A Protocol for Automatic Generation of Web-Based Interfaces for LabVIEW Applications Using the Remote Interoperability Protocol

Summary

This study validates a remote interoperability protocol (RIP)-based automatic Web user interface generation with two distinct LabVIEW systems—a fan model and a direct current motor position-control model—and provides a reproducible procedure for constructing, registering, deploying, and testing both examples.

Abstract

Remote experimental platforms enable local simulation models or physical devices to be accessed over a network, but conventional Web front ends typically require a separate page, control layout, and data communication logic for each experiment, which increases development costs. This work validates an established workflow for automatically generating a Web user interface (UI) from LabVIEW virtual instruments (VIs) using the remote interoperability protocol (RIP) and provides a reproducible protocol for implementing it. The workflow constructs LabVIEW VIs that define input controls and output indicators on the Front Panel, registers each VI in RIP Server Configuration, reads the resulting variable metadata, and generates the corresponding Web controls and output displays. Caddy is used as a reverse proxy to unify the front-end static-file path and RIP application programming interface (API) request path. The workflow is evaluated with two distinct systems: a fan speed model and a direct current (DC) motor proportional-integral-derivative (PID) position-control model. In both cases, the Web page identifies the exposed variables, writes user inputs to the LabVIEW back end, reads model outputs, and generates the interface from RIP metadata. These results validate the same automatic UI-generation process across two different dynamic systems and document the steps required to reproduce it.

Introduction

With the development of remote experiments, online teaching, and Internet-of-Things technologies, providing Web-based access to local simulation models or experimental devices has become an important direction for experimental platform development^1,2,3,4. Recent work has further integrated Internet-of-Things-equipped laboratories with project-based learning and local or remote access, demonstrating the continued development of flexible and networked experimental platforms in engineering education⁵. For control system ....

Protocol

Complete the following steps to build, register, deploy, and verify two RIP-accessible LabVIEW experiments following the workflow summarized in Figure 1. All the tools and platforms used in this study are listed in the Table of Materials.

1. Build and deploy the fan model experiment

1. Build the fan model VI.
   1. Open LabVIEW, create a new VI, and save the file as fengshan.vi. Save the VI in any directory accessible by the RIP WebService process. The Private folder is used only as an example directory and is not hardcoded in RIP. Enter the actual selected VI pa....

Results

After completing the workflow described above, both the fan experiment and the DC motor PID position control experiment can be accessed through the automatically generated Web front end. A successful result is indicated by three observations. First, the Web page automatically generates input controls and output display fields according to the variable metadata returned by the RIP Server. Second, when the user changes an input variable on the Web page, the modified value is written to the LabVIEW back-end VI through the R.......

Discussion

A critical step in this protocol is the standardized construction and registration of the LabVIEW back-end VI. The Front Panel controls and indicators must use clear and unique variable names, and their data types must match the variables expected by the model calculation and by the RIP read/write process. In the two examples used in this protocol, scalar numeric variables are defined as DBL controls or indicators, and Boolean variables are defined as Boolean controls. The Block Diagram must also maintain continuous stat.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Caddy Proxy Server	Caddy	N/A	Reverse proxy used to serve the Web UI and forward /RIP requests to RIP WebService
Caddyfile	Prepared by the authors	N/A	Defines static-file routes and reverse-proxy routes for RIP communication
Fan_Automatic_UI.xhtml	Prepared by the authors	N/A	Metadata-based Web front end for the fan experiment
LabVIEW	National Instruments	2026	Software used to construct and run fengshan.vi and Motor.vi
Microsoft Windows operating system	Microsoft	Win11	Operating system used to run LabVIEW, RIP WebService, Caddy, and the browser.
Motor_Automatic_UI.xhtml	Prepared by the authors	N/A	Metadata-based Web front end for the motor experiment
Mozilla Firefox desktop browser	Mozilla	2026	Desktop browser used for Web UI access, developer tools, timing/resource observations, and Network/Console screenshots.
RIP WebService	UNEDLabs	https://github.com/Nebulous-Systems/rip-server_labview	Receives RIP POST requests and provides the WebService communication layer used by the browser front end.
Windows Task Manager	Microsoft	Built into Windows	Used to record process-level CPU and memory observations for the browser and LabVIEW processes.