Configuring Your Compiler
In my previous blog post about the C Tool Chain, I mentioned a post about configuring the C compiler, which is what this blog will discuss. Please note that I will not be talking about linkers or linking, just compiling.
Programming Languages
Don’t Make a Mountain out of a Mole-HiL
Hardware in the Loop (HiL) systems are used in the development and test of real-time embedded systems often found in Electronic Control Units (ECU) within almost any on- or off-highway vehicle today. HiL systems are comprised of both hardware and software that can simulate the larger entity (i.e. car, tractor, etc.), so that the smaller ECU can be inserted into that larger system to determine whether or not it’s internal real-time embedded system is performing as intended. While this may seem like a mountainous task for vehicle manufacturers in industry today, DISTek has invested in tackling the design and production of an internal HiL solution.
Alternative Tools Lead to Creative Solutions
Here at the DISTek products department, we’re always looking for ways to make our user’s lives easier. As engineers that use our own products, this is doubly important to us! We’ve identified that open source tools can be one possible solution to alleviate potential issues down the road.
We spend a lot of time designing user interfaces for ISOBUS VT clients. There are a few tools currently on the market, and while these tools get the job done, we’ve found a few shortcomings…
How To: Reduce Memory Consumption in LabVIEW Data Acquisition Applications
Acquiring and/or logging high speed data, using the traditional DAQmx scaling approach, will consume considerable amounts of memory due to its use of the double precision data type. Each sample collected will consume eight bytes of memory whether being stored in memory or on disk. This size is fine when collecting data at lower rates, but if you are collecting data at a rate of 1 MS/s, eight bytes per sample is too much for most systems to handle.
Functional Programming in C#
Functional programming has become popular recently, and many object oriented languages (C#, Scala, Java) have begun including functional concepts as part of the language. Here we’ll go over a few functional ideas in C#.
Case Study: Building a Test System to Determine Root Cause of Field Failures
A customer has been receiving field failures and the root cause has been difficult to determine. They have ideas of what may be causing these failures and need a test system that can simulate the various conditions and monitor the Device Under Test (DUT) to assist in determining the root cause. The customer turned to DISTek to provide a bench-top setup that will control the DUT and measure multiple in-circuit test points for events that may be damaging field effect transistors (FET) along with recording FET case temperatures. Custom events have been defined by the customer and will trigger the system to capture pre and post-trigger data. The test system should also provide various loads to the output of the DUT.
Part 2: Cognex LCD Vehicle Display Tester
Welcome back to the blog! Today, I will be talking about how to operate a Cognex smart camera via a LabVIEW program. The way I will be communicating with the camera is via TCP/IP. There are other potential ways to communicate with the camera from LabVIEW, but this was determined to be the best way, giving us the most control over the camera. I will walk through some basic terminology that is necessary to discuss building a Cognex vision test. Then, I will create and set up a vision test and finally, I will briefly describe how to program LabVIEW to send/receive information to the camera and to trigger an image acquisition.
Part 1: Cognex LCD Vehicle Display Tester
As LCD vehicle displays have become more prevalent and versatile in both on- and off-highway, the time it takes to ensure proper display functionality after a software release has increased dramatically. It is not uncommon for displays to have 15, 20, or even 30 different screens, each of which having multiple sub-selections available. If you take into consideration different supported languages, the scope of the test grows dramatically. DISTek, as a company, is always attempting to define the future needs of customers in the off-highway industry, of which vehicle display testers are one of those needs.
NI Week 2016: LabVIEW Champions Track
The 22nd Annual NI Week is slated to begin in Austin, Texas, on August 1st. NI Week provides the forum to bring together the brightest minds in engineering and science. More than 3,200 innovators representing a wide spectrum of industries, from automotive and telecommunications to robotics and energy will converge together to discover the latest technology to accelerate productivity for software-defined systems in test, measurement, and control. While DISTek regularly attends in various capacities, this year we will be making a new showing. Our very own Systems Engineer and LabVIEW expert, Ed Dickens, will be presenting on Wednesday, August 3rd from 4:45-5:45PM. His presentation is the result of National Instruments trying something new. This year, for the first time ever, there will be an advanced software topic track where all the presentation topics and content will be prepared and presented by various “LabVIEW Champions”.
Brainless LabVIEW Programming: CLA Summit 2016
One of the presentations I attended at this years Certified LabVIEW Architects summit was given by Darren Nattinger of National Instruments. Darren is a Principal Engineer in LabVIEW R & D. One of the many things he’s responsible for is getting the Quick Drop feature added to LabVIEW. His presentation was titled, ”An End to Brainless LabVIEW Programming”.
Avoiding the Flying Platypus: CLA Summit 2016
In March I attended the Certified LabVIEW Architects Summit (CLA) in Austin, Texas. Every year National Instruments hosts this conference where CLAs can network, discuss best practices, and share ideas. This year the theme was Continuous Improvement: Building Better LabVIEW Applications.
National Instruments Architect Summit: New Certification Guidlines
As LabVIEW and TestStand developers creating customer applications, acquiring and maintaining our National Instruments certifications is important to both DISTek and our customers. Certification demonstrates up-to-date expertise with the software as new features are released and maintains our presence as product experts in the technical community. To keep certifications current, we must periodically take the next higher certification exam or recertify at our current level.
