Our copy of Labview 2014 has arrived. I will get installed on Thursday.
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This is absolutely FANTASTIC! Thanks!
May I ask specifically which version Makerspace now has?
Look forward to working with this wonderful graphical programming environment.
For those who have never worked with LabVIEW, it is a graphical programming environment (full blown coding language) that uses no syntax, only graphical constructs that represent loops, switches, case selectors in conjunction with variables such as numerics, arrays, booleans, clusters. Compilation is instantaneous, so you can run as soon as you make your changes. Its incredibly easy to program in this language, and extremely powerful (NASA, Intel, US Govt., really all the big boys use it for rapid prototype development, control systems, and automated test).
We could consider training classes, anyone might be interested?
It’s Labview 2014 Home Edition, the $50 makerspace version. If there is
a use case we can certainly upgrade to something else. At least we can
wet the appetite for it.
I think this is wonderful place to start. Look forward to firing it up on nice oversized monitor in the electronics room. It sure is looking nice in there!
For those new to LabVIEW, you may want to check out the forums at National Instrument ( http://forums.ni.com/
). The LabVIEW section can be a big help at times. There are also a number of tutorials on the NI web page and other places around the web.
LabView 2014 Home Edition is now on the eLab PC
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I saw that LabVIEW was installed, and I tried to run the software and it never came up. I click the icon and it appears to attempt to start, but just no LabVIEW splash screen comes up, and consequently, no actual LabVIEW opens.
I went to program files/national instruments/labview/ and made a copy of the icon and placed it on the desktop. I double clicked it, and still no LabVIEW opened. Maybe need to run as administrator? I even tried this, but, of course, I have no admin password to do so.
Is there a recommended protocol for opening this version of LabVIEW?
I will have to check it again. I opened the software but did not have a project in mind to test.
That is after I find where our keyboard went?! The replacement is mostly unusable.
OK, I got it to launch. I had evidently done strange thing on accident with mouse and physically moved the executable by accident. Once I replaced it to its native position in file structure, it launches as expected.
Legs are not typically installed as standard equipment on keyboards. I have one in my trunk I can try to give this Maker LabVIEW version a test drive. I’ll let you know how this goes…
Thx for installing!!
OK, so I did a review of this LabVIEW version, and was happy to see that it was a nicely equipped version for the price-tag. Here is what I found:
Included:
*Standard programming constructs and functions
*GPIB and Instrument I/O functions
*Mathematics functions
*Signal Processing functions
Upgrades As Needed:
*Vision and Motion toolkit
*Report Generation toolkit
*FPGA Toolkit
This version reminds me a lot of the student version of LabVIEW. In fact, it may be the exact same set of included functionality. It allows us a lot of capabilities useful in the lab like the ability to hook up to any number of GPIB instruments and take measurements and control them (like scopes, VNAs, power supplies). We could also use this version to control RS232 and I think even USB controllable instruments.
Once the data is in the machine from the lab instruments, we could display on screen live, take computer automated measurements on the signals and waveforms using signal processing functions available, and we could save data to text files, MS office files, or use SQL commands to write to database. The report generation toolkit is not included, but you can write to office files with ActiveX and you can write your own SQL function library if so inclined (and have the time).
Motion and Vision is NOT included, and NI would want $ for this Im pretty sure. This is really powerful library of tools that makes it real easy to hook video camera into PC, process acquire images, pattern matching, level checks, OCR, etc. The motion part allows you to control systems of stepper motors. If you put the two together, you can easily control systems that can see and move, like robots, milling machines, pick and place, you name it. We could have a lot of fun with this at Makerspace, but such projects usually get very involved very quickly. So maybe need a project and resources allocated for the project before getting deep into this.
So I would say that we have a wonderful start here! So now the big question… what cool stuff do we want to make now that its here??