In one of my recent LabVIEW projects, my application needs receive the message which send by an ECU unit, and to store the message exactly as it send. And the content of the message is hex data, every byte of this message has a specific meaning to this ECU unit, and I need these data to check if the ECU works as desired.

I programmed this application simply with the default VISA read VI. But when I debugged the application to receive the message send by the ECU, sometimes the message was not complete. When I check the send data with the received data, I found out that LabVIEW automatically breaks the message read when it receives 0×0A or 0×25, and these two hex are carriage return and line feed respectively in ASCII.

To receive the message as desired, we need to disable the read function response to the 0×0A and 0×25 in LabVIEW. Here is how to do it: place VISA Configure Serial Port VI in the diagram, there is an input which called “Enable Termination Character”, the default value of that input is TRUE, which causes the uncomplete data I talked above. To ignore CR LF ASCII codes, we just need set the input to FALSE, wiring a false constant to it.

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Sometimes, it needs to run several instances of a VI at the same time in our LabVIEW projects, like open pop-up dialog boxes.

How can we realize it? In fact, it is quiet simple. We just set the pop-up dialog box VI to be reentrant. In the dialog box VI’s menu, select File>>VI Properties. Then, select Execution in Category, and select Reentrant execution option. After these steps, the VI will be reentrant and can be called dynamically in our LabVIEW project and run it in several instances at the same time.

For samples of this LabVIEW VI, you can download them from NI’s site: PopUp.vi and PopUpMain.vi

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In LabWindows/CVI, we can create a free label text control on the front panel and change its text and appearance in program as we wish. But, this can not be realized in LabVIEW,  because the free text label in LabVIEW can only be changed in edit mode, there is no way to change it in our LabVIEW VIs programmatically. So, if we want to have a text label that can be changed programmatically in our LabVIEW program, we have to find a way to work around it, and I use following method to make it happen.

First, create a classic text indicator on the front panel by Controls>>Classic Controls>>Classic String & Path>>Simple String;

Second, pick the coloring tool and set the foreground and background of this indicator to transparent, and left click the  indicator border to make it transparent too;

Third, right click the indicator and make the label of it invisible through the pop-up menu;

Then, you get a free text label. And you can use property node to change its text and appearance in your LabVIEW programs.

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We can use chart and graph to display our acquired data or waveforms. In general, they looks alike, but there still is difference between them which we should note in our VI programming.

The difference is:

Chart control has a data buffer which can be used to store some length of history data. Graph control does not have one. And with chart control, you can scroll to the left to view data in the buffer. With graph control, you have to load the old waveform and plot it on the graph by your VI.

So, chart is suitable for online data display, and graph is suitable for offline data analysis.

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There is no support of the running of .msi files in the options in the installation of a LabVIEW application. But we can file other ways to do it.

Because installation only support *.exe or *.bat file to run after in LabVIEW application’s installation, so we can work around it with one of following methods:

First one, just create a .bat file which make the .msi file to run.

Second one, create a .exe file with LabVIEW VI which runs the .msi file with systemexec.vi, and call this .exe in the application installation.

Anyone of these two methods will work!

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LabVIEW does not have built-in version control, but we can use 3rd party software to realize version control in LabVIEW.

First, use menu Tools>>Source Control>>Configure Source Control to config the 3rd party source control software to integrate into LabVIEW, as in the following picture:

Then, in the popup dialog, we can select which version control software to be used in LabVIEW. As following picture:

All the installed version control software which support LabVIEW will be automatically populated in the drop down list, you can choose the one you want to use with LabVIEW.

And, there are a few options which recommended to check, as in the following picture:

Is is recommended to enable “Include hierarchy when adding files” and “Exclude vi.lib” options.

Then you can use version control in LabVIEW. For further assistant you can search the NI’s official site or Google on the web.

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