Using Reach Technology LCD Touch Screen Driver with LabVIEW 2012

[Dave@Ventec]

I have been using this driver with LabVIEW 2011. Reach Technology Driver  It does not work / load / install in LabVIEW 2012.  Is there a workaround for this?

Thank you.

[SerJames]

Hi alyeska,

As you may have noticed on the driver page you linked the reach technology driver is currently not supported by NI and is provided as is. That being said, there is always the possibility workarounds exist or the ever intelligent community has come up with a solution.

While I cannot promise results, let us give things a shot? Do you remember the order of installation? Did you maybe install the driver before LabVIEW 2012? Potentially uninstalling/re-installing the driver may help. Are there similar drivers that perform functionality comperable to your needs, maybe a third party source?

Also, as it looks like this driver is to connect with an LCD touch screen, how are you actually connecting with the hardware? Maybe a workaround can be done using NI-VISA (http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/3337/lang/en).

Hopefully these questions can at least spur some traction.

Regards,

[egraham]

Alyeska,

I had the same problem. I had to create a new VI package that would install the same set of VIs into 2012. The palette icons aren't perfect, but all the VIs are organized the same way as they appear in 2011.

Have you by any chance created a fully functional keyboard on the REACH touch panel yet? The examples have a limited character set. I was hoping someone else has already tackled this.

Regards,

Eric Graham

[Dave@Ventec]

Eric,

Can you get me pointed in the right direction to create a "VI package" - that is new ground for me?  Wonder why the icons would not look the same?

I have not created a keyboard - my application is a control panel on a device - a page of configurations - a user interface page - and an active graphing page.

Thanks for the reply!  

Best,

David

[egraham]

David,

The palette icons in VI Package Manager are your own custom icons. When you make your own packages you can make them look like whatever you want.

I'll try to find some time later to make the package I made available to you. Right now the version I'm using modifies some of the driver code so I have to fix that in the version I would give to you.

Eric

[Dave@Ventec]

Eric,

I just received this answer from Reach Technology:

"The installer for the drivers wants LabVIEW 2009, 2010 or 2011 to install the drivers.  Once installed, you can copy/paste the REACH API from the older LabVIEW into LabVIEW 2012.  Do you happen to have an older system somewhere?

We are in the process of updating the installer to work directly with LabVIEW 2012, but I don't know when that will be done."

I copied the "Reach Tech Touchscreen" folder from the 2011 vi.lib to the 2112 vi.lib and it seems to work!  I will go back and copy the various help files over as well - but I am optimistic.  I don't know if there is a better way to copy/past the API?

Wanted to get this posted before you spent anymore time on it.

I really appreciate your willingness to help!

Dave

[egraham]

David,

Thanks for letting me know. Good to hear that it's working. It comes in handy to create VI packages when you need to control and version your reusable code. If you are a single developer on a single computer then this might not be necessary and so manually moving your reusable VIs from one system to another is an easy option.

Eric

[egraham]

Even though the original topic was driver related, I wanted to post this follow up since I mentioned it in this post. The REACH demos do have a full keyboard that I managed to overlook. It is called the IKB demo. With a few modifications to the REACH macro, it should work as a full keyboard on a REACH touch panel.

[Dave@Ventec]

In case anyone else is having this issuee....This is a summary of the solution that I find works.  

Copy the files and folders listed on  the attachment from LabVIEW 2011 to the same place in LabVIEW 2012.  Based on my testing everything then seems to work normally.

Dave

[Inst]

configuring the display keyboard reach tech in labview?