Important Links
- Initial State Streaming SDK for LabVIEW on Github
- LabVIEW Tools Network Listing
- HTTP API Reference used by these VIs
Getting Started - Prerequisites For Use
- Create an account with Initial State. You will get a free trial to the platform for signing up and students are always free.
- If you are new to Initial State, it is a good idea to understand the platform outside the LabVIEW context. Go through our getting started guide to quickly familiarize yourself.
- You will need LabVIEW 2013 or higher running on a computer with internet access.
- This toolkit is verified on Windows 10, but will likely run on MacOS, Linux, and LabVIEW Real Time as it utilizes cross-platform LabVIEW code.
- To successfully run the "Looping" LabVIEW example, you will need a valid Access Key from your Initial State account. (How-to is in getting started guide)
- To successfully run the "One-shot" LabVIEW example, you will need a valid Access Key and Bucket Key from your Initial State account.
Stream SDK Single-Shot VI Overview
Use this simple VI to send data to a Initial State bucket. Under the hood it is a convenience VI based on the Advanced API.
Providing an Access Key and Bucket Key gives access to a specific bucket. Pass in a Stream Key and Numeric (data event). Providing a timestamp is optional. If a timestamp is not supplied, your data will get a server timestamp applied.
Stream SDK Advanced VIs Overview
Like many LabVIEW frameworks, the Initial State LabVIEW Streaming SDK uses the pattern of Open > Read/Write > Close. The abbreviation IS is used throughout the SDK, and it simply stands for Initial State. The critical VIs in this SDK are as follows:
Open Initial State Reference (IS Open Connection.vi)
This VI takes an Initial State Access Key and creates an HTTP session. The output is a IS Session, which is a cluster that contains the Keys and the HTTP session reference. The access key is the secret key that is attached to your Initial State account. It can be found in "settings" on your Initial State account. Later, we will learn about the bucket, which also has a key. The bucket is the final destination for you data, and defines how it shows up in your Initial State account. To get an existing Access Key - and/or generate another one - go to your username (top right after login) >> my settings >> Streaming Access Keys
Under the hood this VI opens a new HTTPs session and begins to build up the HTTP request by adding the Access Key as a header to the HTTP session.
Create-Open Bucket (IS Create Bucket.vi)
This VI creates a new bucket or appends to an existing bucket via a Bucket Key. You specify which via the Operation input terminal. The VI requires the IS Session Cluster, which is generated by the IS Open Connection.vi. Let's look at the usage scenarios.
- Standard Bucket Creation
- Wire Operation - with the "Create" enum.
- Do not wire the bucket key - a random alpha Bucket Key will be generated.
- Supply a Bucket Name - a human readable name for the bucket to organize this new bucket on the bucket shelf in Initial State.
- Advanced Bucket Creation
- Wire Operation - with the "Create" enum.
- Wire the Bucket Key with your own custom Bucket Key - The use-case is to create a systematic way to create Bucket Keys. For example, use a human-readable name and a today's date concatenated together, and you will get a new bucket each day, but it will append to the bucket during the same day.
- Append to Existing Bucket
- Wire Operation - with the "Open" enum.
- Wire a known Bucket Key - Assuming there is a bucket key that matches your input, the Initial State system will append new data to an existing bucket.
The output of this VI is a bucket session wire that is used to address the newly created or appending Bucket when sending data.
Tags - use an array of tags to label your data bucket and make it more categorizable and searchable in the Initial State Interface. Under the hood, all data points will automatically get a "LabVIEW" tag.
Data Conversion to JSON Cluster (IS PolyVI DBL/String/Bool to JSON Cluster.vi)
All data needs to be packaged into the JSON Cluster Array. This VI is a PolyVI with three polymorphic instances. Each instance accepts different data types for the data to send to Initial State - aka Stream Value. The Initial State API accepts strings, numbers, and booleans, so we have created those instances for this example. Ultimately, everything is flattened to a string, so you can create your own instances to convert your data to a JSON cluster.
Note: The format of the JSON cluster is important, because it ultimately is flattened to JSON and sent to the Initial State Streaming API. Therefore, you must keep the proper labels and data types intact for it to work properly. Under the hood, the SDK uses the LabVIEW primitives for flattening to JSON.
The other inputs to this VI are Stream Key and an Option Stream Time:
- Stream Key - This is the key to which data will be appended within your bucket. It should be both human-readable and something that names the signal. This will be the string that shows as the signal name in Tiles, Lines, and Waves.
- Stream Time - You can give each data point a time stamp if you prefer. If you give the data point a timestamp, Initial State will respect that time when plotting time-series graphs. If you do not apply a timestamp, Initial State will give it a server timestamp. Typically, it is sufficient to let Initial State assign timestamps if you are dealing with seconds or more. For sub-second resolution assign time yourself.
Initial State Send Stream Event (IS Send.vi)
This VI does the final API request/response for sending the data points you have collected. It takes the IS Session and IS Bucket Session wire, which are created via open sessions and addressing buckets. The primary input for this VI is the JSON Cluster Array. This is an array built from the outputs of the data conversion VIs. Each element of the array is the special JSON cluster destined for the Flatten To JSON.vi.
There are two limitations to be aware of when batching data and sending to the API - rate and bandwidth. You can learn more about these limitations here - API: Rate & Bandwidth Limitations
- Rate - the API is rate-limited at 3 calls per second, but is measured in 10 second intervals to allow bursting of up to 30 API calls in one second. The VI is equipped with a boolean output "Rate Limit Reached?" so that you can use this further batch data and retry when rate limiting is "settled." A simple version of this concept is shown in the example.
- Bandwidth - The SDK accepts an array of JSON data where each piece of data account for a number of bytes, which should be counted before the final string is sent to the API. The total payload of each API data transfer should be limited to 200KB. This limit is not enforced in the example, but should be monitored more closely in a real application that begins to encroach on the bandwidth limit.
Close Connection
Simple close VI for closing the IS connection. The primary job of this VI is to close the HTTP connection which releases some previously reserved memory.
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