How do I convert an HWS file to a TDMS file in LabVIEW?

[bmihura_esa]

I'm converting a big LabVIEW project from LabVIEW 2009 to LabVIEW 2024 which uses HWS files, and apparently LabVIEW no longer supports HWS files after LabVIEW 2021.

How can I convert these HWS files to TDMS?

There was a promising link in the NI knowledge base titled "How Do I Convert a HWS File to a LVM or TDMS File in LabVIEW?" saying this:

"This can be done using the NI-HWS Express Load VI which can be found in the Functions palette under Instrument I/O>>Inst Drivers>>NI Hierarchical Waveform Storage."

However, that's not in any of my versions of LabVIEW (2009, 2015, 2019, and 2024), so I'm looking for a solution to this problem.

[santo_13]

What is your goal? What kind of data and instrument are you using the HWS files with?

[bmihura_esa]

My goal is to test some radar-related electronic equipment by sending many different high-speed digital I/O waveforms through NI's NI-HSDIO libraries.

[santo_13]

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@bmihura_esa wrote:

My goal is to test some radar-related electronic equipment by sending many different high-speed digital I/O waveforms through NI's NI-HSDIO libraries.

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Were you able to confirm whether you have an HSDIO driver for the LabVIEW version you plan to use and whether it still uses HWS or has been updated to TDMS?

[bmihura_esa]

I am using LabVIEW 2024. It has the HSDIO driver but it does not have anything HWS because National Instruments decided to discontinue HWS support after LabVIEW 2021, which has broken my large amount of code.

HSDIO has always supported TDMS.

That's why I need some way to convert my HWS files to TDMS, otherwise my code will not work in LabVIEW 2024.

[mcduff]

In one of the whitepapers, it states "NI-HWS files are based on the HDF5 file format which is designed to store and organize large amounts of data."

Download HDF View and see if you can open the HWS file with the viewer. (I can open .MAT files with that viewer.) If you can open it, then you can use HDF tools to convert to TDMS. There are some libraries available on VIPM.

EDIT: To use the tools you stated in your earlier post, I believe you need 32 bit LabVIEW, they are not available for 64 bit.

[bmihura_esa]

I downloaded HDF View and it can open my HWS files.

I found a couple of libraries on VIPM by searching for HDF. Here are their names:

• Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5)
• LVHDF5

VIPM installed both of those successfully. Both libraries have a VI checking whether a file is HDF5 and they both say yes.

However, I found nothing in either of the two VIPM libraries that will convert my HWS files to TDMS, and I looked at every VI.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious. What should I do?

[mcduff]

The libraries are incompatible with each other, you can only install one or the other.

The LVHDF5 library used to have an example for converting a H5 to a TDMS; however, I have had problems with this library and it won't install on Win11. 

The other library works no problem for me. Look in the example finder for the "Read" vi's. Read your datasets from the original file and write it to a TDMS file. You will have to do a little bit of programming.