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.

Chris’s UK-based team is responsible for designing, manufacturing and testing satellite payload equipments (yes, equipments*!), typically radio frequency (RF) equipment such as frequency converters, power amplifiers, and digital signal processing (DSP) hardware. Their satellites handle everything from Earth observation to space exploration and telecommunications infrastructure.

Astrium-built Hot Bird 7 Satellite. Photo ©Astrium

As Chris so eloquently put it, “there are no field returns from space.” If something breaks, it stays broken and it may compromise the whole mission! That means Astrium products must provide 100% reliable in-orbit service. To ensure this level of quality, Chris’s team runs tests of all kinds, from physical tests such as shock and vibration to system performance test in a thermal vacuum. They test everything from single hybrid subassemblies (the building blocks) to complete functional systems, such as multi-channel frequency converters and solid state power amplifiers. Some of these test campaigns are months in duration.

Chris’s large team had a code base of tens of thousands of VIs with lots of duplication and no clear ownership of the code. They knew they needed a VI reuse library so that team members could own various parts of the code, test them thoroughly, and make them available to everyone.

Chris and his team used JKI’s VI Package Manager to promote LabVIEW code reuse, create a central VI repository, and eliminate duplication of work. As an added benefit, they can now instantly recreate any LabVIEW project environment if the shipping product needs support.

Read the case study to learn how.

What’s your favorite LabVIEW-powered space application? Leave a comment and tell us…

* “Equipments” is a space industry term! Didn’t you know?

About 6 years ago, Christian’s Systems Engineering group at NI started focusing heavily on creating reference designs, components and code libraries they wanted to share with customers. Their goal was to take code created for individual customers – basically proofs of concepts – and turn those VIs into more general libraries they could share online with other customers.

VIPM installs your reusable VIs directly into the LabVIEW palettes

In the process, they encountered all the normal roadblocks and pain points of LabVIEW code distribution. They found it too clumsy to use Windows installers together with the LabVIEW Application Builder. Worse, this method caused problems with dependencies and versioning, and it required too much documentation. The other common VI distribution method, distributing VIs in ZIP files, created too much of a manual and error-prone installation process for customers.

JKI’s VI Package Manager software avoids all of these problems.  When VIPM Community Edition added the ability to build packages for free, the Systems Engineering group quickly adopted it and began using it to build their own LabVIEW reuse libraries as well as libraries and reference designs for NI customers. And now that VIPM powers the LabVIEW Tools Network and is recognized by NI as a preferred method to distribute LabVIEW add-ons, it’s an even more convenient solution for the NI Systems Engineering group… one they can easily recommend to their customers.  

Download the case study today and learn how VIPM helped NI Systems Engineering…

• Support better engineering processes by reusing code
• Improve collaboration among global teams
• Reduce opportunity for VI installation errors
• Save time in creating and distributing reusable LabVIEW code
• Motivate the team to produce better code (because they know others will see it!)

Has your team had good experiences with VI Packages? Or bad ones? Leave a comment to help guide others…

Life's Fluidics Test Screen

The Challenge: Produce a complete software solution to operate a trio of products that prepares samples for DNA sequencing using the latest techniques. The system needed to include commercial shipping software along with software tools for R&D feasibility, manufacturing and field service. Life needed to deliver robust software within a compressed schedule of nine months – without an established software development infrastructure.

The Solution: To meet their tight deadlines and stringent requirements for system quality and functionality, Life leveraged JKI’s commercial software development tools and expertise from our NI Certified LabVIEW Architects to create a flexible, extensible suite of software products in LabVIEW. Together with JKI’s Rapid Application Framework for LabVIEW and VI Package Manager, LabVIEW enabled the seamless development of a fully configurable software solution that satisfied ever-evolving hardware and user interface needs.

Want to learn how LabVIEW helps prepare DNA samples and see how Life’s system works? Read the full case study, LabVIEW Accelerates Next Generation DNA Sequencing.