LabVIEW vs C/C++

[David Doerr]

We expect to be using C++ this season, but while developing our software we intend to use LabVIEW features not available in C++. One is the Vision Assistant already mentioned. Another -- LabVIEW has an impressive set of PID tools -- automatic and Ziegler-Nichols tuning. Joe Ross has worked with those and he can tell you lots more about them than I can.

My opinion is that C++ support does lag behind LabVIEW. I think there is still no dashboard support. I mentioned the PID tools -- those have caught up a little since the beginning of beta testing. But we did find the WindRiver Workbench C++ tools very capable and a lot of fun to work with, and we expect them to serve us well. Writing, building, downloading and running programs in C++ is very fast once you spend a short amount of time learning the process.

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by DaveD

I think there is still no dashboard support.

Correct, there are currently no provisions to write a dashboard in C++. However, a robot running C++ code can use a dashboard written in LabVIEW. Also, I don't think there is anything preventing people from writing a dashboard in *insert language here*.

[David Doerr]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

However, a robot running C++ code can use a dashboard written in LabVIEW.

I don't believe C++ programmers can currently send data from the robot to display on the dashboard -- including either basic I/O data or user data -- but I've been told on the beta test discussion forum that work is being done to add that capability.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by DaveD

I don't believe C++ programmers can currently send data from the robot to display on the dashboard -- including either basic I/O data or user data -- but I've been told on the beta test discussion forum that work is being done to add that capability.

You can set the Digital Outs in C++, at least. I can see where the user bytes go, but there aren't any accessor functions implemented yet. I suspect the problem is coming up with a reasonably clean way to serialize the data teams want to send, such that a Labview dashboard has decent odds of appropriately deserializing it on the other end.