2010 LabVIEW Customer

[ShotSimon]

I'm posting to this forum because it is the most heavily visited and therefore will have the most viewers and responses.

The other elitist forms aren't as fun:) 

I'm not happy with LabVIEW.  I recently decided to cancel my maintenance on 12 LabVIEW developers seats.  I realize this is not a huge number but it does mark a sad moment in my LabVIEW career.  That being said I don't plan on avoiding LabVIEW all together but I am seriously considering my options (Python comes to mind).

The graphical programming style in LabVIEW is by far superior to any other prototyping software on the market.  But It needs to be equally useful on *nix and windows platforms and move between them.  Bare minimum I need Mac support for Snow Leopard and Windows XP.  Let start with evaluation versions of both and move from there.  There is a Mac version but no evaluation version, this is a crucial oversight.

I would like a LabVIEW FPGA tool that creates VHDL code that is not specific to running on a cRIO platform.  I am a mentor for a First Robotics team, and this year I am considering using Eclipse and Java in general as a first step to circumvent cRIO in the first place. And a generic FPGA platform.  I can't convince myself to use cRIO as a serious VHDL designer how can I convince high school students?

Now if they opened up the VHDL for all to see everything would change.  Now you have a tool that I can convince real FPGA designers to use.

After using iPhone and Android development tools I have come to the conclusion that graphical programming is the future.  The bigger question is how can you convince the next generation of this when many leading software tools are free or very close too it?  Objective C, C, C++, Java, Python etc.  LabVIEW needs to lower it's prices and open up it's graphical user interface to developers who are capable of making a bridge to these more widely excepted languages.  I realize they can't do it all with there limited engineering resources. Maybe they could create API's that allow the next generation to do it for them.

I know I'm going to get educated here, let me know what you think.

Regards,

-SS  

Message Edited by ShotSimon on 01-09-2010 01:46 AM

[jcarmody]

Aw, just drink the cool-aid.  Then we'll talk. 😉

[jcarmody]

Please don't take my post the wrong way.  I was just trying to be silly, not rude.

[tst]

Here are some comments. They're not really answer, since I don't really understand your point.

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ShotSimon wrote:

The other elitist forms aren't as fun:) 

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I can't speak for all forums, but I can say that at least LAVA will usually have some people who are capable of serious discussion.

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There is a Mac version but no evaluation version, this is a crucial oversight.

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I'm assuming that that due to the smaller market size NI hasn't seen fit to port the activation mechanism to the Mac. If you're on good terms with your local reps, you could probably get a copy on faith. And if I was a Mac user, I would probably be a lot more concerned with the lack of support for many toolkits and modules.

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I would like a LabVIEW FPGA tool that creates VHDL code that is not specific to running on a cRIO platform.  I am a mentor for a First Robotics team, and this year I am considering using Eclipse and Java in general as a first step to circumvent cRIO in the first place. And a generic FPGA platform.  I can't convince myself to use cRIO as a serious VHDL designer how can I convince high school students?

Now if they opened up the VHDL for all to see everything would change.  Now you have a tool that I can convince real FPGA designers to use.

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I only played with LV FPGA a couple of times, and my main impression was the appalling amount of time it took to compile, so I'm not exactly the best person to comment on this, but:

I'm *guessing* most high school students are not "serious VHDL designers" and have no inherent desire for becoming ones. I'm assuming the point of LV FPGA is to allow people NOT to have to deal with VHDL, in the same way that it allows them not to have to deal with C or C++. Also, I'm assuming that automatically generated code wouldn't look great and would not necessarily be the easiest thing to handle.

I don't know all the options available for FRC teams, but my understanding was that the cRIO is one of the standard platforms for it and that it could be programmed using LV or C.

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After using iPhone and Android development tools I have come to the conclusion that graphical programming is the future.  The bigger question is how can you convince the next generation of this when many leading software tools are free or very close too it?

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I don't think that this is NI's intention (they make a product which, despite its expansion over the years, is still not sold as a general purpose tool, but as one which would be used in X, where X can be many things, but a lot less than C). They do push this familiarity with graphical programming and NI products through things like Lego NXT, the various FRC options and Lego WeDo.

[Dennis_Knutson]

There is a trial version for the Mac. You may have problems with snow leopard, though. Rightfully so, NI placed a priority on testing LabVIEW with windows 7 so you may have to wait a while for that. As mentioned, Mac and Linux represent a pretty small proportion of users.

[LucaP.]

My 2 cents...

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There is a Mac version but no evaluation version, this is a crucial oversight.

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As far as I know you can download an eval version for MAC. You'll find the download link on the right side of this page http://www.ni.com/mac/

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I would like a LabVIEW FPGA tool that creates VHDL code that is not specific to running on a cRIO platform.  I am a mentor for a First Robotics team, and this year I am considering using Eclipse and Java in general as a first step to circumvent cRIO in the first place. And a generic FPGA platform.  I can't convince myself to use cRIO as a serious VHDL designer how can I convince high school students?

Now if they opened up the VHDL for all to see everything would change.  Now you have a tool that I can convince real FPGA designers to use.

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Not seeing the VHDL code is an advantage and a disadvantage (depends with who you speak). But I do agree with tst: "automatically generated code wouldn't look great and would not necessarily be the easiest thing to handle." That's an issue with every generated code. If you program a microcontroller with a C compiler and you look at the generated assembly code, then it usually looks more complicated then if you would write it directly in assembler. But the advantage is, that doing it with the c compiler is usually easier and faster...

LV FPGA was developed so that you don't have to deal directly with VHDL. With LV FPGA non-VHDL designers can develop applications which they previously couldn't do themself. If needed, LV FPGA can still import directly VHDL code trough several inport nodes.

I think the main question here (and for every other application) is: What's your goal?

If your goal is to become a VHDL designer, then LV is perhaps not your first choice.

If your goal is to get a certain job done, assisted by an "easy to use" toolchain (LV, LV FPGA, cRIO in your case), then LV could be great.

There are several ways to reach the top of a mountain (I assume we've only two here):

1. You climb up. This will be the shortest path and you will improve your climbing skills. But you'll probably also be very tired when you arrive.
2. You take a chairlift. You'll probably not take the shortest path, but you will reach safely and rested on the top and probably even faster than the climbing variety.

What's better? I don't know. It depends on your goals...

I think the most important sentence in your post is:  "The graphical programming style in LabVIEW is by far superior to any other prototyping software on the market."  🙂

But please continue to give your feedback. That's very important...

[E.Onorato]

If NI were to make LabVIEW open source, it could easily become the most powerful program period.  Even just attending some of the developer conferences and such, you can see how many good ideas there are out there that could be implemented outside of NI's relatively "small" team.  They should at least have an SDK release, and people can submit their modifications to NI to be implemented.  There are many nuances that I would love to fix given the chance.

[battler.]

Did you know that NI offer an educational discount of 75% on all their software including LabVIEW?

I think that's quite reasonable!

http://www.ni.com/academic/