#VIWeek (Making Trouble Again)

[swatts]

Hello Disease Avoiders (hopefully),

I hope you are keeping fit both physically and mentally.

My DSH friends and I decided to announce some on-line events to coincide with NIWeek (17th May to 21st May) and the idea has blossomed somewhat. We now have quite a few volunteers and a fantastic hashtag/name courtesy of Chris Stryker...........#VIWeek.

NEWS ---> Re-certification by points - 10 pts for attending VIWeek and 20 pts for presenting...isn't that nice of NI!

So this page will be our VIWeek agenda but check out the LabVIEWwiki and the excellent page by Derrick Bommarito, it's very much more user friendly.

https://labviewwiki.org/wiki/Home

VIWeek Landing Page

Discord Channel thanks to Michal Radziwon

We can fill the slots on a first-come first served basis. I think people can host their own events (I use webex and it costs £15 a month) and it works fine.

I'll put some other tips at the end.

Agenda - Keep Checking Back

Contact the Session Host to get a link

Sunday 17th May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	GCentral: State of the Union and Rolling Up Your Sleeves  Chris Cilino GCentral is a non profit organization founded in late 2019. The vision: a LabVIEW community empowered to make the best version of itself. The mission: reduce/remove barriers to collaboration. In this presentation, we'll introduce you to GCentral and give a progress update. And we'll show you how we can all work together to make GCentral a reality. Youtube Link: https://bit.ly/VIWeek_GCentralPresentation info@gcentral.org
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST  Do the survey suckers - here	LabVIEW FPGA for high throughput applications Terry Stratoudakis Microsoft Teams link: Register /Join terry@aleconsultants.com
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	Functional programming inspired object-oriented template in LabVIEW + SOLID Piotr Kruczkowski Teams Link

Monday 18th May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	DSH #VIWeek Pragmatic SW Engineering Join us and fight the NIWeek blues. In this one-hour event, we (the whole DSH gang: Fab, Steve, Joerg and Brian) will be: - talking about who we are and what we do - asking you about your needs and pain points - answering any questions you might have email hello@dsh-workshops.com
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST	Philosophy of Coding - How to be a CraftsPerson. Sam Taggart A discussion of how what we value and the way we think about the process of developing software affects the end result. No LabVIEW code, just a high level discussion of software engineering. I've got a short presentation on our values at SAS and how we approach software development. I'll give that and I'd like to get some feedback. Then I'd like to have a discussion and ask the audience some questions like, what software qualities are important to you? What processes do you think are critical to ensuring software quality? What quality is most important in a junior engineer? How can we do a better job of training junior engineers? Register
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	Confessions of a Retired Superhero Matt Pollock Crazy projects demand crazy solutions.  Crazy solutions create crazy bugs.  Come learn from spectacular failures (or near failures) that have threatened to torpedo other projects so yours will be safe from heroics. Teams Link

Tuesday 19th May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	Proper way to communicate over serial. Tim Robinson Too many users look to the Simple Serial Write Read example in LabVIEW and then struggle to achieve solid, robust communication with their instrument. This is because the example does not properly discuss or handle any of the real-world communication schemes instruments use. At this session, explore these schemes and learn how to handle each case.
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST	Raspberry Pi / LABVIEW Community Edition and Sensors Sam Sharp Sam will demonstrate/show how to get started programming the Raspberry Pi using the LabVIEW 2020 Community Edition with a live/practical demo. He'll then expand this to show off his open-source library of drivers for a range of off-the-shelf sensors/hats so you can connect your Raspberry Pi to the physical world. Webex Link:Register /Join sam@mediamongrels.com
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	Linx Toolkit & Raspberry Pi for Intermediate Robotics Derrick Bommarito I'll be demonstrating how I've used the updated Linx Toolkit for LabVIEW Community Edition to develop remote control and autonomous rovers using the Raspberry Pi along with a handful of sensors. We'll take a look at the high level architecture of the software along with the open source libraries I'm developing that target autonomous robotics projects. We'll also discuss how you can accomplish better performance for more demanding projects by developing custom firmware for arduino clones instead of using the Linx toolkit to interface to microcontrollers. https://bit.ly/neg-live negentropicdev@gmail.com
1-2pm PDT, 3-5pm CDT, 9-10pm BST, 10-11pm CEST	Build Flexible FPGA-Based Systems with LabVIEW FPGA Advanced Sessions Cyril Gambini Creating an FPGA-based acquisition and control system is challenging if the hardware target changes and the bitfiles to load are completely different from one target to the next. Learn how you can handle completely different FPGA personalities within the same application using LabVIEW FPGA Advanced Session Resources. At this session, explore a VeriStand distributed DAQ system featuring multiple CompactRIO devices configured differently based on the test to perform (analyzing the electrical and mechanical behaviors of alternators) and the test’s measurement requirements (currently more than 20 different configurations across four target references). Email:cgambini@neosoft.ca Teams Link Join
2-3pm PDT, 4-5pm CDT, 10-11pm BST, 11-12pm CEST	8 Reasons for encapsulating your next device driver inside a DQMH module Christopher Farmer Do you hate it when software throws an awful error if a device is not connected, and it just stops or crashes as a result? Do you have multiple instances of the same device that you need to manage? Do you find that your applications get so cluttered with code specific to managing devices? Do you like to see what a device is up to “under the hood” whilst you run an automated sequence? If you’re facing any of these challenges, then we’re confident this presentation will help you! Using a DQMH module to encapsulate your next device driver will eliminate these issues. Register below to learn how. Register

