Hi Kovacs
I found an old question about almost the same thing. A number of possible ways that E-Prime could communicate with other applications (besides File I/O) were suggested:
- ActiveX - a Microsoft standard for controlling other programs and passing them data.
- DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) - if there's a DLL interface to E-Prime, LabVIEW can access it that way.
- TCP/IP - if programs can talk to E-Prime over a network, LabVIEW can too.
- UDP - similar protocol to TCP/IP
- Calling Executables - if E-Prime can run another program, it can launch
- LabVIEW. This won't necessarily help with sharing data from one program to the other, just launching programs.
These possible avenues of approach were presented to the E-Prime support and this was their answer:
- ActiveX objects are supported as long as they can be created using the CreateObject syntax and Late Binding. Use of Early Binding through Type Libraries is not supported. Also, the use of OCX or form objects, as well as the Byte data type, is not supported. You would need to write your own Windows DLLs to facilitate this.
- Related to the last point, it is possible to use DLLs in an E-Prime experiment. Such an effort should be placed in the hands of a qualified developer. Although it may be possible to integrate a custom DLL in a number of languages (C, BASIC, .NET, PASCAL, DELPHI, asm), it is strongly encouraged to only use C++ and to not use any managed .NET functions or MFC calls in the custom library unless the overhead to do so is warranted. Keep in mind that operations that require DirectX, HWND windows handles, GDI functions, sound functions, or direct memory access are likely to fail, and operations that consume large amount of time (> 500 microseconds) will delay the overall performance timing accuracy of the computer/experiment. We can provide more information about specific rules for DLLs in E-Prime after your purchase.
- E-Prime 2.0 introduces the ability to open a client IP socket and communicate with listening server applications over a network connection using the Socket device. The Professional version additionally allows more than one Socket device per experiment. Signals may be sent back and forth using simple InLine script. Currently UDP connections are not supported.
- It is possible to suspend E-Run and do other tasks, such as present a webpage in Internet Explorer, and return to E-Run as if uninterrupted. Note that this would allow you to present a webpage and then return to E-Prime, recording key presses only before or after the webpage is shown, rather than during the website stimulus. The Suspend/Resume methods are documented in the DeviceManager object Help topic in E-Basic Online Help. You can also take a look at the Suspend/Resume sample via the E-Prime Web Support site after your purchase.
Best Regards
David
NISW
Message Edited by Davidek on 03-15-2010 05:19 AM
