Increase the Price of LabVIEW by $2

[vitoi]

  + $2  =          +

This idea was actually thought of by falkpl as presented in http://forums.ni.com/t5/ideas/v2/ideapage/blog-id/labviewideas/article-id/18123/page/4#comments . I’ve taken the liberty to post it as an idea.

The concept is simple. LabVIEW Embedded for ARM has very few sales. But it’s an interesting product. Given the low level of sales, why not fold in LabVIEW Embedded for ARM into LabVIEW on a revenue neutral basis. That is, take the current price of LabVIEW Embedded for ARM multiply it by its unit sales and divide by the unit sales of LabVIEW (desktop). Take this amount and add it to the price of LabVIEW and include LabVIEW Embedded for ARM as part of LabVIEW. falkpl’s estimate is that this would add about $5 to the price of LabVIEW. My estimate is more like $1, so let’s take the geometric mean of $2 (why quibble when LabVIEW costs $4499).

The LabVIEW Embedded for ARM target board is a Texas Instruments EK-LM3S8962, which sells for $89 and is open source. That is, once you’ve got your application running you can cut-and-past the relevant portion of the board’s hardware and use it in your design. Or you can just use the development board. It’s up to you and probably mainly depends on volume.

I believe that folding in LabVIEW Embedded for ARM into LabVIEW (desktop) will increase the popularity of LabVIEW. What LabVIEW programmer wouldn’t like the possibility of programming a microcontroller  in LabVIEW, even if they never get around to it?

Wouldn’t it be great to use LabVIEW capable of programming a 32-bit microcontroller for just $2 more?

P.S. To make this truly revenue neutral, if LabVIEW sales increase more than otherwise projected, which I suspect they will, the LabVIEW price should be reduced accordingly. In the end, I believe LabVIEW would have more features and, because of more unit sales, a lower price tag. Yippee.

[PhillipBrooks]

If NI only sold software, your suggestion would be reasonable. A significant portion of revenue comes from hardware. An $89 hardware alternative could reduce hardware revenue enough that software could easily double in cost to keep NI profitable. I would look at the ARM Embedded package is more of a solution for people who absolutely need that processor and custom electronics rather than as a general purpose platform.

[vitoi]

Would any NI hardware sales be lost?

Those that want to develop an embedded product and want to use a microcontroller will do so. This is exactly the situation I found myself in and rather than using my preferred programming language of LabVIEW to program the TI LM3S9D96 development board, I had to relearn C and learn Code Composer Studio. Wouldn't it be better for NI's revenue to attract more customers rather than turning existing customers away.

Including microcontroller programming will attract new entrants to LabVIEW programming and increase it's popularity. It will also reduce current LabVIEW developers abandoning LabVIEW in disgust.

In summary, I don't think NI will loose hardware sales, but it will get more LabVIEW sales, which I think is key to NI's prosperity.

[Dennis_Knutson]

I doubt that there would be a lot of new LabVIEW users. Who is going to spend $4000+ on a software package for cheap hardware. Existing LabVIEW users might use it but would someone new? Is learning C all that difficult? Especially with all the free C compilers and existing code that is out there.

[altenbach]

A significant amount of cheap hardware is targeted at students, and they can get the LabVIEW student edition for about $20 (or sometimes free when attending a LabVIEW user group). No need for $4000+.

At the academic forum at NI Week, TI showed several embedded systems that are supported by LabVIEW embedded (see for example). Unfortunately, the embedded ARM module does not seem to be part of any academic license or student bundle. I asked the booth attendant about this and they were unaware (...that reminds me that they said they will get back to me with more info, but I haven't heard anything yet). I don't know what it would involve to get LabVIEW ARM embedded in order to be able to use these things, because the website never lists any prices! Is it ¢ or $$$$$??? 😮

[vitoi]

Dennis, as for most things in life, this operates at the margin. There are those that definitely use LabVIEW and will be unaffected (~1% of the developer community). There are those that will definitely not use LabVIEW and they will also be unaffected. Those that are half-half about using LabVIEW need a motivation to take the plunge (maybe 1% of the non-LabVIEW developer community). These are the people we are targeting. I suspect that there are as many people borderline considering using LabVIEW as there are LabVIEW users. Moves such as folding in LabVIEW Embedded for ARM may be just enough to sway them.

With regard to using C or LabVIEW to program a microcontroller, LabVIEW is so much better. I build my first LM3S8962 demo application (an each-a-sketch) in 3 minutes. I've been learning Code Composer Studio for 2 weeks now and will need another 2 weeks just to get my head around it. Microcontroller application development is so much easier in LabVIEW. So why not use it, I hear you ask? Because it's been hobbled by NI. No new Tier 1 boards for 6 years, inefficient context switching (which can be fixed), etc.

One things for sure, we need more LabVIEW developers. Only about 1% of software developers use LabVIEW. That's a lot of untapped market if LabVIEW can be made more universally appealing. I'm trying to think of ways to make this happen.

[vitoi]

altenbach, the problem with the current LabVIEW embedded development boards is that they are over 6 years old. There are much better development boards available today such as the Texas Instruemnts DK-LM3S9D96 and the Stellaris Launchpad.

I feel a new idea coming on...

[vitoi]

Done. See http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-for-Stellaris-Launchpad/idi-p/2147586 .

[Tom_Hawkins]

"Is learning C all that difficult?"

If learning C wasn't all that difficult, why would LabVIEW exist?