I started preparing a Bally driver board test routine in Signal Express LE (free to download) with a USB digital I/O interface, just to send a digital ramp signal to the driver board to test coil drive channels and also would work on a lamp board. Essentialy what Leon did in hardware, I'm trying to do in software on a PC.

This got me thinking, what are the barriers to developing full board test rigs in LabVIEW? You can have more than enough digital I/O lines to interface, and open ended processing in LabVIEW. The only barriers I can think of are time to code the routines and cost (a full license of LabVIEW isn't cheap, $1,000 for Basic and you'd probably need some processing/decoding routines added).

Anyone tried something like this? I searched LabVIEW on the forums and got ZERO hits.

In theory, we could then distribute the LabVIEW VIs to others in the community and move beyond the days of the big test rigs.

Interested in thoughts others may have on this.

FWIW, LabVIEW Home (hobbyist license) is only $50!

Will post here after I have a proof of concept.

Both.

Ideally a full test rig, decode display data, diagnostic button controls, etc. I'm imagining plugging a Sys11 or WPC board into a logic interface and using LabVIEW as a test rig.

Bally driver board test routine is largely a proof of concept due to simplicity.

It would be great to have some development partners...

Excellent, I was hoping this would spark some interest!

If you want to be involved, please PM me with your contact info (email, etc.).

We can put together a consortium of sorts, even brainstorming features and not doing development would be helpful.

I suspect we'll need some sort of prime person that has more development experience that I do. I have done coding (C++, Basic, and Labview), but not individual pieces to bring things together into one package. Bob?

My thinking was we could break it up into board set. I.e. 1-2 people per set (Stern/Bally, Sys3-7, Sys9-11, WPC, etc.) all following a standard GUI layout for the control panels, then bring them all into 1 VI.

Good point. I started counting up a Sys 11 test rig and came up with a bit under 70 connections excluding display and sound, so it's probably over 100 with everything, like suggested by Bob. Testing things like driver boards would of course be much lower channel count, except non-matrixed lamp driver boards (i.e. Bally).

I suspect I'd want something that could sink some current and handle above 5V, so I figure combinations of 2 or 3 NI PCI-651x (64 channels each) would do the trick. They retail between $300 and $400 new but can often be had on eBay for half that. So even if 3 cards, that's $500-$600 with used cards. While not cheap, it is attractive to me to have all the rig in software and not have to worry about displays/etc. Just setting up displays (as Vid mentioned earlier) would run you hundreds per board type.

If one could do it all with logic levels and not need to worry about isolation, the price falls to between $300 and $500 in hardware for 96 channels (i.e. USB-6509, PCI-6509, etc.).

Also the time component is worth considering. While it would be time consuming to get everything running, once it is running, it can be shared with others. You can't share a hardware test rig with your pinball buddies, unless you want to haul it around town. But you could e-mail a VI (or post it online). They would have to buy some hardware (quantity depending on which tests they wanted to be able to run) and set up the LabVIEW environment ($50), but then theoretically it'd just be a matter of creating their wiring harness and mapping the I/O channels properly in the software.

After thinking more about the input from all of you, it may be more reasonable to focus on decoding the various display outputs (7-segment, alpha numeric, and DMD) and displaying those in LabVIEW, and perhaps a few other features like being able to operate the diagnostic buttons and reserve most of the other test functions (switch matrix input, solenoid output, lamp matrix, etc.) to external hardware that is readily available at very reasonable prices (Siegecraft) and use the built in diagnostics to control the tests (display, switch, lamp, solenoid tests, etc.).

Some other features for certain boards would make sense since they are super straight forward and require a low channel count, such as controlling solenoids on stand alone driver boards (Bally, Williams, etc.).

Cool set up! I'm starting with Bally boards, will post once I have something working.

It would be amazing to have you provide some hardware input on this Hans! I suspect primarily LED arrays and push button switches.

My vision was to have harnesses that used molex connectors on the board headers. I know that makes for lots of wires, but it does provide for an end-to-end test of all components and connections, including headers. Nasty harnesses though, I know.

I built a GUI test sequence written for a Bally Sol Driver board in LabVIEW last weekend, but still need to write the portion of the routine that outputs the logic values to the board. I'll post some video when it's working to get some feedback.