JKI is proud to announce the release of VIPM 2012. Click here to download it. VIPM 2012 brings great new features for LabVIEW teams and add-on creators, and also comes at a lower price of $499.

We’ve been talking to customers over the past year to find ways to improve VIPM. Through one-on-one interviews and on public forums such as the VIPM Idea Exchange, we’ve learned a lot about how people use VIPM and more importantly how people want to use VIPM. You’ll find many of these user-suggested improvements in VIPM 2012.

Here are a few of the major changes in VIPM 2012. You can also learn more at the JKI website, or go straight to the download page and get started today.

New Low Price, Easy Trial Activation

VIPM 2012 Pro is now $499, and if you’ve ever bought a previous version of VIPM Pro or Enterprise upgrades are just $199. We’ve also made it easy to evaluate VIPM Pro for 30 days: just activate VIPM with the special trial code VIPM-PRO-EVAL-WEB.

Unleashing VI Package Repositories

With VIPM 2012, VIPM Pro users can create as many VI Package Repositories as they want. This means that if you’re building LabVIEW add-ons or reusable libraries for your coworkers, customers, or the community, you can create one or more central VI Package Repositories to easily distribute your add-ons. Other features:

• VIPM 2012 Pro can connect to any number of repositories. Repository client limits are a thing of the past.
• VI Package Repositories can be hosted in public Dropbox folders. You no longer have to run your own web server or ftp site to host a repository (although you still can if you want).
• VIPM 2012 Pro users can now manage multiple shared repositories. Previously, VIPM could only a manage a single repository.
• VIPM 2012 Pro can create private repositories for package sharing within your organization or with your customers.
• Every VI Package Repository has a unique RSS feed so repository users can subscribe to receive package release notifications in their favorite RSS reader.

Automate Tasks With VIPM’s New VI-based API

Do you want to automate installation of packages or perform maintenance tasks on your reuse library easily? Now you can, with VIPM 2012 Pro’s new public API. Learn more here.

Here are some examples of automations you can create:

• Automated package builds: Create a one-click build for your LabVIEW add-on. Write LabVIEW code to automatically apply a VIPC file, build your package, install the built package & test it, then publish the package to your repository, all automatically.
• Unattended system updates: Script your development systems to automatically find and install add-on updates.
• Group package publishing: Create a “package release dropbox” for members of your team to put built packages into; automatically publish packages from that folder to your repository.
• New development system setup: Create a “system setup” script to automatically install “core” packages on multiple LabVIEW versions with a single command.
• System inventory and maintenance: Validate system installations, perform cleanup and maintenance on deployed systems.

VI Package Configuration (VIPC) Improvements

Our users tell us that once they start using VI Package Configuration files they can’t stop. They’ve also given us some great ideas to improve how VIPC files work. We’ve listened, and VIPM 2012 Pro adds the following enhancements:

• Apply VIPC to any LabVIEW Version: VIPM 2012 allows you to apply a VIPC in any version of LabVIEW.
• LabVIEW Project (.lvproj) Dependency Scanning Support: VIPM 2012 Pro supports LabVIEW project files as a source for finding project VI package dependencies. Use this feature to create a VIPC file containing exactly the right libraries and add-ons for each project you work on.

Other Stuff

• Did we mention that new, low price for VIPM Pro? It’s only $499, and upgrades are only $199.
• Lots of bug fixes.
• If you bought VIPM Pro or Enterprise in the last year, your upgrade is free, just like before.
• Click here for full VIPM 2012 release notes.

The millionth package deserves a party, even in the middle of workday.

Inside the Numbers

On one hand, this was a long time coming, but on the other hand we’ve gotten here pretty quickly. We started counting in 2007, and this graph shows the total VI Packages downloaded since then.

We started off modestly; only about 100,000 packages were served the first year. After that, though, the curve starts to bend. If you divide the graph into two halves, it took about 40 months to serve the first 500,000 packages and only about 20 months to serve the next 500,000.

