Accelerate Time‑to‑Market with RTI Connext DDS Professional Tools

hen working on the Lua bridge for the LabVIEW GUI, I used the Connext Pro Record and Replay services. In the lab, I recorded about ten minutes of live data covering all use cases. That night, in a hotel, I replayed the data while refining the Lua scripts. Replay lets you selectively play back topics, loop the playback for continuous simulation, and accelerate the rate—turning days of runtime into minutes.

One of Prototyper’s strengths is its ability to reload the Lua script automatically while running. This allowed me to iterate quickly: Replay played accelerated data continuously; I edited the Lua script, saved it, and Prototyper reflected the changes instantly—no restart needed. The conversion script was completed in just a few hours.

Prototyper also proved invaluable for generating simulated data. The LabVIEW GUI was built entirely offline, using Replay‑generated topics and Prototyper‑bridged or simulated data. I would email a simulator script to ORNL, they would incorporate it into LabVIEW, and I would run the updated VI locally to verify integration. ORNL’s integration of real‑time DDS data with the SGIP visual elements produced a polished GUI that became the demo’s centerpiece.

Main Takeaways

When we arrived in New Orleans a couple of weeks later, the entire system was up and running in about 30 minutes—a remarkable feat given that some applications, like the LabVIEW GUI, had never previously been on a network with the real hardware.

The comprehensive toolset in RTI Connext DDS Professional enabled us to resolve integration hurdles quickly during the Knoxville week and to continue remote development thereafter. Admin Console, Monitor, DDS Ping, and DDS Spy accelerated initial deployment. Record, Replay, and Prototyper facilitated distributed development in the absence of live hardware. DDS Toolkit for LabVIEW allowed us to deliver a sophisticated GUI swiftly. Even after the event, these tools remain available for ongoing development and virtual demonstrations.

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