TestStand (part 2 - Learning how to use it)

As part of a project I completed for my previous company, I  learned NI TestStand and implemented it for a test station.  I started writing a few posts about that experience and my impressions of TestStand a year ago.  I'm finally getting around to finishing it, and this is the second of three posts.

Learning how to use it

I came into TestStand from the LabVIEW world, although I have a long background in text-based languages.  When my development group decided we wanted to evaluate TestStand, the first thing I did was download the evaluation software (free) and purchase the source materials for the training class (a couple hundred bucks).  After spending a week walking myself through the training and reading through the manuals, we decided to buy the software and implement it in our test systems.

Here's a couple of pointers for learning it yourself:

1. Download the manual and eval materials from NI (reference manual). 
2. Don't pay for the actual training if you don't have the cash.  Just buy the source materials for the training class.
3. This book is a collection of articles about using TestStand.  If you don't want to spend the $10, you can get most of it from here online.
4. Step through all of the examples you can find.

The God particle

It looks like the Higgs boson has been found.  Very cool.

As I've mentioned several times before, I spent time working in high energy physics, before the SSC was shut down.  Back in grad school we talked alot about how close we might be to discovering the Higgs particle and what it would mean.  It's taken a heck of a long time to finally get there, but sometimes research (and taking lots of data) is like that.

Engineering apps for the iPad

After completing a big project at my previous company, our group was given iPads as a thank-you.  While that was certainly a nice gesture, I'm in no way an Apple fanboy, and at the time I was thinking about getting a Kindle Fire for Christmas.  But I didn't turn it down.

I now use it every day at work.  Of course I have a few games on it (although my kids play the games far more than I do), and I check emails on it frequently, but I was surprised at the number of useful engineering-related apps I found.  So I want to list my most useful ones:

• Penultimate - I use this app for taking notes all the time.  But be warned, I found the interface somewhat cumbersome until I bought a soft-pin stylus.
• eDrawings - At least every other week I get a SolidWorks drawing for review, either from in house or a vendor.  This apps is a very handy tool for viewing those models and easily showing them to someone else.  For example, a few months ago I brought it into the lab so I could look at a test chuck model and debug a machining problem.
• VNC Viewer - I am responsible for multiple test stations, each with a separate IP address.  With this app on my iPad I can check those stations when I'm sitting in a boring meeting and don't have my laptop.
• NI DAQ Device Pinouts - A handy little app that simply lists all the pinout diagrams for the multitude of NI DAQ appliances, this tool has come in handy several times lately.
• Mariner Calc - I've used this tool a few times in the lab or in meetings when I didn't have access to a computer.  Not bad for a cheap spreadsheet.
• Filebrowser - It's a nice app for navigating the internal computers on the company intranet.
• 2X Client RDP - While my computer screen is a little cramped viewing it through my iPad, working on it when I'm in a boring meeting (see above) can come in handy.

Laundry list

Well, aside from the too-ambitious post I made last month, it's been a solid year since I posted on this blog on a regular basis.  We'll just call it a sabbatical.

I'm going to dip my toes back into the water with this blog, so don't expect much more than a post a month for now.  Saying that, here's the list of things I want to talk about this summer (in no particular order):

• LabVIEW style
• Startup company personalities
• My iPad engineering apps
• Linked lists
• Interviewing 
• Test Stand

The first one should be coming this weekend, since I wrote most of it last month.  I'll try to get another one out in a couple weeks.

A long absence

Well, after a long absence I have finally gotten back to posting on this blog.  It's been close to a year, and a lot has happened in that time.  Not to get into the low level details of my personal life, but here are the highlights (in roughly chronological order):

• I wrapped up a big project at work,
• I changed companies to work at yet another startup.
• Immediately after starting the new job I had a LOT of new projects.
• There were some medical issues.
• I got remarried and had a wonderful honeymoon in the Caribbean.

Things are settling down some at work, I'm back (and recovered) from vacation, and winter is essentially over here in New England.  So sometime this week I'll publish a list of some of the things I still want to write about.  And believe me, over the last year I've found quite a few....

Congrats to Henry Huang

Back in February I wrote about my new Ford Escape and the massive amounts of testing that must go into verifying features like the hybrid electronics or the SYNC software.  Well, Test & Measurement World just named Henry Huang their Test Engineer of the Year.  It just so happens that he is the "specialist and supervisor for the SYNC platform QA group" at Ford.

I must be psychic...

Labview versioning hell

I've been traveling a lot for work the past year or so.  A few weeks ago one of the people I work with on the west coast complained about the different versions of LabVIEW (LV) and how they don't communicate well with each other.  I brushed it off at the time, but like Chekhov's Gun, this came back to haunt me...

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About a year and a half ago I wrote a camera program that takes a picture and does some processing of that data.  This program runs on a station with LV2009 and NI Vision (v8.5) installed.  A couple of weeks ago someone asked to make an executable of this program and install it on another computer.  So I compiled the program and then tried to create an installation.

This is where I got stuck in LabVIEW version hell.  I could not create the install because (as the NI support people told me) the version of Vision had to match the LV version.  My choice was to either a) buy a new copy of a program I already had (Vision), or b) install LV 8.5 and compile with that.  So I downloaded LV v8.5, installed that on that computer, then I used LV2009 to downconvert the software to v8.5.  

But of course it wasn't that simple.  When I tried to compile the install, I got a "data space type map" error and LV crashed.  After some digging on the NI Forums I found out that this is a known issue with that version of LabVIEW.  The solution was to downconvert to v8.2, and THEN open it in v8.5.  BUT, I couldn't do it in my version of LV2009.  I had to either upgrade to a later release of LV2009 or do it in LV2010.   So I installed LV2010, opened the code in LV2010, downconverted it to LV v8.2, and then opened the v8.2 code with LV v8.5.  Finally I created the install.

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This series of events illustrates a simple question that I doubt has a simple answer.  Why can't LabVIEW work like a text-based programming language where you can open it regardless of what programming environment you use?  At it's root, code written in C++ or Java is just text, and you can open it in any compiler.  You can't necessarily do that with different versions of LV code.  I often see requests for reverse compiling in the NI LabVIEW Forums ("Downconvert VI Requests"), so I know this is a common problem.  Maybe it's because LabVIEW is not a public language but rather owned by NI?  Is it the nature of a graphical language?  Is there some other reason?  I don't know, but it's really annoying.