This acceleration is also reflected in the month-by-month package download rate:

There are some bumps in the data, but the monthly package download rate has been increasing linearly ever since we started tracking it and VIPM currently serves up around 30,000 packages per month.

So What Does This Mean?

This means a lot of things. Obviously, we’re proud of VIPM’s success and we hope we’re making it easier for people to create, share, and sell LabVIEW add-ons. The data, I think, implies we’re making progress there.

But more than that, it shows that the LabVIEW community and “LabVIEW Ecosystem” remain healthy, vibrant, and not just growing but accelerating. We wouldn’t have these numbers without the strong community leadership we see from OpenG, LAVA, and NI Community members.

Our data, then, doesn’t just reflect the growth of VIPM, it reflects the growth of the LabVIEW platform itself. Every day, more and more people are doing better software engineering and solving harder problems in LabVIEW. We’re proud to be a part of that, and we hope you’ll celebrate with us.

If you’re not already using VI Package Manager, why not start today? You can get the free version of VIPM by clicking Find LabVIEW Add-ons… in the LabVIEW 2011 Getting Started window or download VIPM directly from jki.net.

So Which VI Package Was #1,000,000?

Appropriately enough, the millionth package was the OpenG Toolkit (if you have VIPM, click that link to install the package). Congratulations to Jonathon Green and the whole OpenG team. Keep up the great work!

Join the discussion in the comments! Do you have an idea for an awesome LabVIEW add-on? How long do you think it will take VIPM to get to 2 million packages? Tell us below.

Saving Test Data In XML Using LabVIEW
by Dan Shangraw, P.E.
Owner, Automated Software Technology

Introduction

Most significant LabVIEW software projects involve acquiring and saving data in some way. After all, what’s the use of all the data we acquire unless we do something with it later? However, in my experience flexible and effective data storage is an afterthought in many projects.  We focus on what sensors to buy, what cool new hardware we get to play with, and which new LabVIEW features we get to use. None of this matters to the client who’s paying us to develop this awesome new measurement system; they care about the DATA!   They need data that solves their measurement problem, and they need that data to be compatible with the analysis tool they are proficient in (Excel, DIAdem, MATLAB, Origin, etc).  They also need the data to be in a format that is well-known, mature, and will still be supported in ten or twenty or more years. A file format that meets all of these requirements is XML.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language that defines rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.  In wide use since 1998, it is governed by an open standard and is supported by virtually every popular analytical program. XML-based formats have even become the default for many programs including Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and Apple’s  iWork. And because XML files are plain ASCII text, your data is future-proof; you’ll still be able to read it 10, 20, or even 50 years from now.

Since this article is about data and LabVIEW, I’ll focus on how to save data acquired by LabVIEW in an XML format. I will also show you how to easily view and analyze that XML data using Microsoft Excel.

The XML Format

In the following example, let’s assume we have a LabVIEW program that monitors temperature and pressure.  We want to save the temperature and pressure data to a file along with some header information.  The header information will be Test Operator, Test Comments, and Sample Rate.

Below is an example of the sample data in an XML format.

<Test Operator="Dan" Comments="Test Passed" Sample_Rate_Hz="10">
   <Data>
     <Temperature_C>1</Temperature_C>
     <Pressure_psi>2</Pressure_psi>
   </Data>
   <Data>
     <Temperature_C>3</Temperature_C>
     <Pressure_psi>4</Pressure_psi>
   </Data>
   <Data>
     <Temperature_C>5</Temperature_C>
     <Pressure_psi>6</Pressure_psi>
   </Data>
 </Test>

If you look closely at the XML above, you can see XML’s simple, self-describing syntax. The first line contains the “root” of the XML structure, in our case <Test>.   This first line also contains attributes of the root: Operator, Comments, and Sample Rate. The next lines describe child elements of the root, in our case data samples which each have a temperature and a pressure element.  The values for an element are between each tag e.g. <Temperature_C>Test1</ Temperature_C >.  A tag is what identifies an element and has the following syntax:

<Name>Value</Name>

Creating XML Files in LabVIEW

The easiest way to create XML files in LabVIEW is to use JKI’s EasyXML add-on for LabVIEW. There are other ways to do the same thing, such as by using LabVIEW’s built-in XML functions; however these built-in functions add data that only pertains to LabVIEW and they generate XML that can’t be easily loaded by tools like Excel.  This defeats the purpose an open file format that can be read with any analysis tool.  EasyXML, by contrast, creates XML data that follows the standard XML format.

