Navigation:  Ole automation > Using SCOUT in LabView

 

You must have object generation 3.60 for the mechanism described below!

 

If you develop automation solutions with LabView you can access SCOUT in your LabView projects. A typical application would be a scanning spectrometer system, used to obtain one- or two-dimensional thickness profiles. If LabView is used to control the mechanical motion and the data acquisition of the spectrometer hardware, it would be advantageous to control SCOUT by LabView as well. After a measurement, LabView could pass the recorded spectra to SCOUT, start the thickness determination, and pick-up the results in order to generate appropriate operator displays.

 

Here is how you get access to SCOUT within LabView:

 

oGenerate a control of type 'Automation refnum'

oRight-click on the control and select the command 'Select ActiveX class/Browse'

oA dialog for the selection of a type library opens

 

 

 

oSearch for the type library 'SCOUT library' in the dropdown list

oIf you do not find it click on the 'Browse' button to the right and select the SCOUT program file scout.exe (in order to see the program file you may have to set the file type to 'All files (*.*)' in the file dialog)

oThe dialog should now look like this:

 

 

oCheck the ckeckbox 'Show Creatable Objects Only' and select the only remaining line 'scoutole (scout.scoutole)':

 

 

oThen press OK to leave this dialog.

oIn the LabView Block diagram, right-click the new object and select the command 'ActiveX palette' to generate a new object of type 'Automation open'. Connect the 2 objects like shown below:

 

 

oFrom now on you can use all OLE properties and procedures of SCOUT. In order to check if you can really access SCOUT commands generate a small test sequence: Show SCOUT on the screen ('show' command), execute a file selection dialog (by calling the property 'a_filename') and finally call the routine 'prepare_shutdown' to prepare the death of the SCOUT server.

 

 

 

Before you do any real work in LabView, please test if you can get this sequence to execute properly.