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The Actor Framework has become the defacto standard tool for developing large, maintainable, and scalable applications in LabVIEW.  For many LabVIEW developers, however, the learning curve associated with the Actor Framework seems like it is much too steep for them to take advantage of its many benefits.  The purpose of this article is to help developers who are familiar with the common design patterns of “procedural” LabVIEW development transition to the Actor Framework.  Hopefully, by the end of this article you will see that the Actor Framework is not quite so different from the patterns

Bloomy supported the automated test community with informative presentations and practical exhibits at NIDays North America conferences late in 2014.  Turnkey Systems Manager Grant Gothing presented “Plan for Success with Automated Test” to standing-room-only crowds who learned best practices for creating test requirements, specifying instrumentation, defining interconnects, and selecting the right software architecture.

Bloomy’s participation at The Battery Show Expo for Advanced Batteries in Novi, MI consisted of an exhibition, a presentation, and participation in the open-tech forum, all of which allowed attendees to learn valuable BMS test insights.

Lets start with the basics. What is a dictionary?  A dictionary provides a mapping of key, value pairs.  They allow a programmer to store a value under a key and look it up later.

A naive implementation could be done with two arrays, one to store the keys, and one to store the values.  For managing a few keys this is fine, but once the number of keys grows large enough, this will begin to suffer because a lookup will have to inspect all elements, resulting in a computation complexity of O(n).

Have you ever wondered if a film about an aging Manhattanite being roped into joining his two friends on a cattle drive in the southwest could help you write better software?  

City Slickers

Nested deep within the complex social commentary of the movie "City Slickers" there is a scene in which Curly, a software engineer turned cowboy, gives Mitch Robbins, the titular city slicker, advice on how to write great software.

As manufacturing processes improve and circuitry has moved from discrete components to highly-integrated programmable components, effective test strategies must now place more emphasis on functional test rather than in-circuit test (ICT).

In-circuit test performs a “schematic verification” by testing individual components of a printed circuit board (PCBA) one at a time by comparison against a software model of some parameters of the component. It is not done “at speed” and does not verify interoperability but is very effective at finding manufacturing defects.

ICT excels at:

How does software value relate to a 2000 year old Greek paradox?  

Bloomy had a strong presence at NIWeek 2014, with the biggest Alliance Partner booth that included an engaging bicycle generator that hundreds tested their stamina on, as well as many presentations by Bloomy staff in various conference tracks. 

The New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology (NY-BEST) test and commercialization center celebrated its grand opening in Eastman Business Park on April 30. NY-BEST partnered with DNV GL (formerly DNV KEMA) and local New York entities such as New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and Empire State Development to create the commercialization center.  This center promises to stimulate the rapidly growing energy technology storage industry by providing crucial product development services to test the viability and performance of innovative energy storage technologies before they are introduced to the marketplace.

2013 was a great year for Bloomy Energy Systems growth in providing test, data acquisition, and control products to the fast paced battery, electric vehicle, and grid storage industries.  With the energy storage market rapidly evolving, and few test standards existing, energy storage companies are taking various approaches to solve their testing challenges. Bloomy has optimized our platforms to provide robust solutions that can be configured for our customers’ unique needs.