What is LabVIEW

[EricS-Team180]

Originally Posted by texasdiaz

This way I can start up my autonomous code and watch the RC react to the sensor data from the simulated Hall-effect sensors. Does my robot stop after N number of pulses? Yes! I've just unit tested a portion of my autonomous code without having any physical robot hardware attached to the RC! Once I have my robot, the values can be tweaked for optimum performance.

Dang! We've given a lot of lip service, over the last few years, to building a "black box" that could simulate sensor inputs, but you've just given us a whole lot more!

Eric

There is a version of Labview called RoboLab written for the Lego RCX brick.
I believe this has always been included as part of the FLL distribution, and can be obtained separately from Dacta for under $50 (I think). Robolab was witten by Tufts University under a NASA Grant. I believe our own Jeff Seaton
(National MC and NASA guy) was responsible for awarding the grant. Any way you can get a good introduction to Labview for very little $$$. I don't think LabView would be suitable for FRC, heck - you guys need to learn C eventually!!!!

If you google "tufts sensors NASA" you should get to the site.

[Mr.G]

LabVIEW is a great program made by a company that stands behind their product. The hardware is also the best in the industry and relatively inexpensive, but the software is not. Both have been around a long while.

It is rumored that Microsoft purchased the Windows name from National Instruments.

I use it every day, and love it.

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by Eagle Master

LabVIEW is a great program made by a company that stands behind their product. The hardware is also the best in the industry and relatively inexpensive, but the software is not.

I hope you mean that the software is not relatively inexpensive, and not not the best in the industry. Our software is definitely not inexpensive, mainly because it's done right. What's the difference between a $20 USB-to-Serial converter and National Instruments $150 USB-to-Serial converter? Ours actually works when it's supposed to. As far as drivers go, I'd say we produce the best in the business, and they're free. As far as LabVIEW, TestSTAND, MeasurementStudio, etc... products are concerned, you'd be hard pressed to find anything better for what they're designed for.

Originally Posted by Eagle Master

It is rumored that Microsoft purchased the Windows name from National Instruments.

LabVIEW was originally designed to run on the Mac because Windows didn't have the graphics engine required to use LabVIEW. If NI had anything to do with the Windows name, this is the first I'm hearing of it...

-Danny

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

There is a version of Labview called RoboLab written for the Lego RCX brick.

True and False. RoboLab isn't actually a version of LabVIEW, it's an app built on top of the LabVIEW runtime engine. It uses all of the components of LabVIEW but isn't a specific "version" of LabVIEW. Originally Chris Rogers at Tufts wrote VI's to plug into LabVIEW, and we worked with him to expose the front-end hooks necessary to make it its own "application". However, with that said, each of the last 4 versions of RoboLab (at least, could be more) has used a version of LabVIEW that was specifically tweaked for RoboLab - we took a version of LabVIEW (LabVIEW 7.x for the latest version, RoboLab 2.5.4) and released a dot-release for RoboLab specifically.

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

Any way you can get a good introduction to Labview for very little $$$. I don't think LabView would be suitable for FRC, heck - you guys need to learn C eventually!!!!

LabVIEW Student Edition costs $89, it's also a cost-effective way to learn LabVIEW. Realize that only the most advanced RoboLab programs will actually use LabVIEW as you would consider it as a real programming language, there are a lot of things you cannot do with LabVIEW when targeting an RCX. I would strongly disagree that LabVIEW wouldn't be suitable for FRC - as a matter of fact, it might be better than traditional C programming. It all depends on whether or not you're more trying to emphasize low-level or high-level programming; more and more colleges are not teaching C or C++ but more Java because they are focusing more on high-level programming. I agree you should learn what's inside the hardware "black box" and how to control it, but when it comes down to it what's important (especially for FIRST) is how to incorporate the usage of the hardware, sensors, and such in a program at a high level. Drowning in the implementation details of a list or an array is a GREAT academic effort but completely unnecessary for a 6-week competition.

-Danny

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

There is a version of Labview called RoboLab written for the Lego RCX brick.

I guess I get to finally tell everyone that there are now 2 programs written for 2 different versions of the LEGO Mindstorms family, and both are written on top of LabVIEW - the new LEGO Mindstorms NXT system is more of an environment that uses LabVIEW in a MUCH different way (way better in my opinion) and it introduces graphical programming concepts better for a smoother migration into LabVIEW.

-Danny