Fun Times at NIWeek

[jaking]

I cannot wait for NIWeek. Last year was fun, but 2011 is going to be even better. In less than 60 days, we'll all be exposed to some jaw-dropping keynote demos, exciting technical presentations, and quality networking opportunities at fun evening events. The NIWeek Community decided to put together a little post recapping some of our favorite moments from NIWeek 2010, just to give you a taste of what you may have missed and the types of things you can look forward to this year.

Racing Green Endurance

Up first are the kind folks from the Racing Green Endurance (RGE) team. This group of students from Imperial College London traveled more than 14,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina in their electric sports car in hopes of it becoming the first electric car to travel the entire Pan-American Highway.

The team made a stop in Austin, Texas, during NIWeek 2010 and told us all about how they used LabVIEW and CompactRIO to power the car's control system. One of our bloggers was lucky enough to catch them on the show floor with their electric supercar:

Waterloo Labs' Eye Mario System

Next up is the The Eye Mario System brought to you by the talented DIY engineers at Waterloo Labs. Eye Mario debuted at NIWeek 2010. With this system, which uses an NI Single-Board RIO embedded controller, you can play an old-school Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) using only your eye movements:

Guest Keynote Dr. Michio Kaku Gives Us a Heads Up About the Future

Dr. Kaku, theoretical physicist, author, professor, and host of numerous scientific documentaries, closed NIWeek 2010 with informed projections about the future of science, technology, and innovation. He explained how with Moore’s Law doubling computer power every 18 months, innovation is happening faster than ever. Some of the emerging technologies he mentioned included invisibility cloaks, computer-based telepathy, and contact lenses that use the Web to augment reality, also known as "supervision." An Engineering Mind caught up with Dr. Kaku before the conference to pick his brain a little:

(Part 2 available here.)

Our Very Own Indoor Lightning Storm

To create an indoor lightning storm, NI borrowed two 4 ft Tesla coils capable of producing arcs of over 250 kV from our favorite experimental rock group, ArcAttack. Even though the band wasn’t at NIWeek to perform with these high-tech instruments, the audience was still able to rock out as we measured the temperature from the high-voltage arcs using 300 ft of fiber-optic cables, the new NI optical sensor interrogator, and an optical temperature sensor.

Texas Trivia

And last, but not least, we can't forget the hilarious and enlightening game of Texas Trivia that our bloggers played with NIWeek attendees at the NIWeek 2010 annual conference party. Read the blog post to get the full list of questions and answers, but our favorite answers were for "what's the state bird of Texas?"

>> What was your favorite part about NIWeek 2010? And what are you most looking forward to this year?