Wednesday 20th May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	DSH DQMH 5.0 Introduction Fab, Joerg Hear it directly from the horse's mouth! Learn what's new in DQMH 5.0. In this one-hour event, we (Fabiola and Joerg) will walk you through the new features of DQMH 5.0. We'll also give insights into how these features actually help with our daily work. Overflow Youtube Stream email hello@dsh-workshops.com
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST	'Efficient Programming in LabVIEW' Tom McQuillan In this session, I'm going to showcase Project Templates. After choosing to go down a DQMH route for a project (after being a hardcore Actor Framework user), I realized there were certain aspects of AF I missed. Namely, the ability to reuse messages between modules. In this session, I will showcase a solution to this using Project Templates and how templates could be used for your modular applications. I'll also showcase some scripting tools that were possible using templates. Thomas.mcquillan@scientifica.uk.com
10-11am PDT, 12-1pm CDT, 6-7pm BST, 7-8pm CEST	Graphical programming beyond G - Use case of LabVIEW integration with Node-RED Michal Radziwon Dataflow programming is not only about G and LabVIEW! There is more and more of other platforms that uses graphical programming and one of them is Node-RED. Node-RED is a programming tool build to ease connecting and automating IoT enabled devices, APIs, and web-services. I will show a use case of integrating LabVIEW with Node-RED using MQTT server - all running on a Raspberry Pi. Register radziwon@purpravn.com
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	Using a Message Broker with DQMH Actors for High Speed/Throughput Data logging Chris Roebuck and Becky Linton Tasked with creating a hardware agnostic, highly configurable, high-throughput data logger for ADAS applications we implemented the Mediator pattern using multiple modified-DQMH actors with a message broker. In this session we will review the requirements, high level design objectives and review the solution and take a deeper dive in to some of the specific technologies used such as malleable VIs, eDVRs and Message Brokers. b.linton@konrad-technologies.com,c.roebuck@konrad-technologies.co.uk Teams Link : Register
6-7pm PDT, 8-9pm CDT  (Thursday 21 May 9-10am SGT, 11am-12pm AEST)	8 Reasons for encapsulating your next device driver inside a DQMH module Christopher Farmer Do you hate it when software throws an awful error if a device is not connected, and it just stops or crashes as a result? Do you have multiple instances of the same device that you need to manage? Do you find that your applications get so cluttered with code specific to managing devices? Do you like to see what a device is up to “under the hood” whilst you run an automated sequence? If you’re facing any of these challenges, then we’re confident this presentation will help you! Using a DQMH module to encapsulate your next device driver will eliminate these issues. Register below to learn how. Register

