Tuesday, December 11, 2007

"Application Instance Close" Events


One of my friends recently asked me how to create a VI that runs in the background and shuts itself down when LabVIEW exits (without prompting the user to abort running VIs).

After a little research, we determined that the answer was using the "Application Instance Close" events.

This is a somewhat advanced topic, but using both the filter and notify Application Instance Close events achieves the desired effect.

If you want to see this in action, watch this video.

[Edit January 15, 2008] I need to underscore that this technique is needed when a VI is running as part of the LabVIEW editor. For normal applications, you do not want to suppress the "abort running VIs?" prompt because you want users to shut down a VI from its user interface.

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Monday, December 10, 2007

FIRST LEGO League, Central Texas Championship

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being a volunteer at the 2007 Central Texas FIRST LEGO League Championship Tournament.

It is such a joy to see teams of 9 - 14 year olds working together, solving design challenges, learning about technology and helping their communities.

FIRST LEGO League is an international organization, and I highly recommend getting involved. There are many opportunities for volunteers, including mentoring teams and helping at events.

The FIRST organization talks about promoting science and engineering and making them "cool" to kids. After going to an event like a championship tournament, you realize that they are really doing it. The kids have so much fun while learning valuable skills that will help them throughout life.

Of course, I also take a bit of pride in knowing that most of the kids are using software powered by LabVIEW!