Labview + SPI Sensors

[Gdeaver]

Team 1640 built a 4 wheel independent steering pivot drive for 2010. We used 4 window motors for steering. To sense wheel position, we used Cherry AN8 series non-contact absolute rotary position sensors. They output a analog voltage from .5 volts to 4.5 volts. They have performed very well. However we are looking at other sensor options and have found some other encoders that put out a synchronous serial stream of 16 bits. My question is has any other team used the Labview SPI interface with success? We would have to use 36" cables to 2 of the sensors. Is this a problem? Do we need to use shielded cable? Before we buy some to test it would be nice to know if this is a viable solution. Like I said the analog sensors work fine but we could get better resolution and linearity with the serial sensors. Any input would be appreciated.