MiniStand 1.0.0

MiniStand

Testing process and production data management

MiniStand is designed to have a standard method to do manufacturing automation, especially to have general and reusable running test sequences and managing production data with failing information, just like NI Test Stand. Surely this is a mini version, anyway, it can adopt to many scenarios in automation software development, like some measuring and validating projects which have the common scenarios to drive some electric devices to do some actions and drive DMM to measure voltage, current or resistance, etc.

Currently the version of MiniStand is 1.0.0, it can only drive 2 things:

1. Select test objects sored in Test Sequence Management v2 (an NuGET package), and run in sequential order.
2. Write a piece of production data indicating the time stamp, duration, product SN and result, etc into Production and Defects Management v2 (another NuGET package), also if there are any failings, write those failures too.

In automation software, NI LabVIEW takes to electrical action and drive to measure in most cases, but LabVIEW is hard to use Event Handler to interact with C# assembly directly, so MiniStand takes LocalRedis (the 3rd NuGET package) communicating with LabVIEW. Following is the flowchart of MiniStand:

Prerequisite:

1. You must run GeneralInstaller (the 4th NuGET package) to install some necessary components with Administrator permission. Just run GeneralInstall.exe and all the COM components will be registered.
2. Run the WPF application, please type MiniStand.WpfManager.exe in System running dialog (or you can go to folder C:\Program Files (x86)\PatrickGamp\MiniStandApp, why it is x86? Because most industry automation software are using x86 version of LabVIEW), and you can see the main UI as below:

MiniStand is using CSVMultilang (The 5th NuGET package) to do multilang, however, the author has too few time to do the translation jobs, so only Chinese version is complete, the English version is still pending.

See, at the left panel is the running test sequences and test steps, and at right panel is the status, and there are 4 buttons to let you check current production data, today’s, all history, and launch the WPF application of Production and Defects Management.

The MiniStand.WpfManager.exe simulates LabVIEW, monitoring commands from MiniStand via LocalRedis. When received topic of ‘MiniStandAsksToMeasureOrAction’ it will send 123.456 to simulate DMM’s response; when received ‘MiniStandNotifyCompletion’ it will update the UI to reflect that the testing is done.

Note： MiniStand will handle the process, every time when hardware actions required, it will publish ‘MiniStandAsksToMeasureOrAction’ via LocalRedis, and LabVIEW or other controller should call UpdateExecutionResultBySettingActualValue of MiniStand COM component to set current execution result. Every time the process is ended, it will publish ‘MiniStandNotifyCompletion’ via LocalRedis, and LabVIEW or other controller get notified the running is over.

When selecting test object(s) to run, you can select any item in the test object tree as following:

A product or a test sequence or a test step or an action, any one can be run together or individually.

Every time if the testing is over, the production data will be ready, you can check it in right panel as you click the first button, current production data will be shown like below:

Remember, unpack InstallBits.zip and run the GeneralInstaller.exe with Administrator permission to use that. Also, 2 db files under assets will help you go through with existing data faster. Please reference to MiniStand.docx under sub folder 'doc'.

For technique support or business, please call the cell phone ++0086-18603016232, email: patrickgamp@hotmail.com, WeChat(A Chinese popular chat app) id is same to the cell phone number

I am a professional with 26 years software RD experience. In 2005-2018, worked for Microsoft Windows Mobile and Windows Phone developing team, XBox One manufacturing automation team, and Surface imaging test team, after 2019, opened a small automation software corporation at the first strong manufacturing city in the world - Suzhou, China. If you have some industry automation related software project to oursource, or any Windows desktop based non-Web softare developing requirements, please send me email to contact.

Author

Patrick Gamp

Published date

November 12, 2023