EasyXML is also much easier to use than LabVIEW’s native XML functions. All I need to do to generate a properly formatted XML file containing my data is to create a Cluster containing the data I want to save and use EasyXML to turn it into standard XML:

Writing LabVIEW data to disk the easy way...

In this example I am using Easy Generate XML.vi.  This VI converts a LabVIEW Cluster into an XML formatted string.   Then I just save the XML formatted string to a text file. I could make this code even simpler by using Easy Write XML File.vi.

...and the even easier way.

Note: Both these images are VI Snippets. To use this code yourself, just drag the image into a LabVIEW Block Diagram.

The cluster that is wired into Easy Generate XML.vi contains the attributes and acquired data I want to store.  The attributes are in a cluster named “#attributes,” which EasyXML automatically converts into XML attributes.  The data is an array of cluster elements named “Data.”  Each array element contains a single sample for temperature and pressure.

Reading XML Data With Excel

Data is useful only if you can read it with a tool and do something with it. For this example we’ll use Microsoft Excel because almost everybody has Excel, and because Excel makes working with XML really easy. Below is a screen shot of our sample XML file, viewed in Excel.

Importing XML data into Excel.

As you can see, Excel displays the XML data in a very familiar and easy-to-use table. Now we can use Excel’s native functions to analyze the data.

Filtering XML Data With Excel

In the image above, Excel has automatically used our XML tags as column headers .  We can filter data by clicking the column header dropdown as seen below. The built-in filtering tools allow us to easily inspect portions of our data, and we can also use custom filters to build complex drill-downs.

Using Excel's built-in filters with XML data.

Creating a simple numeric filter.

The above 2 screenshots show how I specified a filter to only show data greater than 4.

Our data after applying the filter.

The above screenshot shows what the data looks like filtered.  Our sample file only has 3 datapoints in it, but these same features allow us to inspect vastly larger datasets easily.

Conclusion

Saving data in an XML format can be very powerful because XML is a popular, well-supported, and open standard for data exchange, and what I’ve shown above is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve seen how easily Excel reads and manipulates XML data, but you can also use many other powerful tools like National Instruments DIAdem.

How do you use XML to store and manipulate your data? Leave a comment and tell us!

If you’re in the Bay Area, don’t miss next Wednesday’s Bay Area LabVIEW User Group meeting!

The Time: Tuesday, February 7th, 2012  5:45 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
The Place: The Lookout at 605 Macara, Sunnyvale, CA 94085
To Register: Sign up here.

JKI Project Engineer Joe Lee will give a talk called, “Closing the Loop: Generating LabVIEW Data Structures from XML.” He will be discussing how (and why) to use XML with LabVIEW for web application interfacing, configuration management, and flexible data storage. You will learn how to take XML data and start manipulating it right away using EasyXML, and if there’s time Joe will show off a new, unreleased EasyXML feature that analyzes XML code and generates the corresponding LabVIEW cluster automatically.

Joe will be joined at this meeting by NI Field Engineer Logan Herr, and Dmitry Sagatelyan from Arktur Technologies, who will each be sharing presentations on LabVIEW Design Patterns.

So come for the LabVIEW and stay for the food, drinks, and community! We hope to see you there.

JKI is pleased to announce the release of VI Package Manager (VIPM) 2011.0.1. This release fixes a number of outstanding issues reported by VIPM users and community members. All users should upgrade.

If you’re already a VIPM user, you’ll be prompted to install this update the next time you launch VIPM. If you don’t have VIPM 2011 yet, get it here for free.

