Change a VI to a more sophisticated pattern (e.g. consumer/producer)

Question

Hi everybody!
I have written a VI taking spectra from a triggered flash lamp and spectrometer. The whole systems works in a rotating device. So the triggering and exact timing is quite important. I finally got my Vi to work  but there are still some problems with the spectrometer. I think this is due to the fact that the spectrometer runs into a internal timeout but I don't know why. Furthermore there is still a lot of false triggering when changing to the next sample with a different delay.
So it's really time to take a deep and think about my program. At the moment I have a flat sequence with some for loops defining the number of measurings as well as the while loops for the triggering...
Well that's I want to do:
1. All the necessary data comes in a cluster from a different vi
2. Initialize: Create folders, calculate positions for the step motor and move it to the initial position, open spectrometer and so on
3. Start the speed measuring and calculation of delays
4. Measure the spectrometer dark current
5. Move step motor to the first position
6. Start retriggerable task for lamp and spectrometer (the triggering occurs in a subvi, whereas the delays are updated continuously by a reference) 
7. Measure at step motor position first sample, second sample and so on
8. Move stepmotor -> 7
9. Stop retriggerable task for lamp and spectrometer
10. Save data and wait for a specified time
11. Back to step 5
12. In the end: Close the spectrometer, stop the speed measurement and so on
Furthermore the data has to be displayed:
1. The actual scan
2. Step motor position dependent absorption for the actual scan as well as the former scans (by option)
So much for the theory. I thougt that maybe a produce/consumer patttern would fit but I have no idea how to realize this. Of course I have read a lot but I don't know how to do the triggering stuff and so on.
I have attached my main vi that you can see how I deal with this at the moment. Of course all the subvis are missing but the working principle should be clear. Please let me know if If you need any more information!
I want to do two things. First I want to separate the data aquisition from the display and file I/O, second the data aquisition has to be seperated from the lamp and spec triggering.
Especially the second point seems to be very important because my spectrometer runs into some internal timeout (not because there is no trigger) after some minutes or hours (the exact time is not reproducible, but it does happen) and crashes my whole system  as I mentioned before.
I don't know why but I hope so much that a more sophisticated vi pattern will solve this problem.
May you help me with this?
Thanks!
Attachments:
radial_scan_v5.10.vi ‏293 KB

Answer 1

If the vi runs without user intervention, then simple Enum based state machine architecture can be used.
1. All the necessary data comes in a cluster from a different vi
State -1
2. Initialize: Create folders, calculate positions for the step motor and move it to the initial position, open spectrometer and so on
State -2 Initialise state
3. Start the speed measuring and calculation of delays
This can be a Dynamically launched vi ( and can be launched in State-2) where it waits for the notification from State -2 to start Acquisision.
This vi will also stop acquisiion based on another notification from the main vi states
State-3 -> Set start notification for this cont. running sub vi
4. Measure the spectrometer dark current
State -4
5. Move step motor to the first position
State -5
6. Start retriggerable task for lamp and spectrometer (the triggering occurs in a subvi, whereas the delays are updated continuously by a reference)
This can also be another dynamically launched subvi, that is launched in State -2 itself.
State-6 -> Send Notification to start the Retriggerable task
7. Measure at step motor position first sample, second sample and so on
State -7.Measurement
8. Move stepmotor -> 7
9. Stop retriggerable task for lamp and spectrometer
State -8 Send stop notification to stop the Retriggerable task.
10. Save data and wait for a specified time
State -9 - Log the Data
11. Back to step 5
State 10 .. Check for completion.if required again redirect to state -5
12. In the end: Close the spectrometer, stop the speed measurement and so on
State -11 Send stop ACQ notification for all the dynamically launched vis, stop those vis..close  all instrument refs .. stop main vi
If the states are dependent on user intervention then Event based producer consumer can be used where, the producer will control when to start the whole process and when to stop the process( Using queues).The consumer can be Queue driven Enum based state machine