Labview 8.2 on Ubuntu 6.10

Hi,

I was seeing the thread in:

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=200997&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

And I had a big surprise when my installation just worked whitout problems. I’m using ubuntu 6.10

$uname -a
Linux yesidh-laptop 2.6.17-12-generic #2 SMP Mon Jul 16 19:37:58 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

I installed rpm, from synaptic, then copy the entire cd contents to /media/labview and then run INSTALL by using:
$sudo ./INSTALL

Then the installation went perfect, just some warnings about a deprecated command:
sort: Warning: “+number” syntax is deprecated, please use “-k number”

Finally i ran:
/usr/local/natinst/LabVIEW-8.2/labview

And the program ran, I don’t know if I will have that crashed in the future but the installation was good. I will let you all now.

Here is a screenshot of the program running:

Bye

English site freeze

Unfortunately I will not post so much on this site for a while, I’ll focus to improve the Spanish version. The reason for this is because it’s my mother language and I think there is not so much mechatronics information in this language, and in english you can find it more.

I hope this doesn’t take to long, so I can write in the two languages (that takes so much time). If you want take a look and the spanish site in: http://mecatronica.wordpress.com

And don’t dubt to ask for any help you think I can bring you some support.

Bye

wxWidgets-2.8.3 for wxArt2D on MSW

Hello,

This time I would like to share the steps by steps needed to compile wxWidgets for use with wxArt2D. the idea is to begin from the very basics just as If you have installed your computer right now.

Requeriments:

• wxWidgets-2.8.3 sources
• wxArt2D sources
• Cmake

Well, here we can have two ways, you can use a installation based on Visual C++ or using gcc with MinGW. First we will explore the VC++ method, have in mind I’m using VC++ 6

Visual C++ 6

First thing to download the exe installation of wxWidgets. then open VC++ and open the Workspace in the %WXWIN%\build\msw\wx.dsw

Because this workspace has configured a lot of targets, at least I didn’t need all that so I just compiles the debug target, this can be done in the build menu, then batch build, and select the ones you want, for my case I selected the debug versions for all the projects.

That will take some time.

Now lets probed the intallation opening the minimal.dsw in the samples\minimal directory and try to compile it. Everything should work ok.

The following thing to compile is the wxSTC component. For that open the file stc.dsw in the contrib\build\stc and do the same thing as above.

Let’s now compile wxArt2D, so the first step is to do the download. Then set the WXWIN variable to the wxWidgets installation path.

Open Cmake and create a directory outside the wxArt2D sources directory. Then do the configure with cmake. What this do is to generate the wxart2d.dsw file in the directory. Then open this a compile using VC++.

In the samples directory you will find the samples compiled so you can probed it.

MinGW

First thing you shoul do is to install the MinGW and MSYS packages. So then create a directory in the wxWidgets path and run the following commands from the msys command line:

cd %WXDIR%
mkdir buildmswd
cd buildmsw

../configure –with-msw –disable-std_iostreams –enable-debug –disable-shared
make
ldconfig

Probed the compiltation:

cd %WXDIR%
cd buildmswd/samples/minimal
make
./minimal

Now because wxArt2D needs the wxSTC class, go to the contrib directory and compile it.

Well the next step is to set the WXWIN environment variable, for this use:

SET WXWIN=%WXWIN%/buildmswd

Now run the cmake like this, first create and directory outside the wxArt2D sources:

mkdir wxart2dmingw
cd wxart2dmingw
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" %WXART2D%
make

Run a sample, to probed the compilating. I think that’s all, maybe you get any error, so write here to see how can I help you.

Mechatronics Open Source Software

Right now all the engineering disciplines do a great use of computational programs, in the design of any appliance you have in home or in your car a great use of software was made. That’s totally true with the Mechatronics world where you can have the bless to integrate very useful discipline to create a truly “intelligent” or automate process.