New Fixes in VIPM 2011.0.1

A few of the notable fixes in VIPM 2011.0.1 are listed below. Click here for the full release notes.

• Fixed an issue that made some LabVIEW Tools Network views unusable under certain Windows XP themes.
• Fixed cosmetic issues with Windows “Large Font” settings.
• Fixed an issue that broke previously-working package builds if they included hyphens and periods in their names.
• Fixed multiple causes of crashes on VIPM startup.
• Improved error message when the user tries to install a set of mutually conflicting packages.

Do you have an idea for how to improve VIPM? Is there some way VIPM can make you better at your job? Visit the VIPM Idea Exchange, where VIPM users can interact directly with each other and the VIPM development team and let us know!

JKI is pleased to announce the release of the TortoiseSVN (TSVN) Tool for LabVIEW v2.2.0. All users are recommended to upgrade. See below for detailed changes.

This upgrade is free for all paid users of TSVN Tool for LabVIEW v2.0 and above. If you are a paying customer of the TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW, please contact JKI support to get your updated package or check your email for upgrade instructions.

If you are a new or demo user of the TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW, click here to install it using VI Package Manager 2011. Don’t have VIPM 2011? Get it here.

New and Changed Features

• Added support for Windows 64-bit.

Resolved Issues

• Fixed incompatibility with TortoiseSVN 1.7.

Learn more about the TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW.

We need your help to make the Idea Exchange a success. You can participate in several ways:

• Submit your own ideas – Is VIPM missing something? Is there a task that is painful for you that you wish VIPM could solve? Are we just doing it wrong? Tell us!
• Vote for existing ideas – Show your support for other ideas by voting for them. Ideas with more votes carry more weight with the development team.
• Comment on existing ideas – Help clarify and expand on ideas submitted by other users to make their ideas better.

Join the VIPM Idea Exchange today! The development cycle for VIPM 2012 will be starting soon, so get your ideas submitted before the window closes.

We will be reviewing the activity on the Idea Exchange throughout VIPM’s development. The more popular an idea is, the more likely we are to include it in the next version of VIPM. Don’t be afraid to submit off-the-wall ideas or things that you think are outside “normal” VIPM usage. We want VIPM to be the best tool to create, use, and distribute LabVIEW add-ons of every kind, so it’s important that we hear from you, no matter how you use VIPM.

The Lifecycle of an Idea

The VIPM Idea Exchange is about two-way communication between you (the users) and us (the developers). To keep you updated on the status of all the ideas, we’ve created the process below. Ideas progress through the following stages:

• Under Review – New ideas start here. The VIPM developer team will review this idea and decide what to do next. An idea can go into the Planned stage or the Declined stage next.
• Planned – This idea is slated for a future VIPM release. There is still no guarantee that an idea will make it into the final product, but the likelihood is high.
• Started – This idea is under active development (design and coding) for the next major VIPM release.
• Completed – This idea has been implemented for the next VIPM release. Development is complete and it will ship with the product.
• Declined – This idea has been rejected. We’ll provide a reason accompanying the response.

Special Thanks

JKI would like to extend a special thank-you to everyone who helped out during the beta period of the VIPM Idea Exchange. You know who you are. Your feedback and help working out the kinks and submitting the first few dozen ideas has been invaluable.

Now tell us what you want VIPM to do!

If you missed my talk, or if you just can’t get enough, don’t worry; the slides and sample code are now available for download below. If you’re interested in interprocess communication in LabVIEW, or if you just want to see a novel use for LabVIEW’s User Events, please give this framework a try! And as always, comments/questions/criticism are encouraged. Join the discussion below.

If this is your first exposure to the JKI State Machine, welcome! The JKI State Machine is a simple yet flexible and powerful template that forms the backbone of everything we do at JKI. You can use it for free in all your projects. Visit our JKI State Machine pages to get started.

Title: Beyond State Machines: Building Modular Applications in LabVIEW

Abstract: Nearly every significant LabVIEW application uses multiple loops and several pieces of hardware. Coordinating these moving pieces can create a recipe for unreadable code. Learn how to use a template for interprocess communication based on “public” and “private” events that is easy enough for intermediate developers but powerful enough for Certified LabVIEW Architects.

