LabVIEW
Keba KeTop T50 Integration in LabVIEW with Touch Panel Module
I am part of a project that involved the implementation of the Keba KeTop T50 as a mobile pendant controlling a system. I wanted to share some of my experiences and one important solution that may help other projects trying to integrate with 3rd party code and DLLs. This pendant was originally chosen for its large touchscreen, built in E-STOP, and the handwheel as you can see in the picture below. This pendant runs a Windows CE operating system which as many of you know can be tricky with LabVIEW in terms of the restriction of supported property nodes and features. Most of the development was fairly straight forward calling into provided DLL's to access the functionality of the device,(buttons, keyswitch, bypass, etc) except the handwheel at the top. Because of the way this DLL was made it called both 16 and 32 bit instructions (still not sure about all the details) which is not supported by LV. This would cause the .exe not to build and be looking for additional files. Whenever using a Call Library Function node to access the DLL or associated .LIB file none of the functions loaded, even if they were manually typed in there were still build errors. As it turns out the key was to both include the FCSKebaWheel.lib file in the project and to use a Call Library Function node BUT to leave the "Library Name or Path" completely blank and manually type in the function name and parameters. This causes things not to be linked at build but still worked completely within the VI. I hope this helps someone else out there.
If you are looking for a solution like this first I would highly recommend Flex Control Solutions Inc as a supplier for the Keba device. If you too would like to use this device or have any other custom engineering project you can contact my company Innoventor an NI Alliance Partner through the website below, or get in touch with me directly.
