Hi Eli,
Latest update is Fall 2023 for VENUS 6 for NIMBUS!
Thanks,
-Eric
That’s great it’s moving up!
“Fall” is pretty vague…do you at least have a definition of the “end of fall”…? Is Dec 21st what you consider the end of fall since that’s technically the first day of winter? Or are you thinking “by end of Q3”…?
Hi Eli,
I was told Fall 2023, but as soon as I have a more accurate date, I will be sure to let you all know! That being said, even if I had a specific date, I would take it with a grain of salt as there are often delays depending on the results of QA testing.
-Eric
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Does Venus 6 still rely on Microsoft SQL Server 2014? Or does it incorporate a newer version? If not, does Hamilton have a plan moving forward to account for Extended Support ending in July 2024?
Thanks!
VENUS 5 and 6 both use Microsoft SQL Server 2019!
-Nick
2 Likes
Hi @EricSindelar_Hamilton , any details on the Venus 6 Rest API? Last I heard it was slated for a later release (Maybe late Fall if I remember right), is this still the case?
Hi Keenan,
The API is included by default with the VENUS six installation.
The API has a SwaggerUI to view all the functions available, although it´s disabled by default. To enable SwaggerUI:
- Edit ProgramFiles(x86)\HAMILTON\Bin\WebAPI\WebAPI.Host.appsettings.json with a text editor
- At the bottom, set the “swaggerUIEnabled” setting to true
- Stop/start the “Hamilton VENUS WebAPI Host” service.
- Open http://localhost:51745/swagger/index.html
5 Likes
Any plans to release this version to the public for development work? Have loved being able to download and Venus 4 on my personal machine, hoping to do the same with Venus 6!
For customers with systems under warranty or service contract, the software is free and upgrades are typically free so long as they coincide with a PM. Otherwise, the software is available for purchase.
That’s great for current customers, unfortunate for those who might be considering adopting the software. Would love to be able to recommend Venus 6 but without a thorough test drive I don’t think I’d be comfortable doing that.
For demos and evaluations, I recommend reaching out to your local sales team to see what accommodations can be made. If you need any help getting in touch with them, please let me know!
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Question about Virtual Machines for Venus 6. Has Hamilton done any testing to see if this works on Windows 2019 Server?
As long as the virtual machine software you use to launch VMs is compatible with Windows Server 2019 as the host OS, and the VENUS 6 VM is generated with Windows 10 or 11 as the guest OS, then I don’t see why you would have an issue running a VENUS 6 VM.
VENUS 6 was validated for use with Windows 10 and 11, and would not have been tested against other operating systems.
-Nick
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Hello,
I wanted to post something here to the forum, in the case that it might help others when they upgrade to Venus 6. Recently we just had our 1.3 Hamilton Vantage upgraded to Venus 6 but ran into a couple of bumps in the road after the upgrade was completed. On top of our Hamilton we have a HEPA hood/fan and when we went to run some of our methods that uses this fan we ran into a syntax error on the new software, while it was analyzing the script, that read “The key SOFTWARE\Phoenix\Instruments\HxFan\Command could not be opened or does not exist”.
After a couple emails and failed attempts of trying to install new drivers for the HEPA fan/hood, our local FAS had to come on site to try and rectify the error himself. What he ended up doing was retrieving an even newer version of an installer for the HEPA hood, and then created a new script for us that would call on the new driver and turn the fan/hood on.
The next day after our FAS completed all of this I then exported all of the scripts I knew that called on the old driver of the HEPA hood, and removed all of those steps and removed this line of HSL code: global device HxFan (“Organoid Screening Methods\OrganoidScreening_VantageProduction_DeckLayoutV4_2023.lay”, “HxFan”, hslTrue);
This then allowed me to open the scripts on the computer with the new Venus 6 update and input the new coding for the new driver of HEPA hood that our FAS created. I was then successfully able to load a method and start it with the HEPA fan/hood running.
Moral of the story is, make sure that when you do upgrade to Venus 6 that you have the newest driver for the HEPA hood and try to start a method before they leave to ensure that you do not run into any errors.
Let me know if anyone else has any questions in regards to this!
6 Likes
Hello,
Another warning, any submethods saved with venus6 won’t be compatible with venus5.
This seems like no biggie, but many libraries are SMTs, so if you edit one of those, you won’t be able to use it in any Venus 5 methods.
We use git repositories to keep our team’s libraries up to date. After one team member made changes to a library and pushed it to the repo, we couldn’t even open any method that referenced that library. we thought the methods got corrupted, but eventually realised that the issue was Venus 6 incompatibility.
Be careful with libraries saved in venus 6
cheers
5 Likes
That’s really good to know, thanks @Emile. Do you know what its changing under the hood, when you open an existing v4 smt and then saving in v6? Is it changing any of the hsl? Or just the checksum or something?
Is this intended behaviour @EricSindelar_Hamilton @NickHealy_Hamilton?
This is a dif of a blank smt’s .his file. No differences there except the name, timestamp and checksum
If we dif the smt however:
Line 1 is a few thousand characters long and also have differences.
Line 6 has an additional parameter for Venus6
Line 12 ends with 5 in Venus6 where it ends with a 4 in venus5
If I change lines 6 and 12 manually I get a “reached end-of-file while parsing …” error.
Hi Emile, in order to manually modify an smt file in a text editor you need to first convert it to ascii format using the HxCfgFilConverter located at C:\Program Files (x86)\HAMILTON\Bin. After doing so, the file is easier to read and your approach should work.