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]

It's been about ten years since NI got us all excited with the "promise" of LabVIEW Everywhere. Nothing eventuated. Does anyone think we'll get any of the LabVIEW Everywhere goodies within the next ten years?

[vitoi]

It would appear that National Instruments are unlikely to pursue the “promised” LabVIEW Everywhere since it does not fit into its business model. National Instruments has a gross margin of about 75%. Yep, take the cost of producing a product, quadruple it and that’s the sale price. This is much higher than Agilent’s 50% (take the cost of producing a product and double it). So we pay a huge premium for the privilege of using NI products.

So, if National Instruments have abandoned LabVIEW Everywhere (about 10 years ago), what are they pursuing for the prosperity of the company. The answer is RF. Yesterday the announcement went out that NI have acquired Signalion – another RF company acquisition. NI has acquired three or four RF companies over the last several years.

Moving into RF makes sense for National Instruments since it is a high capital cost, high margin product area and the RIO platform with its blinding speed and ease of programming is a good fit.

I have tried unsuccessfully to argue that good earning can be made from increasing LabVIEW sales through LabVIEW Everywhere, but it appears to be falling on deaf ears.

I don’t think we’ll get to see LabVIEW being used extensively outside the desktop. And even then less than 1% of software development worldwide happens using LabVIEW, so we are a rare breed indeed. Endangered species maybe?

Meanwhile the NI share price continues to fall (16.0% so far this year relative to the Nasdaq and 11.9% so far this year relative to Agilent). This is the only real pressure bearing on National Instruments to consider the LabVIEW Everywhere promise. We can yell all we like … nobody’s listening.

[vitoi]

Financial figures for 2012 now available:

* National Instruments: Down 2.5%

* Agilent: Up 14.2%

* Nasdaq: Up 13.6%

* Russell 2000: Up 13.1%

The relevant indices and Agilent are all up about 13 to 14% (and remarkably close to each other). National Instruments down 2.5% over the year (or down 14.2% relative to the Nasdaq).

Not a good year. Let's hope 2013 is kinder. Looking for a game changing innovation from National Instruments.

[antonio.matar]

I just saw this video where the iOS "Data Dashboard" is presented.  Unfortunately, this App only acts as a "Display" (no real interaction with VIs).  But also in the video there's Jeff Kodosky one of the NI founders, playing with an iPad and doing some real LabVIEW programming on it.  As far as I'm concerned, iPads run on an Apple A6 processor based on ARMv7.  Does this mean that in the close future we can expect the programming and deployment of executables on devices running on ARM architecture?

[tst]

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...in the video there's Jeff Kodosky one of the NI founders, playing with an iPad and doing some real LabVIEW programming on it.  As far as I'm concerned, iPads run on an Apple A6 processor based on ARMv7.  Does this mean that in the close future we can expect the programming and deployment of executables on devices running on ARM architecture?

---

No. As they say quite explicitly in the video, what they showed there is an early demo, nothing more. Maybe NI does have a plan to support execution on ARM devices (although Android seems more likely than iOS), but I wouldn't take that video as a sign that it is near.

[falkpl]

I quick update on this thread I started about 6 months ago.

I have started augmenting my LabVIEW ecosystem with microcontrollers and have made parts of complex labview systems communicate with custom firmware running on an arduino board.  Although the learning curve was not hard, it as dissapointing that my firmware is written in a in a non-labview environment.  The end result was what I wanted but the means to get there was not satisfying.  It would have really been great to have ported my vi dirrectly to a microcontroller via an open toolchain.  No this didnt take any sales form NI, I added the microcontroller to yield a simplier design that still was based on labview and daq for 95% of the project, the microcontroller simply offloaded some simpel logic for controlling RC servo motors and leds.

I do not feel NI is on the wrong path but wouldnt mind if several parallel paths were taken to grow the promised "LabVIEW ecosystem" - the term replacing LabVIEW everywhere marketing used to use.

[vitoi]

falkpl, I have followed a simuilar path to you and agree with what you have said.

Like you, I've expanded into microcontrollers. Tried LabVIEW Embedded for ARM, but it has effectively been abandoned by NI. Went to Texas Instruments Stellaris LM3S9D96 microcontroller with Code Composer Studio and C programming. Not my first choice (would have loved to do it in LabVIEW), but in the end the solution was developed.

Programming in C is slower to get started, but quicker towards the end. My conclusion is that the overall developement time is about the same in LabVIEW or C. I know the performance is as good as it gets (without having to go to assembly language), but would have a big question mark with regard to performance if LabVIEW was used. But then if LabVIEW for Microcontrollers existed for a variety of microcontrollers, I could always move to a more powerful microcontroller.

I still live in hope that NI will see the light and actuively develp LabVIEW Everywhere. In the mean time, I'm able to do everything I want without having to rely on NI.

[craigc]

Hello

I have visited this thread several times when searching to see if there has been any progress on this area of development.  As it seems this is not a priority perhaps I could be so bold as to suggest a community based open source type project effort type thing to accomplish some of these goals.  It seems to me that with vi scripting one should be able to analyse a block diagram, parse the functionality and output some Pseudo code.  Perhaps with a little modularity in mind there would be a way to select what type of code we want out of the BD analysis (C, C#, Python)  This could then be taken to a compiler of our choosing for the device of our choosing.  I am not saying this would be a silver bullet but perhaps with some group effort we may be able to script out say the comparison, numeric and array pallets initially.  If these seem feasible to do then perhaps we could build other functionality and structures on top over time.  Obviously this is not a small task but perhaps with some luck and foresight (Using the dll call function to call C libraries? ) we may be able to program a state machine or two in LabVIEW to run on a microcontroller / mobile device.  I know there is probably a ton of stuff I am missing because I do not know much about text based languages, hence just opening it up for discussion.

Craig

[vitoi]

The share price figures for the two years 2012 and 2013 are now available:

* National Instruments: Up 20.9%

* Agilent: Up 59.6%

* Nasdaq: Up 57.2%

* Russell 2000: Up 55.0%

The relevant indices and Agilent are all up about 55 to 60% (and remarkably close to each other). National Instruments up only 20.9% over the two years (or down 23.3% relative to the Nasdaq).

Over the past two years, on average, the National Instruments share price has dropped about 1% per month relative to the Nasdaq.

National Instruments has the innovative technology to outperform the market. However, marketing is flogging the hardware and retarding revenue growth and customer satisfaction. LabVIEW could be much more prevalent than it is now if the LabVIEW Everywhere concept is reignited and truly pursued.

[RavensFan]

Vitoi,

Please quit spamming the forums with your stock market statistics.