Download Slides & Code: niweek-2011-jki-beyond-state-machines.zip (4.5 MB)

Notes:
Example code requires LabVIEW 2009 or later.
Example code requires the JKI State Machine. Install the JKI State Machine using the free VIPM 2011 Community Edition if you don’t already have it.

JKI's EasyXML Toolkit wins LabVIEW Add-on of the Year award in the VI Library category

Live from NIWeek 2011… we’re delighted to announce that NI has selected JKI’s EasyXML Toolkit as a LabVIEW Add-on of the Year in the VI Library category!

The EasyXML Toolkit for LabVIEW is a simple set of VIs that make generating and parsing XML data in LabVIEW as easy as creating a cluster. It’s NI Certified as Gold Compatible with LabVIEW.

Try it! You can download the free trial directly from within LabVIEW 2011.  Just click on the Find LabVIEW Add-ons… link in the Getting Started window to launch the LabVIEW Tools Network. Search for EasyXML, and click the Install button.  VIPM will automatically download and install EasyXML into LabVIEW, and you’ll find it in your palettes immediately.

Also check out how NI uses the EasyXML toolkit to support the FIRST Robotics championships, in which NI Application Engineer Patrick Corcoran notes that “JKI’s EasyXML made XML easy, to the point that we may have gotten spoiled with it.”

Winners of the 2011 LabVIEW Add-on Awards, surrounded by Jeffs (Meisel on the left, Kodosky on the right)

The LabVIEW Tools Network browser is included in every edition of VIPM, even the free Community Edition.

Browse the LabVIEW Tools Network from inside VIPM

Why VIPM?

Installing toolkits and reusable code in LabVIEW using Windows installers or ZIP files is complicated and error-prone, especially if you use multiple LabVIEW versions or work on lots of projects. VI Package Manager and its VI Package file format take that pain away.

VIPM safely installs packages under multiple versions of LabVIEW, and ensures that packages that depend on each other are always installed correctly. It makes it easy and safe to install and uninstall packages at any time, so you can configure your development tools correctly for any project.

It also automates all the installation, uninstallation, and management of VI packages, eliminating the potential for error that can occur when installing things manually.

VI Packages and More

You can use VIPM 2011′s LabVIEW Tools Network browser to find any Tools Network add-on. If an add-on a VI Package, VIPM installs it directly into LabVIEW with no hassle – but if it’s not, VIPM directs you to the add-on’s manual download page so you can install it yourself.

Integration with LabVIEW 2011

When you launch LabVIEW 2011, be sure to look for the new Find LabVIEW Add-ons… shortcut in the Getting Started window. This shortcut launches VIPM and opens the new LabVIEW Tools Network view.

Use VIPM to "Find LabVIEW Add-ons" right from LabVIEW 2011

Do You Have an Add-on for the Tools Network?

If you’re a LabVIEW add-on developer, the LabVIEW Tools Network is a free and easy way to distribute your LabVIEW add-on to thousands of LabVIEW users. If you are interested in listing a product on on the Tools Network, visit NI’s LabVIEW Tools Network site and click Contribute an Add-On to the Tools Network or just click this link to get started.

Start Using VIPM 2011 Today!

If you’re not yet a VIPM user, download it and get started!  VIPM Community Edition is free and allows you to install all the great LabVIEW add-ons from the LabVIEW Tools Network and the LabVIEW community.  You can also build your own LabVIEW add-ons to share with coworkers and friends!

If you already use VIPM, just launch it and VIPM will prompt you to download the update.  If it doesn’t, select Help >> Check for VI Package Manager Update from the menu bar.

Note: All VIPM upgrades are free for VIPM Professional and VIPM Enterprise users with a current license subscription. If your subscription has expired, you may want to renew it before upgrading.  Upgrading an expired VIPM Professional or Enterprise installation will cause it to revert to Community Edition, which may not be what you want.