Comparing TestStudio and TestStand..Not!

Comparing TestStand and TestStudio at this point is...impossible. At the momment, I'm still waiting on the official PO to go to Teradyne so that they will be so kind as to give us the software we're buying. We have sent them 10% of the PO for long lead items but that isn't enough insurance to actually get the software.

It's starting to wear thin, I just want to learn a little about this monstrosity called TestStudio. I am assuming it is a steaming pile of ... code. Until I actually get to see a copy of it, I'm not going to change my opinion.

Once I get to play with TestStudio I really am going to compare it to TestStand. Okay, I do have one bit of pre-knowledge of TestStudio that I can compare to TestStand. Any parameters passed out of TestStudio to a DLL or other code is only allowed to be passed in Character strings. TestStand does it right and passes the value in the form it needs (i.e. integers, doubles, pointers, etc).

Last week the score was TestStand 2, TestStudio -2. The score is now TestStand 3, TestStudio -3 for TestStands ability to pass parameters correctly and Teradynes unwillingness to allow people who are going to use it to actually use it.

TestStudio, Hmmm...

It's been a while, I've doing a lot of playing with my Genetic Algorithms program, writing a Neural Net program, and studying Chaos.

First, Congratulations to the Wendy, former Queen of CVI. She's moved on MIT, graduate school, and opportunities up there. Way to go!

Second, Welcome Adri K, the new Queen of CVI and all NI things Text. Everyone needs to go to NI Week and say hi to her or the NI CVI community.

Now to the meat of the subject. TestStudio, not TestStand but TestStudio.Teradyne's offering in the test sequencing arena. It seems to be cheap knock off of TestStand put out by Teradyne. This is the product we'll be using on our next test set. It was not my choice or the choice of anyone who will have to develop on it.

Since this choice has been made for use and I've been told to accept it, I want to write about comparisons between TestStudio and TestStand.

First comparison...none. Teradyne, who is apparently very big on keeping the purchaser of the product in the dark, will not allow us to have an evaluation copy or access the support site until they get their PO.

We are told it's great, or at least the only product that will run its proprietary switch manger. We're also told the switch manager is a .dll. .dll's will run under TestStand, so why is TestStudio the only way to run the switch manager?

I guess I'll have to wait until we actually get the software before I can compare it. Since TestStand allows a 30 day evaluation and TestStudio doesn't, plus we can't get to the support. Is Teradyne's product so bad they can't even allow people to evaluate it?

TestStand 2, TestStudio -2. Negative since I can't even get to any documentation except Propaganda sheet.

Post Robotic relaxation

Everything is calming down now after the FIRST Championships. I'm trying to capture some lessons learned and keep some thoughts and idea's for next time. If anyone has any fund raising idea's I'd like to hear about them. The money was probably the biggest hurdle.

We, team 704, does have pictures from Atlanta. One thing I'm doing now is buying a new and better camera with stabalization. A lot of my pictures came out fuzzy.

Below are some pictures on the team 704 odyssey that, mostly, I took. Also another link to the Google pic

FIRST Championships

This has been an exhausting weekend at the FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta Georgia. We arrived Wednesday night but it all started early Thursday morning. We got in un-crated the robot. We ran some practice rounds and started scouting teams as well as warming up the Robot.



More fun was on Friday morning...the real thing started...qualifying rounds. We started out strong, three wins in a row. Unfortunately the win streak didn't last. We had some poor luck of the draw, our alliance was with some weaker robots and we were against 3 robots that all wound up in the final rounds. Our alliance lost. We lost one more Friday when two robots were blocking us and our alliance robots weren't coming to help break us loose.

Saturday looked promising at first, at least until we lost our first round...then our second round. There were no good explanations except not much cooperation between alliance teams.

Alas, at the finals team selection, our team number was not called. The race for the Championship was over for us.

It was an exciting weekend. The high school kids had a lot of energy and some of it translated to me. I had a lot of energy...more or less. Over all it was fun and tiring, it's most certainly a labor of love.

Headed for the FIRST Championships!

Team 704, the SGP Robotics club, is headed from Atlanta GA for the FIRST Robotics Championships! This will be SGP's first trip to the big game!



