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MANAGING CHANNEL SETTINGS
PROGRAMMING > PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES >

When working with LabVIEW, C/C++, and Visual Basic; one is often faced with the question of how to set up instruNet channels (e.g. specify thermocouple). Several methods for managing channel settings are listed below. DasyLab does not have this issue, since the DasyLab software automatically saves channel settings within their .dsb file. For details on moving settings information between Windows 32bit and 64bit computers, click here

1) Save/Load Settings from instruNet World
Within instruNet World, one can set up all sensors in the Network page and press the SAVE button to save these to a .prf file on disk, or the OPEN button to pull in settings from a .prf file. Also, one can press STORE or RESTORE to save/load these settings from a standard file in the system and not specify a file name. And, one can press buttons from their program (e.g. LabView) by calling the Press_instruNet_Button() dll subroutine. For example, Press_instruNet_Button(9) does a RESTORE and Press_instruNet_Button(10) does a STORE.

2) Set Fields with a Subroutine
The SetFieldValue_iNet() dll subroutine can set any of the settings within instruNet. For details on this, please see files "INET_INT.H" and "INET_INT.H", or Reading & Writing Scalar Values.

3) Automatically Load Instrument settings file (.prf) at iW+ Application Launch
To automatically load a .prf settings file (named "iNet32_EndUserSetup.prf") when one first runs runs instruNet software, click here.

4) Call a subroutine to get and set channel settings.
There is a dll function that one can call from your program (e.g. BASIC) to get the channel settings inside iNet (it returns a block of binary data) after you had set them up manually from instruNet World, you can then save this binary block w/ by your program, and then when you run your program again, you can call an iNet dll routine and pass this binary block back to the iNet dll to set up your channels. This is done via dll routines Get_instruNet_Network_State() and Set_instruNet_Network_State(). For details, click here.

5)Automatically execute Script file (.ibs) after loading instruNet Driver
To automatically execute an iW+ script program (named "iNetLoad.iBs") after loading the instruNet driver, click here. This requires an iW+ license to be installed on the computer.

6) Automatically Execute Script file (.ibs) after opening window
To automatically execute an iW+ script program (named "Startup.iBs") after one first opens an instruNet window, click here. This requires an iW+ license to be installed on the computer.

 

32bit and 64bit Windows

If one creates an instruNet .prf settings file (or array with settings data) while on a Windows 32bit computer, saves it to disk, and loads it onto a 64bit Windows computer, it will load properly. The same is true with moving settings information from a 64bit computer to a 32bit computer. The reason for this is the settings data is stored in a text form and is not effected by varying pointer sizes.