Thursday 21st May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	CEF (configuration editor framework) Sreejith Sreenivasan and Vikas Koujalagi Configuration files are commonly used to specify application settings and hardware configuration. Manual editing of some of the complex configuration files of hardware systems or applications are often error prone. Shipping a configuration editor can ease the pain but development overheads may outweigh the benefits. Configuration Editor Framework (CEF) from NI Systems Engineering is a versatile framework allowing rapid development of such editors. Development generally take hours instead of days or weeks. This presentation delves in to the features and walks through an example which saves the files in JSON format. MS Teams Meeting Link: https://bit.ly/VIWEEK_NICEF sreejith@multics.co.uk
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST	Using the new TLS/SSL functions in LabVIEW 2020 Sam Sharp Sam will go through the newly added SSL/TLS functions in LabVIEW 2020 which enables secure TCP/IP communications in LabVIEW. This session should provide enough information to be able to implement secure TCP/IP communications in your own applications and learn why you should. He'll also demonstrate an update to his WebSockets library that enables secure WebSockets (wss://) support - a highly requested feature now possible with LabVIEW 2020. Webex Link: Register /Join sam@mediamongrels.com
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	DSH Soft Skills for Software Engineers Discussion Steve and anyone else who wants to join It won't be the presentation I intended to do, more of a chat really. email hello@dsh-workshops.com

Friday 22nd May 

AristosQ suggests you check this vid out as an intro before this session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQU3eM0yLMk&feature=youtu.be or https://t.co/XUZKvffDUM?amp=1 7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST	#VIWeek – Open Your Instruments With A G Interfaces HAL In LV2020 (No Lever Tool Required!!) Jonathan Hird (Jono) The recent release of LV2020 Community edition has opened up the new capability of “Interfaces” into the LVOOP world. I for one am incredibly excited about what this means specifically for Hardware Abstraction Layers. After some initial trudging through the mud and not quite seeing the value in interfaces for my specific needs for a HAL, I decided to scrap what I had, start from scratch and work logically to put together an example of a “Real World” HAL application. In this session we will briefly cover the Why, What and How of HALs and how interfaces may help along with some sample code which will be uploaded for community use as a good starting point. Teams Meeting Link
9-10 PDT, 11-12noon CDT, 5-6pm BST, 6-7pm CEST	The Core Framework. Denis Stavila It's something that I built on top of the Actor Framework and aims at solving several shortcomings that I believe AF has ... plus a lot of tweaks and built-in functionality to make the life of a developer much easier: Internal broadcast system Debugging/Monitoring tools UI structuring and configuration Interface-Like implementation for modules communication User Access tools .... etc. I started working on this framework basically the moment I faced my first project with AF ... I would like to show you what problems I encountered, how I attempted to solve them and what I wanted to achieve with it.  Teams Link : Join
11-12 PDT, 1-2pm CDT, 7-8pm BST, 8-9pm CEST	Mock Object Framework Sam Taggart I will present an open source tool for creating Mock objects and show how to use them in tests. It will be an informal kind of code review thing. I might put together a few slides on what Mock Objects are so we are all on the same page. After that I will just start with defining the problem and then how I came up with the solution. We will spend a lot of time just looking at the code. Register

Saturday 23rd May 

7-8am PDT, 9-10am CDT, 3-4pm BST, 4-5pm CEST

Fast and Simple Unit Testing with Caraya 1.0 Francois Normandin, Jim Kring Almost everyone writes code to test their code. Caraya, a unit test framework for LabVIEW, makes it simple to turn those test VIs into unit tests that can be reused throughout the life of the project. With a focus on ease of use and lightning fast execution time, Caraya allows you to write and run tests without adding much overhead to your development work. Come see how you can create and run a test in under a minute, run all the tests in your project with a simple QuickDrop shortcut, and integrate your tests into a fully-automated build and deploy process. You’ll also learn about advanced features like running tests on real-time targets, creating custom test report formats, and more! Register

Contact me for changing the agenda, it's only my first guess and I'm missing all the eastern time-zones. TBH anything goes.

Tips for Hosting Events (based on my tiny amount of experience)

• Have a moderator to field questions in chat, that way you only need keep 2 microphones open.

• Kill non-presenters mics and screens when you are presenting, open up for discussions.

• Tell people the rules before you start.

• Don't spend ages preparing, free-form works fine in this environment. Scripted presentations come across as being a bit flat and dull IMO.

• Switch off desktop icons (believe it or not I didn't know you could do this until Fab told me)

• Remote seems to work well with demos and software reviews

• Use the hashtag #VIWeek

Any other tips people can think of?

Hopefully this will keep us amused in May

Lots of Love