The use of private software in the field has made some time difficult for a hobbies or student to use it because his highly price. A alternative way has been in progress for some time with the Free Software Community willing to develop software and share it with the world for free (as free spech). Among all those Open Software Projects there are many related with the mechatronics field, that I will describe here and give some advice in it use from my own experience.

I’ll would really like to incentive you to participate in some of this projects, the first you can do is give it a try.

CAD Software

QCAD: QCad is an application for computer aided drafting in two dimensions (2d). With QCad you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schemas and diagrams. QCad works on Windows, Mac OS X and many Linux and Unix Systems. The source code of the QCad community edition is released under the GPL (Open Source).

BRL-CAD: The BRL-CAD package is a powerful Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system with over 20 years development and production use by the U.S. military. BRL-CAD includes an interactive geometry editor, parallel ray-tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, path-tracing for realistic image synthesis, network distributed framebuffer support, image-processing and signal-processing tools. The entire package is distributed in source code form.

Electronics squematic diagrams

Kicad: is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork.

gEDA Project: The gEDA project is working on producing a full GPL‘d suite of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and production. Currently, the gEDA project offers a mature suite of free software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture, attribute management, bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into over 20 netlist formats, analog and digital simulation, and printed circuit board (PCB) layout.

Electronics PIC Microcontrollers

GPUTILS: GPUTILS is a collection of tools for the Microchip (TM) PIC microcontrollers. It includes gpasm, gplink, and gplib. It’s distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License. See the gnupic page for other GNU PIC tools such as gpsim, a gputils compatible simulator.

PiKdev: is a simple graphic IDE for the development of PIC-based applications.
It currently supports assembly language. C language is also supported for PIC 18 devices.

Programming software

GCC: the GNU compiler collection

CodeBlocks: Code::Blocks is a free C++ IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.

Cross platform GUI

wxWidgets: wxWidgets lets developers create applications for Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase. It can be used from languages such as C++, Python, Perl, and C#/.NET. Unlike other cross-platform toolkits, wxWidgets applications look and feel native. This is because wxWidgets uses the platform’s own native controls rather than emulating them. It’s also extensive, free, open-source, and mature.

Mathematical analysis

Scilab: Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications.

The descriptions has been copied from the projects websites. Surely there are a lot of other projects, but my idea is to post here the ones I have used. If you know another one feel free to posted. To help me show all the benefits we can get by using open source software.

Mechatronics books

Interesting books in the mechatronics field:

Grafcet documentation: http://edison.upc.edu/curs/grafcet/ 

PLC documentation: http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~jackh/books/plcs/ 

wxWidgets-2.8.0 for wxArt2D on Ubuntu

Hello,

This time I would like to share the steps by steps needed to compile wxWidgets for use with wxArt2D. the idea is to begin from the very basics just as If you have installed your computer right now. (have in mind that I’m using ubuntu)

Requeriments:

• For wxWidgets-2.8.0 you will need to have the gtk+ development files, so please install libgtk2.0-dev with synaptic

• For wxArt2D you will need to have Cmake

Then we can begin to install wxWidgets, so please untar the file and create the buildgtk directory within the wxWidgets-2.8.0 root. For this run the following within a console:

cd $WXDIR$
mkdir buildgtkd
cd buildgtkd
../configure --with-gtk2 --disable-std_iostreams --enable-debug --disable-shared
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

The –disable-std_iostream directive is beacuse wxArt2D need this, if you don’t do it and this time you will later. The others options are the default wxArt2D look. In the configure script you can run others options just as you need them, for example installing monolithic or shared or debug etc…, you should see the manual for this options.

In the contrib folder you should compile wxSTC, using the known commands: make and sudo make install

There you have the wxWidgets compiled let’s now test it:

cd $WXDIR$
cd buildgtkd/samples/minimal
make
./minimal

If the above ran ok, then everything went perfect.

