Make labview everywhere a reality

[falkpl]

I have used labview for a long time and avid user.  One issue I have been hitting lately is the "LabVIEW everywhere" slogan never really panned out, it has become LabVIEW everywhere NI allows it to be.  I am getting jealous of the Arduino and Rasberry Pi and hundreds of PICS and ARMs not avaliable to me (Yes I have the pro liscence but not embedded).  I wish Labview pro opened up the toolchain and started porting to many other platforms by default.  I am seeing jobs that labview is loosing ot to where it should be much more competetive like the embedded market. 

Essentially I am looking to see the Labview development environment easily work with toolchains for the most popular processors and also open up a simple standard to add targets to projects. 

Wouldnt it be nice to program a $25 ardunio dirrectly from labview (NO THIS IS NOT WHAT THE TOOLKIT IS DOING).  Add a Ardunio target file (maps the io memory to variables and throw down a loop, boolean shift register, a wait and a digital line variable, download to the micro and the blink led example is done.  Really open up the doors for LabVIEW everywhere.

[vitoi]

falkpl, you've brought up an important aspect of getting LabVIEW Everywhere to work. It is important to get microcontroller board manufacturers to include LabVIEW "drivers" for LabVIEW Embedded. However, NI needs to get this started.

When LabVIEW desktop got started, NI didn't say to the instrument makers - include a LabVIEW driver or you'll loose market share. LabVIEW was the new entrant and NI provided instrument drivers for popular instruments. Once critical mass was achieved, instrument manufacturers included LabVIEW drivers. Today, many instruments have LabVIEW drivers as part of the package. It's what you expect.

Would be good for NI and our careers if the same was achieved with LabVIEW Embedded. NI needs to start the ball rolling with development board "drivers" and achieve critical mass.

Of course, LabVIEW Everywhere is not just about microcontrollers, but it's a good place to start given the development effort has already been done by NI.

I wonder if I'll be programming microcontrollers in LabVIEW or .NET Micro Framework in two years time? Time will tell.

[falkpl]

 - This presentation (last year NI week?)  shows some hints of the power of such an implementation.

http://zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-2875/upvisited/y

Labview in a PC is powerful so would LV on a chip.  The PC is slowly dissappearing It had an awsome run, we must be ready fo the embedded future.

[Peter_B]

falkpl, unfortunately the Flash video in the link you gave doesn't play.

My current interest lies in embedded offerings (uC and FPGA), but it is worth reminding people reading these comments that by definition,  LabVIEW Everywhere includes smartphones and tablets too, and that is a much larger market than custom embedded targets.

Imagine how many more votes this idea would have now received if the original post mentioned this point, and had the above graphic to attract people's attention  !!

[falkpl]

Try this link,

zone.ni.com/wv/app/doc/p/id/wv-2875

[vitoi]

falkpl, thanks for the link to the video. Given that the video is now over 9 months old, hopefully a powerful and inexpensive Xilinx Zynq based offering will come out soon from NI. Something like

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-FPGA-Idea-Exchange/Smaller-and-cheaper-sbRIO-based-on-Xilinx-Zynq/id... would be great.

The combination of dual ARM Cortex-A9 running at 800 MHz and FPGA logic in a compact size would make a great sbRIO!

[NICOLESKY]

Hi to everyone,

From what I see , I'm not the only guy who wants to port Labview dataflow on embedded custom Hardware.

It will be great one day to download Arduino,Pic,ARM,etc firmwares with the Labview Block diagram.

Some important step have been done with the Ni ARM tool that i'm going to try. 

Hope this ,one day , could be open to other platforms. Switching from C/C++ to Labview firmware should improve  embedded designing speed .

Let's think about mutex,semaphores,global variables structures ,... in C programming replaced by few VIs.

In my opinion will be faster to develop embedded applications.

Nico

[ErnieH]

And PLC's. Having recently 'inherited' some PLC based systems, having an option that runs on the PLC itself would be very useful. Their controllers are becoming more complex but the toolset does not seem to be keeping up IMO. Painful to create more complex logic. Painful to debug. Difficult to create and modify GUI's. Working with the manufacturers to create a control package that runs natively on the PLC with LabVIEW's native debugging tools would be great. The long life, reliability, and stability of PLC's coupled with a longer life version of LabVIEW that actually runs on it would be a great tool.

[falkpl]

I am hoping for some update at NI week with the ZYNQ.  This shows some great promise with a tightly integrated FPGA and dual A9 ARM.  This would open up atleast some more ARM options hopfully not requiring a major additional software investment (ie embedded toolkits).  I still hope for a more open toolchain some day, only time will tell if NI agrees that LabVIEW everywhere is more important than ever.

[vitoi]

The Xilinx Zynq chip is a great product for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, it allows NI to produce a cheaper, smaller and more OEM friendly sbRIO. Something like http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-FPGA-Idea-Exchange/Smaller-and-cheaper-sbRIO-based-on-Xilinx-Zynq/id... 

Secondly, it will be the catalyst that get's NI to offer such a great product. With dual ARM Cortex A9 and FPGA fabric in the one chip, there will be other players that provide an integrated development environment for microcontrollers and FPGA's. The chip is here, the innovative development environment will come. NI need to stay ahead of the game or become second fiddle.

Thirdly, it's cheap. $30 in single quantities. This will open up a whole new market of embedded programmers.

[josborne]

Want to hear about innovation?  Checkout NI's list of product changes in their LV 2011 release:

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361H-01/lvupgrade/labview_features/

Some real ground breaking stuff, huh?

I remember at NI Week in 2011, it seemed like the biggest change in LV2011 was that the product was STABLE ... yes, they poured tons of hours into make it actually work and with minimal bugs!  Sorry, that is not innovation.