LabVIEW at 20!

[RobCole]

I first used LabVIEW when I went back to school in 1993. We did a project where we had to monitor a pressure sensor and control a compressor. Graphical views, upper and lower pressure limits, etc.

I poked at it off and on in the various versions on my own until LabVIEW 6i. Finally I was at a job where I had to create a program for testing boards in a bed-of-nails tester.

LabVIEW programming is now what I do for a living.

     Rob

[Conseils]

Youve got me.....
At work I have a backup Windows 3.1 machine for emergencys.

I still have the odd projects that runs on realy old stuff. They use RAM disks and serial ports for communication, so I have Rev 3 and 4 about. It's all about capital investment (money) so it will run untill the hardware fails and has to be replaced. It has been the monitors that have caused most of the problems, they are switched on all day every day. They tend to last about three years. I found Sony monitors to be the best, they tend to last about 7 untill they become too dim to see!!!

I run LabVIEW 3, and 4 under XP as you can see because sometimes I want 'that VI'.. to see how that old vi really worked or to upgrade when the hardware fails, but the green is how it looked......

[M_Kunze]

Once upon a time in eurpoe.

I had my fist touch with LV 4 in 1997.
The first projects have been a diagnosis and commissioning software for fast running diesel yacht engines. 
This project was pure fun. I realy lowed this project. Than in 1998 I was hit by a big project with nearly
300 Sensors, lots of graphics, tables, different alarm types and a lot of serial comunication.
While I was the only LabVIEW programmer in the firm I had to do the job from scratch in 10 weeks.
In 10 Weeks I worked more than 20 weeks and teached a college of mine in LV to help me.
In this early days of LV there was no undo and after more than 12 hours of programming, concentrating,
and that was rather normal, I realy get more and more paramoid to make mistakes while programming.
Internal alarm sensors (brain) told me to save often and early, use different names for the same VI to be
sure to have a fall back reference point and I became more and more aggressive because the time was
running out.
The timing problem I had with this project was caused by the shipyard. The engine monitoring
program for a mega yacht had a date for the delivery. Otherwise there would be the need for me to walk
on water to follow the ship. That was realy stressing and I loved to see undo in LV 5. At this time I felt undo
would be worth a new version. To me there was no need for any kind of enhancements than this.

Btw. the monitoring program is running since this time without a problem. It runs 365 days per year
and 24 hours a day. I just made a update because of a overvoltage problem that damaged some parts
of the PC.

With kind regards

     Martin

[bogdani]

Hi

My first look on LabVIEW was on my exercises when I was a student on technical university.

I was very short look but I interested in this programing environment. Then I learned LabVIEW in about 6 weeks and I did my first project.

It was software for stand to measure electromagnetic field phenomenon (I know my English is bad ...)

It was in 2000. I saw LabVIEW 5.1 and 6i, so I didn't think to much and choose LabVIEW 6i.

I'm not proud of my first program (my program style) but it worked.

After that I did few other projects and now I'm working in LabVIEW 8 and I can't wait what will be next 🙂

Good luck for every one

bogdani

[CoastalMaineBird]

I saw LabVIEW 2.0 demonstrated in 1989, by an NI rep.

I was impressed by it's connection to a Fluke multimeter, and having the front panel look just like the Fluke.

It hooked me. (I had a background in electronics design). I then found out that some other folks in my department owned LabVIEW 1.2, but were not using it. I tried it and found out that you could not move a wired object on the block diagram without disconnecting the wires and re-wiring it. ICK!

Never did a project with 1.x, but did lots of stuff with 2.0.

I enjoyed taunting the Windows droids with what could be done.

[DFGray]

I wrote my first LabVIEW program in 1993 with the first copy of LabVIEW 3.0 my company (DTM Corporation) owned.  I spent a week going through the teach-yourself-LabVIEW book that came with every copy of LabVIEW at the time.  The program was a simple analog acquisition to support the industrial laser control work I was doing at the time.  It was done on a Macintosh with a 640x480 color screen (I managed to dodge the black and white version).

My favorite early application was a simple VI that queried data from a Tektronics 2232 oscilloscope (you could only control the scope through the front panel).  I inherited it and ported it through the 2.x to 3.0 serial port change.  It lasted, unchanged, until I left DTM at LabVIEW version 5.1.  It survived several upgrades and a Mac to PC port without a single change.  I still consider this amazing (and lucky).

[shoneill]

My first LabVIEW encounter must have been around 1993 or 1994 during a project in my third year in college.  It was the first time I'd ever seen anything like it, and after about a week I had improved some software being used in the lab for a Flow-injection system.  Looking back now, I think the code was horrendous and innefficient, but it worked.

I never really encountered the paradigm shift problem which seems to affect many.  I took to LV like a duck to water really despite having learned Pascal and C during my studies before.  I guess it just "clicked" early enough.

I'm still the opinion that the visual aspect is a tremendous way to improve productivity and promote oversight.

I can't believe I'm at it over 10 years already.......

Hopefully I'll learn another 20% of LV's functionality within the next 10 years

Shane.

PS I remember swapping an old 386 SX (which was supposed to be my machine) for a newer DX while no-one was looking. A whole 33MHz.  And my code needed it to make up for my total lack of skill or style.......

Message Edited by shoneill on 02-06-2006 04:18 PM

[maxpower]

First used LabVIEW back in 1996 (version 4.0).  I built automated test equipment for in-house circuit testing for a wide range of our products.  Our location was closed down in 1999, but I heard that the main office still uses those test fixtures - and they're still using version 4.0!  I guess no one up there wanted to learn anything about the systems themselves or LabVIEW - too bad....

[K C]

My first introduction to LabView was a demo with version 3. After this introduction, I made my first application with LV 4 just after the release of LV4. This was a tester for a small PCB with a microcontroller we produced for one of our customers. The tester, with a bed of nails adapter, was build with SCXI modules and some dedicated hardware.
Not enough time to do things the right way and little knowledge how to make a LabView program. Afterwards I think I did al lot of things the wrong way but the tester was in production for many years at the company where I was working at that time and it still is by someone else.

Since then I made different programs mostly for testing.

At work or at home when I need to program something I use LV (except for microcontrollers )

[devchander]

First touched LabView6i on Windows in 2003, it was an easy transision from 'C ' to LabVIEW.

The rapid develoment concept of labVIEW appealed to me the most, Must admit i never did like sitting down an composing/compiling lines and lines of codes.

Since then, LabVIEW has been my first preference for developing all applications.