Automating & Educating the World’s Leading Companies for Over 30 Years

The Challenge  

Create a modular application that eliminates the non-standard file protocols used with a Compact  FieldPoint controller and provides the ability for the user display to adapt while a filter efficiency assessment is running.  

The Solution  

Leverage LabVIEW’s built in ability to communicate via standard network protocols while leveraging  LabVIEW’s Object Oriented Design capability to empower the client with the ability to interface  between sections of code without interrupting the filter efficiency assessment.  

Introduction  

Data Science Automation (DSA) is a premier National Instruments (NI) Alliance Partner that  specializes in automating and educating the world leading companies. Clients choose DSA because of  DSA’s deep knowledge of National Instruments products, disciplined process of developing adaptive  project solutions, staff of skilled Certified LabVIEW Architects and Certified Professional Instructors,  and unique focus on empowerment through education and co-development.  

Reasons behind the Design  

DSA wanted to empower the client with the ability to easily modify their application without having to  completely abort their filter efficiency assessment application while also providing a platform and  interface that is intuitive even to those that are not formally trained in the LabVIEW programming  environment. DSA leveraged National Instruments ability to implement an Object-Oriented (OO)  design approach. Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) has demonstrated it is superiority over  procedural or sequential programming as a powerful architecture in many languages. It allows  engineers to develop applications with well-designed interfaces between sections of code. OOP also  provides proven rules for creating and modifying those sections of code. OOP designs in general are  easier to debug, while providing methods for scalability and flexibility. OOP designs allow for a Plug-in  design feature which would allow modifications to the source code that could implemented without the  client’s aborting an assessment test. This is crucial considering the assessment test operates over  weeks or even months with continuous data acquisition and analysis. If a software update needs to be  applied, the client does not want to stop an assessment, they simply wanted an on the fly update  applied which the OO design approached allowed DSA to implement.  

The Client was not formally educated by certified LabVIEW professional instructors. So by enforcing  inheritance from the base classes created by DSA engineers, the client was less susceptible to making  fundamental structural or architectural errors when modifying or editing the original source code. This  gave the client confidence in adding and modifying features to the application without the risk of  corrupting the current ongoing assessment.  

LVOOP (LabVIEW OOP) Integration  

To compensate for the client’s informal coding practices, DSA designed a core or base set of classes as  the foundation of the system. The core classes outlined how the application would communicate with  multiple National Instruments Compact FieldPoint units, process the acquired data and display the required data. The client understood that the base classes controlled a majority of the interactions of  the various code segments of the application. It was also understood that the client would be able to  inherit from these core classes and build additional functionality into the child classes to create custom  displays for each of their customers. This was extremely useful for keeping development cost at a  minimum while maximizing the client’s ability to customize an application to their customer’s unique  requirements.  

Another feature for the LVOOP design was its ability to quickly load or change what the client referred  to as views or graphical user interfaces while providing the client with the ability to customize a user  interface at any time. For example, the engineer may need to be able to modify the user interface of  the Graphs Display (Figure 1) to display three graphs instead of two. By using Dynamic Dispatching  and basic OOP design features, DSA was able to provide the client with a plug-in architecture that  would allow them to load a modified graphics display object at any time (Figure 2). This ability to load  new display gave the client the ability to sell to their customers a proprietary, yet completely  customizable, display solution with automatic updates while ensuring that the current assessment test  would not be affected.  

Benefits of Partnership  

The Alliance partnership between Data Science Automation and National Instruments has allowed DSA  to tackle many extremely complex engineering challenges while maximizing our client’s return on their  investment. This Graphical Interface Customization (GIC) project was no exception, by selecting NI  LabVIEW as the programming environment DSA was able to create a software package that not only  reduced the overhead costs but also greatly increased the client’s productivity with customized  applications. By using NI software, the GIC application enabled the client to save development time  from conception to deployment. These savings permitted the development of application  enhancements. 

Contact Information  

Brad Westfall, bjw@DSAutomation.com 

Jeff Scott, jjs@DSAutomation.com

Figure 1 – 1 Graphs Display user interface 

 Figure 2 - 2 Graphs display use dynamic dispatch