I'm a Teststand beginner and I'm evaluating the software. I would like to get some feedback on my approach and see if others have familiarity with this.
Project:
Test N UUTs in a climate chamber.
Hardware:
Power supply, relay matrix, network switches, etc.
All parts use the Ethernet protocol for communication.
Software:
LabView, Powershell + Teststand
Question:
I do prefer to make the program as simple as possible and similar to what is looks like in the real world. In labview I create a lib for each component of the test station. PSModelNumber.llb for powersupply, a llb for the climate chamber. etc.
Inside the llb there is one class.
PowerSupply.llb:
---QXP2100.lvclass
----create.vi
----destory.vi
----method1.vi
----....
In Teststand (Setup section), I call the PowerSupply.llb->QXP2100.lvclass->create.vi and save the object reference which is returned by create.vi as Locals.foo.
Now I can call any method of the QXP2100 class (in the Main section) and set the Locals.foo as input argument of that method.
At the Clean up section I can then destroy the instance.
I have one object reference for each hardware of the test platform. I even create N instances of the UUT class for each UUT (Batch model). The UUT class contains functions which can be executed on the UUT. It works good for my simple tests! But I have to do more complicated procedures.
What is your opinion? Do other Teststand developers do it this way?