Python LabVIEW Automation labview_automation is a Python package to make it easy to call LabVIEW VirtualInstruments (VIs) from Python. It includes a Pythonic interface to call VIs and a class to interact with LabVIEW executables on Windows.

To facilitate this interaction LabVIEW is started with a VI that listens for tcp messages. The Python interface sends BSON (see bsonspec.org) encoded messages to the VI which then performs the commands.

LabVIEW can be started on a remote machine using hoplite. Since the interface between Python and LabVIEW is tcp the messages can be sent to another machine.

Python LabVIEW Automation opens a TCP port and does not have any secure protocols currently implemented.

Python LabVIEW Automation is not supported by National Instruments.

This package depends on hoplite. First install hoplite. When/if hoplite is added to PyPI then this manual step will not be needed.

labview_automation can be installed by cloning the master branch and then in a command line in the directory of setup.py run:

pip install --pre .

You can set controls on the front panel of the VIs that you execute by adding members to a dictionary where each member represents a different control of the given name. Controls can be numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, or clusters of the same types.

run_vi_synchronous runs the VI synchronously and returns a dictionary of all the indicators on the VI.

from labview_automation import LabVIEW
lv = LabVIEW()
lv.start() # Launches the active LabVIEW with the listener VI
with lv.client() as c:
    control_values = {
        "DBL Control": 5.0,
        "String Control": "Hello World!",
        "Error In": {
            "status": False,
            "code": 0,
            "source": ""
        }
    }
    indicators = c.run_vi_synchronous(
        vi_path, control_values)
    print(indicators['Result'])
    error_message = c.describe_error(indicators['Error Out'])
lv.kill() # Stop LabVIEW

All LabVIEW code is developed using LabVIEW 2014 SP1 x86.

Pull requests for Python code should adhere to PEP8.

The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2016 National Instruments

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