Ludwik Kordas presented the concept of a Circular Buffer (CB) and various ways to implement it in LabVIEW. His presentation and example VI’s are included in this post.

A VIG or “functional global” is a LabVIEW VI that provides the features of a global variable while overcoming some of the down sides of an actual global variable. A function global uses uninitialized shift registers to maintain state information and a typedef function to select the mode of operation. This example implements a stopwatch [...]

There was a lot of interest at our last group meeting about NI certification tests. The Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) is the first step in getting certified. The test shows knowledge of LabVIEW basics. If you have had the LabVIEW Basics class (now called Core 1) or if you have some real-life experience with [...]

Ready, Aim… This month, Seneca5 will once again be presenting at the quarterly National Instruments LabVIEW User Group. Description Seneca5 will be presenting a technical demonstration on vision and motion. Using a Compact Vision System and a Firewire camera, users will interact with a video feed to control an aiming device. Demonstrates NI Compact Vision [...]

We had a great meeting discussing motor control of all types. Thanks to all who attended. Many people offered information on websites and products they have used. I wanted to capture some of them here in case anyone wants to check into them: Motor drivers for hobby servos phidgets.com geckodrive.com seetron.com/ssc.htm (serial control of 8 [...]

Previously, I posted a listbox control with improved icons. Some have asked if it can be used for multicolumn listboxes, too. Well, yet it can. And here it is. (Actually, you can just use the listbox control. Right click and select Replace. Replace it with a multicolumn listbox. The new multicolumn box will maintain the [...]

When I head out to my work shed to build something with my tools, the tools I use are picked by one and only one person…me! That’s the way LabVIEW used to be, too, back in the good old days. Now it’s all about the young kids and their automatic tool selection. La-ti-da! Manual tool [...]

In my day, we knew that LabVIEW was an acronym, so we spelled it with capital VIEW as God intended! We knew it because we were there when it was being made. Sure, the first versions of LabVIEW were icons chiseled on stone tablets, but we liked it that way! And there is one thing [...]

Multithread programming in traditional languages can be a challenge. The programmer is responsible for managing many things, such as: Separating logical tasks Avoiding race conditions Avoiding thread starvation conditions Managing communication between the threads LabVIEW, on the other hand, lends itself easily to multithreaded programming. In fact, if you follow the dataflow rules, multithreading will [...]

You can make pop-up windows quickly and easily by using tab controls. By using tab controls, you can create the same visual effect and the same functionality as a pop-up window, but you don’t need to create a sub-VI. Since you never leave the VI, you don’t need to worry about passing information into and [...]