Labview 8.2 Drivers

Labview 8.2 Drivers, a forum discussion on Cleverscope Mixed Signal USB Oscilloscopes. Join us for more discussions on Labview 8.2 Drivers on our Driver Questions forum.

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jricheson

29 Nov 2011
Posts: 4

when using the pre-compiled cleverscope.exe the program loads fast and runs well on Widow2000 machine. When writing my own in Labview or using one of the labview example programs, upon startup, it hangs for about 5 minutes in the initalize area. Once this completes the program runs and responds very fast. What is taking so long to initialize. I have updated the firmware and software and this does not help. Early on it worked very fast but nothing seems to fix it now. Any ideas please.
Thank you
jricheson

30 Nov 2011
Posts: 4

Follow up on above problem. I have isolated this down to the calling of the initialize and the close at the end of the routine. Normal operation work as expected, only the cscope control to "Initialize" takes about 5 minutes to move on to the loop to check if open. Then when all acquisition is compete, I break out of the while loop and call the cscope control to close and finish. The "close" also takes about 3-5 minutes to close, but the finish is very fast (a few milliseconds). Why is the "initialize" and "Close" taking so long. I don't want to blame this on the NI Visa drivers but this may be the case. This used to work faster until I did something and did not realize it.
bartschroder

1 Dec 2011
Posts: 477

Hello JRicheson,
We have been trying to make this happen, but sadly without succes yet. 5 mins is just crazy. I do remember vaguely that if a driver was not found, Windows would go to the web to find it, and load it, which can take quite some time. A long shot, but I would disconnect from the internet to see if this has any bearing on it.

You say the Cleverscope application still loads and runs quickly, and it uses exactly the same Visa driver as does the DLL and Labview driver examples. This suggests that the driver is in fact properly loaded.

Anothere alternative you might like to check is if there is any interaction with another USB device. We have found that the PIC Kit can cause some problems. Maybe you could unplug other USB devices, just to check.

We will have a very close look at the Initialize and Close portions of the driver.
jricheson

3 Dec 2011
Posts: 4

Update to the problem. I have tested the time required further and determine the call to the control.vi for the close function take about 8 sec, which is expected and o.k. The call to the control.vi to initialize takes about 1 minute and 50 seconds to process. This gives no errors and is very consistent. I have removed all USB hardware and disconnected the internet. Did a reboot and the time required is still the same. LabView is using the NiVisa drivers for the cleverscope and the hardware is showing up in the device manager as working properly. The cleverscope.exe program loads and runs quickly but the vi's that are included with take the 1 min, 50 seconds to start, but did not early on. Initially this only took the 2 seconds to initialize, but something has changed. I don't think that I have inadvertently changed anything in the sub-vi's. I have updated the firmware and verified this was successful, updated the programs from the website, I am about to uninstall everything and reinstall to see if one of the sub-vi's has been corrupted in some way. Any other ideas would be appreciated.
Thank you.
bartschroder

4 Dec 2011
Posts: 477

Hello jricheson,
The initialize process loads the runtime portion of the driver that runs in the back ground, and keeps the the connection to the acquisition unit refreshed, and handles transfer of samples. It's loaded with a dynamic vi call.

Some timing tests here: Running simplescope.exe (using the LV8.2 build), by double clicking to seeing the CAU status = 'Open' is about 6 seconds. If after runniung the Simple Scope, we click the red 'Stop' button on the task bar below the menu line, the program is stopped but not unloaded from memory. (The background runtime automatically sees that the foreground program has stopped, and unloads itself from memory, but the cache will still have the runtime in it). If then I click the white run button, it takes less than a second for the CAU status = 'Open.

So a question: if after starting siumplescope.exe (and waiting that huge time to Open), you click the red stop button, and then the white Run button, do you see the same start up time, or is it much faster. This could indicate if it is a loading problem, or a run problem.
jricheson

6 Dec 2011
Posts: 4

Bart,
After running the Minimum seq scope.vi and going through a complete capture of 3 frames and displaying them, I press the stop button on the screen under the Again button. After about 3 seconds, labview returns to the edit mode. If upon pressing the white arrow "Run" button, it takes the long 2 minutes to start again. Once it does, it works fine and unloads quickly. It is only during startup that takes so long.
I have further isolated it down to the Cscope run vi.vi. Inside the first block called the Open VI Reference from national instruments is where the long lag time exist. I have check the string input for the path to the "Cscope control driver runtime.vi" and it is correct. Is is possible that something is taking a long time to load inside this .llb file. and what should I look for that might resolve this long time to load issue.
I am still developing my vi from you vi's but the time it takes is getting very long if I want to try one of my features and have to wait 2 minutes to try a quick test.
By the way- we love this cleverscope and have a lot of things planned for it once we get this issue worked out. I would like to buy some more at some point when more project money is available.
bartschroder

6 Dec 2011
Posts: 477

Ok, I've been thinking about this. Did you do an update to Labview 8.2? It might be that the version of 8.2 you are using is not the same as the one we developed in. The solution to this is to do a Mass Compile of the Cscope Control driver.llb. I have seen that it takes quite a bit of time to run out of an llb that is not compiled for the current environment. You mass compile by Tools/Advanced/Mass Compile. Choosing the .llb is a bit odd, but this is the way I did it:
1. Navigate to the .llb, and choose open.
2. You should see a dialog saying 'Choose a directory to compile'. Click on the single '.' (second line in the file list), and click Select.
3. Click 'Mass Compile'.
Try it again after doing this, and see if there is any difference. Good luck.

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