please some tell me how to start programing in labview

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

I have never used Labview, but I quickly glanced at some of the online tutorials and it appears to be kinda sorta like EasyC as far as drag and drop is concerned. Can I expect to figure it out in a couple of hours and teach my new students logic in the same way, or should I start taking my C++ books to bed with me at night and put Mike Walker's cell phone on speed dial?

If you start with the assumption that LabVIEW is "sorta like EasyC" you'll quickly find yourself frustrated by the differences.

If you start with the understanding that the LabVIEW graphical programming language is a different kind of language altogether, you'll be able to get comfortable with it much more easily. The fundamental thing to keep in mind is that it's data which controls execution, not program structure per se. Each block is trying to execute simultaneously, waiting for its input to be available before doing its job and providing an output.

Unlearn what you know about procedural languages and embrace the goodness that is LabVIEW. That's my commitment for this season. Fortunately, LabVIEW for FRC will come with a wealth of applicable examples and tutorials. The brief glance I had at it last weekend gives me a very warm feeling about how well we will be able to use it.

[MorbidAngel]

You can go onto http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/...view/index.htm and they have lots of tutorials on how to do stuff

[rjmah]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

If you start with the assumption that LabVIEW is "sorta like EasyC" you'll quickly find yourself frustrated by the differences.

Unlearn what you know about procedural languages and embrace the goodness that is LabVIEW.

I still think the best analogy for Labview is to think signal processing and electronic board layout. Digital and analog in to digital / analog out. What you put in Labview are amplifiers, comparators, conditional signals and many advanced functions to make your outputs.

[kamocat]

Wow
That's a really good way of thinking about it. Here we have our reprogrammable hardware (FPGA), and we're programming it like true hardware (an electronic diagram). We could even go so far as to say arrays are our ribbon cables.

[Greg McKaskle]

If these are useful to get you started, great, but there are big differences, specifically LV processes discrete chunks of data in a synchronized fashion. It is somewhat more like a digital circuit with clocking and enabling controlled by the dataflow needs.

Greg McKaskle

[Annette Somers]

I know how to start programming in Labview, but I'm looking for info about doing advanced stuff like inter-task communication (eg, semaphores).

Is that included in the book, "Labview For Everyone"?

If not, can anyone recommend a book that covers it?

Thanx.

--Annette

[jdejoannis]

Run the benchtop control system test to make sure everything is working and set up correctly. Then start with very very simple programming tasks and work your way up. Look for concrete examples in the manuals. I found some in WPI's C/C++ Programming Guide. Even if you are using LabView, these examples are still relevant since you will be using the same WPI functions to get the job done.

[kamocat]

Yep, that's in it. Beginning of Chapter 13, I believe. It also covers state machines, queues, locked resources, local and global variables, and some other cool stuff.
Unfortunately, the book is around $70 (I don't know why they never make $25 textbooks)