near NYC area. I will suggest NI Tech team to test TamTamSVN plugin for TortoiseSVN integration with TestStand to ensure its features and functionality are acceptable to NI applications. If it pass the test, please add it into tested list. 

Now TestStand 2016 supports enums, I found myself in need of an Enum Step Type to check the value of a Enum.

I have VI that returns the UUT's current status as an enum. E.g. Booted OK, Bootloader, Timeout or Error. 

In this case I want to check the UUT has got to the Bootloader...  

I intially worked around using numeric limit test with Datasource set to  "Val( Enum("Boot_State","Bootloader"))". But then in results it would be nicer to see "error" than the enum constant. 

Then I relaised I could use the String test instead.... which is better. Example attached, casting to Str instead of Val.....

The Search Directories.Insert method should only insert the directory if it is not already there.

The Method includes an index argument, if the directory is already there, then it should move the existing directory to the requested index.

While we were working on the shipping examples for DQMH, we discovered that the insert method was creating duplicates every time it was called. We implemented a work around that includes a for loop to check each of the items in the search directories list to see if it is the directory we are trying to insert, if it is, we delete it. Once the for loop ends, then we insert the directory where we want it.

You can see a video of the issue and how we worked around it here: DQMH 3.1 Only inserts the Delacor examples directory into Search Directories once

Hello,

As we can read in this very good document, we can add information in header for UUT in Report.

It is mentionned that we can do that for StationInfo in the same way:

"The report below includes the custom data in the AdditionalData container.  The process for adding custom Station data is similar, but uses the Parameters.ModelData.StationInfo property instead of Parameters.UUT."

In fact, it doesn't work in TestStand 2014 and later, certainly the same for 2013 because the default report plug-ins doesn't support it as you can see in the help of TestStand 2016.

Maybe NI can add it like it is done for UUT.AdditionalData. The goal is to avoid to put some Station Info in UUT result to show it easily in reports.

Best regards.

MaximeR

CLA - CTD

When opening a LVOOP dynamic dispach VI in LabVIEW it will present us a 'Choose Implementation' dialog box. Can this dialog box also be presented when the Edit VI.. button is beïng clicked in TestStand? And when the user dubble click the LabVIEW action step?

For our test we use 48 TestSockets in a Batch process model.

Every TestSocket will gather data for every millisecond while the test of maximal 3 minutes is preformed. A few times per second we like to call a LabVIEW VI and preform some tests on the last few seconds of this data. To give the CPU some time to do other things a 100msec wait time is in between all the tests. While LabVIEW only needs the last few seconds of the array to preform the test, TestStand will take a subset of the array and give this to LabVIEW. But this subset it already taken more than 1.5 seconds in TestStand.

Attached is a small Benchmark test that shows (and hopefully explain) this behaviour.

We just make an local array of 180000 data points. (3 minutes with 1msec sample rate)

A for loop of 100 times is done to average the results.

In the loop two VI's are called.

• One with 100msec wait.
• The second to receive the array. In LabVIEW the array isn't touched.

If we just start with an array from 10000 data points. (the first 10 seconds)

This will take 107.5 msec and about 12.5% of my CPU resources.

Seems good, but the data grows to about 3 minutes, lets test 180000 data points.

This will take 138.5 msec and about 40% of my CPU resources.

We already use 40% of my CPU without doing anything more than give LabVIEW the data.

As we don't need the complete data array, it seems not smart to copy everything to LabVIEW. TestStand is capable to take a subset from the numeric array and send this part to LabVIEW.

So if we want to analyse the last 5 seconds, we give the data to LabVIEW like this:

Locals.Array[175000 .. ]

This is only half of the data as the first test, so expected it will be about same in execution speed.

The average execution is now 1.6 seconds, so 1.5 seconds is used for the array subset.

Also the CPU is fully taken by this process. This way our application can't work.

As a workaround I send in the complete array into LabVIEW and take a subset in there. This is at the moment faster than take a subset in TestStand, but I would expect that this process can be faster done inside TestStand.

I would like to post the idea of an optimized array subset function.

This will optimize the performance of TestStand greatly while working with larger array's.

Especially if you have more TestSockets than CPU cores, like me.

The "Report Options" dialog box provides a lot of flexibilty in the way reports are generated for sequences executing under the Batch model.  A new report can be generated for each UUT, for each socket, etc.  One option that appears to be lacking, is to flat out not generate a Batch Report.  Doing a brief search, I found at two other folks who were trying to do the same thing:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Disable-Batch-Report-TestStand-2014/td-p/3091476

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/How-do-I-disable-batch-report-in-the-batch-model/td-p/238387

Suggest adding another check box to the Report File Pathname on the Report Options dialog box to disable batch reports.

It would be really helpful to have a diagram showing the order in which process model callbacks execute for the sequential, parallel, and batch models and their relations to the various test sockets.  The TestStand documentation does contain a list of the model callbacks, but it would be nice to have them in a diagram format so that a developer doesn't have to open the process model files and figure out that information.

Please make possible to select LV Development System version in similar way as it is possible to select Run-Time Engine.

It also should be available in TS API.

That will allow Test Engineers to use code modules (especially those inside .lvlibps) from different versions.

It would be also useful for to set up desired version of LV for code modules without lack of debugging options of Run-Time Engine calls.

For an easier debugging it would be good to have coloured lines for (nested) loops or the the possibility to hide the content on demand.

Hi All, My code module to be deployed uses some VI's from user.lib. When I'm trying to create the deployment, in LabVIEW options I'm excluding all files from vi.lib,user.lib and instr.lib. After creating the deployment, still my code module looks for the VI's from user.lib in SupportVIs folder which is parallel to the deployed folder. I don't know why it is still looking in SupportVIs folder instead of taking it from user.lib. Please share your thoughts about this.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

vani