LabVIEW Hidden Gems

As promised in my previous post, I am bringing here something about the LabVIEW Hidden Gems, on what they are, how one can use it and more.

About Hidden Gems

For a while I saw a presentation from Darren Nattinger from NI, who has showed what are the Hidden Gems for the first time. It was in the CLA Summit 2014. Really recommend seeing this video to fully understand the concept and implications.

So, what are hidden gems?

They are essentially VIs located in vi.lib folder that are not documented, not fully tested and not supported by NI. R&D engineers develop them when they want to have a useful function but not enough to include in some palette and fully document/test it.

They are “hidden” because they are found in vi.lib, but they don’t appear in palettes or any other toolkit. So, this means if you intend to use it you take the risk of NI modifying it in the next versions or remove them from vi.lib, or in the best cases, NI turn them official and finish documenting them.

Although, as shown in the presentation, LabVIEW R&D team makes effort for keeping them compatible (connector panes) as long as possible.

Lately most of them are Malleable VIMs, which you can explore and see how the functions were made (In case you don’t want to take the risk of using them from vi.lib).

Can I download it?

All of that previously said and noted. Yes, you can. Below is the link from VIPM for “Hidden Gems” from NI Tools Network.

Hidden Gems – VI Package Manager Link

This package is only up to LV2017. And afterwards?

I don’t know why but since LV2017, DNatt stopped publishing new packages along LV Versions. Maybe it is just because there aren’t enough VIs to populate the palettes. But for your own comfort, I’ve already done it for the LV2019 e LV2020 versions. I skipped the 2018 version because was not worth it.

I uploaded it to my GitLab and named it “Hidden Gems Plus”, to not conflict with the official ones.

Gitlab link for Hidden Gems VIPM – LV 2019 (v0.1.0) and LV 2020 (v0.2.0)

More information

But if you want more information about the hidden gems in each LV Version and more information about them, you can go the NI Forums Group in the link below.

Hidden Gems – Special Interest Group

If you find this topic interesting or already use them, leave your comment below.