We have the airplane tickets, another team will be taking some of our equipment to Atlanta in their trailer, and the excitement is mounting. I'm very excited! I contacted the Lockheed Martin internal newsletter about doing a story on the FIRST Championship. It's an event where there are potentially hundreds of future employees!

I was so excited I pulled out my NXT robot and started playing with it. I've also updated my personal web page with the robotics stuff from Dallas and Lone Star tournaments.

Building Robots to take over the world

I apologize for not writing lately. I've been busy lately working with the South Grand Prairie Robotics team. I tell everyone it's to build robots to take over the world but it's really to build a robot for the FIRST Robotics Challenge.



The FIRST Robotics Challenge is (FRC) is a great organization where high school kids are given a game, a “kit”, and 6 weeks to build a robot to play the game.

The game is called Lunacy. Basically, you try to put your balls in your opponantes trailer. Every robot has a trailer behind it and so while you're trying to dump in someone's trailer, they're trying to dump in someone elses trailer.

The kit is a set of parts to build a basic Robot with enough programming to have a joy stick control it. From there, each team needs to figure out how to dump balls in opponents trailer, what to do in autonomous mode (the first 15 seconds of the match)

FIRST is a national challenge sponsored by a lot of technical companies who will need engineers in the future and want to get the kids interested now. They are a very organized group who have regional robot tournaments in various parts of the country.

The team I'm working with is Team 704, associated with the South Grand Prairie High school Robotics team. Each team, once a number is assigned, keeps that number and the numbers aren't re-used. If a team disbands, the number is no longer used. Team 704 has been going since 2001 sponsored by physics teacher extraordinaire Phil Harris.



I'll write more later. I just want close by saying that high school kids who are even vagually interested in robots should go to usFirst.org and find a team in your area. If you're an adult (who is a kid at heart) you can help mentor a team. (Even though they're using LabVIEW)

Thankful for Family, NI, and Sarcasm

It's the season to be thankful. So in the spirit of the season I want to say what I'm thankful for.

First, of course, I'm want to thank God for all my blessings. Next, I want to thank my family. My Mom and Dad for giving me a good foundation and work ethic and encouraging me to go to collage in spite of their very limited education. I'm thankful for my kids for keeping me grounded through a bunch of tough years and for putting up with me and my warped sense of humor the rest of the time. And I'm even thankful for my hard driving have-to-be-right brother and sweet sister.

I'm Thankful for my really good friends who helped me get past my shyness, helping with my introversion, and helping me get through my tough years. They are fun to hang out with when I don't have a date. In other words, we always hang out.

I'm also thankful to National Instruments for making it easy to do my job. LabWindows CVI is a great tool for Test Engineers and makes it easy to develop code for test sets and for easy to use hardware. I'm also thankful for all the helpful people I've met and worked with there at NI like Joel, Wendy, Santiago, and Conan. I especially thankful for NI Week and the Wednesday night party they throw, maybe happy they do it than actually "thankful". And, yes, I'm even thankful for LabVIEW, it's a good language and most likely a piece of the future of software.

I'm also thankful to both of the Directors I work for, especially JT. They believe in me and know that I'll work hard to do a good job for both of them.

[Start Sarcastic Voice]
I'm also thankful for the boss who said I couldn't follow a process. Now that I've helped deveop our companies processes and reach CMMI level 5, you proved how well you know people. To the same boss who said I would never work in software at our company again. She was right, I'm not in the software group, I'm Test Engineering doing much more and fun software.

I'm thankful to Electrical Engineers. Since most of you guys don't think I can tell the difference between a resistor and an FPGA, you make it very easy to impress you. Especially, to they lead EE guys who couldn't find the problem between the IMU and GPU on LOSAT. You made it easy for "Just a software guy" to find the 25ns glitch that was reseting the IMU with just a schematic and an OScope.

I'm also thankful to the boss who believes that software is just a passing fad. You make everyone else seem so much smarter.

I'm also thankful to the place I work. [insert almost any sarcastic comment from Dilbert and it applies. I'm pretty sure he works where I work]

[End Sarcastic Voice]

The reality of it is I have a lot to be thankful for and I know that I am truly blessed.

Thank you