using Lab view for design graphical program to execute in ARM Micro

[shjalilian]

Hi, I am designing my own ARM micro board to monitor and control some analog and digital based units. Indeed it is a custom PLC which I want to find an appropriate software environment for programming. I am inspecting if the Lab View can facilitate to achieve this goal or not. I found that there is facilities in LV to generate C code and also I read some topics discussed about editing Ladder diagram. But I am not sure whether I design my own graphical software  or  develop based on LV tools. I am not sure which one is optimum way. Pls share your ideas experiences with me. 

[Hooovahh · Accepted solution]

As a major LabVIEW advocate, I don't think LabVIEW is the right solution to your problem.  LabVIEW works best on platforms that NI has provided support on.  This is x86 based Windows, Mac, and Linux, ARM platforms that the project explorer has integration with, and FPGAs that the project explorer has integration with.  These are typically limited to NI ARM and FPGA hardware, but there are a few exceptions like Raspberry Pi where NI has support for.  There is also a Chinese company trying to add support for other 3rd party hardware, but that goes against various NI EULAs.

If your design has you working on a random ARM board, and your only path to get LabVIEW code on it is the C generator, I suspect you will have a bad time.  I haven't personally used the C code generator, and I haven't heard of anyone actually using it so I suspect its uses are quite limited.

If you can entertain the idea of using a different hardware platform, I'd investigate the myRIO.  It is an embedded ARM device, with a built in FPGA, WIFI, USB, various AIO and DIO, and is running a real time version of Linux.  This opens the door for lots of open source tools to help do more.  They are marketed to students, but there is a non-academic price.  If you want something more industrial, then NI sells other embedded hardware solutions like the cRIO.  Or to cut cost there are real-time versions of the cDAQ which are embedded ARM or x86 running RT Linux with no FPGA.  The advantage of these is they support reconfigurable IO with modules that can pop in and add other features.  All of these things all run the same LabVIEW code and going from one platform to the next is pretty easy assuming you don't use any platform dependent features like .NET.

[shjalilian]

It was useful guidelines. I supposed that LV's graphical programming environment could help us to use it for getting Ladder diagram from user and use its output in target (ARM micro). But I found that this way is not an easy way as you said. Then I should search other tools. Thanks Hooovahh