Does anyone know any free websites, books or other resources to learn labview?

[NyCityKId]

Hey guys. My team is pretty big so we dont have a shortage of ideas on how to tackle the FRC yearly challenge but we are usually limited by how well we can program. Next year I want our team to have an operational autonomous mode that works with sensors rather than being pre-programed. I also would like to use mecanum wheels.

[Kimmeh]

A mentor and I have found FRCMastery (http://frcmastery.com/) to be invaluable. In addition, just messing around with it during the off season helps greatly.

[NyCityKId]

thanks i just favorited the website

[Ether]

thanks i just favorited the website

This one is by the same company (Videos #5 through #11 are specifically for FRC):

http://www.lvmastery.com/tipjar2008


[EDIT] Also, visit your local library. If you live in a town of 50,000 or more there's a good chance there'll be a book on LabVIEW programming. If not, ask about Inter-Library Loan. It's usually a free service. You can get books from other libraries.


~

[Doc Wu]

I highly recommend Ben Zimmers sites, FRCmastery.com and LVMastery.com. They helped our team out immensely last year and we reviewed them this year along with the new material as a refresher.

I'm now using a book, Labview For Everyone, by Jeffery Travis. It seems to be a good all-purpose text on LabView. If you've gone through Ben's videos, you'll be quite comfortable jumping into this book and could even skip the first few chapters. I've been going through it a chapter at a time and it fills in the gaps that I missed before. It's written assuming you are using a trial version of LabView, but 95% of the examples work with the FRC version. Of course, it doesn't cover any of the robotics-specific parts.

You can find that book on amazon.com. I think there is a newer version than the one I got. It wasn't cheap (I bought a used copy) but not out of line for a computer textbook.

[kamocat]

LabVIEW for Everyone is an excellent resource for learning LabVIEW.
I wish I could give you a resource for instrumentation (what you can measure).
I think my Software Development Process for FRC (http://kamocat.com/programming/soft_dev_FRC.pdf) is also a good resource for how to go about creating code.

[Bill_B]

I'm presuming you already ran through the videos at NI.com(?) Amazingly enough, they'd like everyone to be fluent in labview. If you haven't watched them yet (there are quite a few) try it with teammates and nachos w. cheese. No, not the teammates with cheese! Or pick a snack to team's taste. You're there with them to insist on paying attention the the subject matter. It will make the other suggestions for help clearer once you've heard the basics from the source.