Opinions wanted: LabView-based controller?

[JBotAlan]

While a LabVIEW-based controller would run fine, there are teams out there programming on a 350MHz laptop with a 6GB hard drive with 128MB of RAM. Try installing, let alone running, LabVIEW on that. And LabVIEW does NOT need to install any service on my machine (a good program does not rely on them), or start anything up at startup, yet it was trying to start at least 3 processes (which I promptly disabled) at startup.

I also find that documentation on LabVIEW is extremely sparse. For C, there are *tons* of tutorials. Not so for LabVIEW. Mostly because it is so expensive.

At least before today, the MCC18 compiler could be run on any system, even Linux, through WINE. I'm 99.99% sure LabVIEW won't so as well in an emulator. What about alternate OS programmers?

I'm tired of proprietary software. I'd like to see IFI or whoever designs the new controller to *completely* open-source the whole thing. Schematics, master code, compiler, IDE, etc. That would be really nice.

If LabVIEW was quite a bit less beefy, then maybe I might go for it. However, I think that many programmers would be disabled by LabVIEW--it wouldn't install on their systems, or would crash. It's fine for industries that can afford new computers, but we are not such an industry.

It's not that I'm trying to put down LabVIEW; I believe it has applications in other areas (signal processing and simulation are two areas that come to mind) but I don't see it as suitable for FIRST.

Maybe I'm just biased by all of the nice open-source projects I've seen, but that's my 2 cents on this topic.

JBot

[Adam Y.]

# Installation instructions have been poor or missing, even with correct instructions it takes a long time to install. We usually have four classroom computers plus at least two mentor or loaner laptops.

That is right. I don't remember how long it specifically takes to install LabView but there a significant amount of other programs that you install in a full installation. I also don't remember needing instructions though.

At least before today, the MCC18 compiler could be run on any system, even Linux, through WINE. I'm 99.99% sure LabVIEW won't so as well in an emulator. What about alternate OS programmers?

Labview can be run on all systems. In fact it would be a step up from running an emulator. It stems from the fact that LabView was originally designed on a Mac.

I'm tired of proprietary software. I'd like to see IFI or whoever designs the new controller to *completely* open-source the whole thing. Schematics, master code, compiler, IDE, etc. That would be really nice.

The problem is that you would be severely limiting your options with such a constraint. There are very little microcontrollers that have open source compilers. I'm all for using LabView if I can be shown it's a good choice for this application. I'm certainly convinced that it's an excellent choice for experimentation and data collection. I can collect data from many different instruments with a minimal amount of effort.

[JBotAlan]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

That is right. I don't remember how long it specifically takes to install LabView but there a significant amount of other programs that you install in a full installation. I also don't remember needing instructions though.

Labview can be run on all systems. In fact it would be a step up from running an emulator. It stems from the fact that LabView was originally designed on a Mac.

Umm...FIRST shipped the WINDOWS version of LabVIEW. AFAIK the other OS versions have to be ordered separately and are separate licenses. Those licenses are not cheap.

The problem is that you would be severely limiting your options with such a constraint. There are very little microcontrollers that have open source compilers. I'm all for using LabView if I can be shown it's a good choice for this application. I'm certainly convinced that it's an excellent choice for experimentation and data collection.

I am fairly convinced it is not a good choice for the reasons I outlined in the post you responded to.

It would be fun to experiment, but when all is said and done, I am much happier coding in C.

JBot

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

Umm...FIRST shipped the WINDOWS version of LabVIEW. AFAIK the other OS versions have to be ordered separately and are separate licenses. Those licenses are not cheap.

Yeah, you're right, if you walked to your local sales office and tried to pick up a copy of LabVIEW it'd cost you several thousand dollars. However, National Instruments feels FIRST teams shouldn't pay a penny for LabVIEW, and so far that's how we've handled that situation. Teams who want a copy of LabVIEW for Linux or for the Mac merely have to ask for the specific operating system version. We had a thread over in the National Instruments LabVIEW topic in the Technical section where some had asked for the Linux and/or Mac version, and we told 'em where to send the e-mail requests; everyone who asked got their copies, some even got upgrades when the upgrades came out...

It would be fun to experiment, but when all is said and done, I am much happier coding in C.

I'm sure you're not the only one, primarily because that's "what you're most familiar with." I recently had a very "rich" discussion with a group of 7th graders who wanted to program their LEGO Mindstorms robots with Java, and their primary rationale was because "it's what everyone programs in nowadays." So I asked them how rich their library set was, how quickly they could get a program up and running, how easy it was to debug, how extensive it was, and questions like this to try to get them thinking about the things that would be important to consider. Their immediate reaction was one of, "but I KNOW Java, I have used it FOREVER, I don't want to learn a new language!" Those are all good reasons for a 7th grader to stick with when programming a LEGO Mindstorms robot, but is it the best one for an engineering competition such as FRC? I dunno, I'm still on the fence.

-Danny