I have built some test equipment around a picolog 1216. It works in conjunction with Visual Basic routines called from Excel macros to transfer data directly into the workbook for analysis.
I have to build a duplicate system for installation on another PC. The prototype was built with MS Office running on Windows XP with the Picolog SDK loaded.
I have moved the excel spreadsheet to another computer with the SDK loaded and everything works fine. The software administrator for the new system is unhappy about loading the whole SDK onto the new system, am I correct in thinking I only need pl1000.dll loaded onto the new computer and if so in which directory do I put it?
If the dll is located in the same directory as the excel spreadsheet it should work fine, that is the way it would have been working in the first place. The sdk installation does not do any path mapping it is just a simple zip file extraction.
I've just got back to this after being diverted onto something else. I tried placing the pl1000.dll in the same directory as the spreadsheet I'm using, it doesn't work. I get a "Run-time error '53': File not found: pl1000.dll" message from Visual Basic and the Debugger starts.
Everything was working fine with pl1000.dll in a folder called "Pico Full" in a directory called "Pico Technolgy" in C:\Program files
I uninstalled Pico Technolgy and copied pl1000.dll to the same folder as the Excel workbook and now it doesn't work.
Also tried pl1000.dll in a variety of locations, hoping the workbook would find it, it doesn't.
Any clues as to what I'm missing? I suspect it's my complete ignorance of how to set up and use dlls but it would be nice to get past this blockage in learning about software installation.
I've just worked out how to fix this. Took too long to realise that pl1000.dll had to be in the same directory as the original Excel application program (within Microsoft Office\Office 12 on my PC), not the same directory as the workbook I had created with the macros embedded.
Guess thats what happenns when you let crusty old hardware engineers play with software.
Where you declare the .dll, you can append the excel worksheet location via 'ActiveWorkbook.Path' to the start - so you can bundle the worksheet and .dll together without having to put the .dll in other folders.
Thanks for the additional information. I'll try this in the future but as with all commercial installations, now it's working I'll not be allowed to test anything new in case I upset somebody's production plans.
I'll use it for the next test setup I have to make.