Now it is time to compile wxArt2D, so first download the sources from the cvs.

cd $wxART2D$
mkdir buildwxart2D

cd buildwxart2D
cmake ../
make
sudo make install

Let’s know test it:

cd samples/editor/samples/wires/
./sample_editor_wires

Free fuzzy logic library Docs

Hi, this time I want to contribute with a documentation for the FFLL library, I have worked with it and think it is good. I had some trouble looking for documentation, that’s why I liked to change that by first generating a doxygen documentation for the library.

I think anyone that begin working with the library will find this helpful, you can get it from here http://pwp.etb.net.co/iyhernandezo/ffll, that’s all this time.Bye

Short coming: Free Fuzzy Logic Library tutorials.

wxOGL vs. wxArt2D

Well, like you probaly saw in a old post I was trying to use wxOGL and did some advance on it, but then in turn into wxArt2D and must say that if you want to do some drawing or ploting you must be in that path. My experience with wxArt2D has been good, the project is in actual development and you can get quickly answers from their mailing list. So take a look and use it, at least for me has worked.

You can download the wxArt2D package from http://wxart2d.sourceforge.net

QCad Fluid Power Library

Hi all, I create a fluid power library for QCad based on the ISO1219 standard in the fluid power technology for the automation industry.

Here is a screeshot of what you can do:

Another screenshot showing QCad and the library.

At the moment I can’t upload the file here. So please post here and I’ll send you the library. Bye.

Adding a Lexer to wxStyledTextCtrl

This is my 2 days work to create a new lexer for wxStyledTextCtrl (wxSTC). The first think you should now is that wxSTC is a wrapper around a widely know text control named scintilla. So if you want to add a lexer you really are adding it to the scintilla distribution that wxSTC comes with.

There is this web page http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTELexer.html where you can found how to add a lexer to scintilla and his Text Editing application called SciTE. The first step are basically the same.

You should have a $(wxDIR)/contrib/src/stc dir where you have all the thinks that goes with the control, I not a expert in this just I saw what I needed to add the lexer, in the documentation you will find more information. for the moment you shold go to that directory and follow the step. We supposed we’re adding some language call it foo.

1. So go to the scintilla/include dir and open the SciLexer.h file, ther you will add a ID value:
#define SCLEX_FOO=79, (supposed the last ID was 78)
And any lexical class IDs:
#define SCE_FOO_DEFAULT=0
#define SCE_FOO_COMMENT=1

2. Now you should add the ID value to stc.h locate in $(wxDIR)/contrib/include/wx/stc.
#define wxSTC_LEX_FOO 79 and
#define wxSTC_FOO_DEFAULT 0
#define wxSTC_FOO_COMMENT 1

I think you should be able to recognize a order in the file so you can do it that way.

3. In the scintilla/src/LexOthers.cxx write a ColouriseFooDoc function similar to one of the other functions such as ColouriseLatexDoc. For a more detailed guide open the file LexCpp.cxx and see the ColouriseCppDoc. What I did just to copy and paste that function and fit it to my needs.

LexerModule lmfoo(SCLEX_FOO, ColouriseFooDoc, “conf”);

4. If this is a complex lexer then it may be better off in its own file, in which case clone one of the current files and then add the file to all of the make files where LexOthers is currently referenced

5. You should be able to compile wxSTC and does all.

That was the steps I followed to get the lexer working, you should see this page to understand what the Colourise function does: [http://www.scintilla.org/Lexer.txt]

To get the lexer working we would modify the sample that comes with wxSTC, you should find it in $(wxDIR)/contrib/samples/stc, here what we need to do is to modify the prefs.cpp file, this contains all the preferences for the lexers:

1. If you have some Keywords you should added just follow the way C++ and Python does.

2. To the g_LanguagePrefs const add _T(“FOO”) with your definitions.

That’s all you should be able to compile the sample and select the Foo language from the View->Highlight Language->Foo

I hope that serves you.