Boston Engineering decided to demonstrate their FlexStack product by attaching it to an iRobot Create programmable robot, have it scan RFID tags and then make it do several dances. FlexStack is powered by LabVIEW Embedded. Take a look at this original VI Shots video.
Apple.com/science has a feature page dedicated to LabVIEW! Not sure when this went up but it’s awesome. The main article focuses on the RoMeLa team who worked on DARwIn. VI Shots did a video last year on DARwIn. The article goes in depth on the power of LabVIEW but also focuses (of course) on the teams decision to switch from PCs to Macs:
“We started developing DARwIn in Windows,” says graduate student Sean Egger. “But you can port LabVIEW code from PCs to Macs and vice versa. Many of us had Macs and prefer Mac OS X to Windows, so we ported most of our DARwIn development software to the Mac version of LabVIEW. The Macs give us a stable operating system, and more importantly, a UNIX core, which makes things easier – such as TCP connections and serial port communication.”
“One of the reasons we really like LabVIEW is that it will connect so easily and seamlessly to any kind of sensor or motor controller. We don’t get bogged down writing drivers. LabVIEW’s got packages that communicate with just about anything we’ve thrown at it.”
The FlexStack product is a 2.5 inch, rugged platform that takes advantage of the flexibility of LabVIEW Embedded with the power of the Analog Devices Blackfin Processor.
Stephen Litt, a systems design engineering student from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) shows us how he and three other students replaced a vehicle ECU with a CompactRIO module running LabVIEW Real-Time. What started as a fourth year design project has now turned into a start-up company called WaterlooSPEED. The team documents their efforts on their blog, and in this post, describe how they have the system controllable via a PDA! Now that’s cool.
I wanted to let you know about something we feel is a pretty significant open source milestone. Namely that we were able to help get TI to release a free compiler for their c54x DSP. It’s especially significant considering they have a big profitable division turning out these proprietary, expensive tools.
As you know, TI’s silicon has often been coveted for its combination of high performance, low power consumption as well as low cost. TI’s silicon powers something like 55% of the world market for cell phones, so any steps they make towards opening devices and allowing independent developers to contribute has a lot of potential significance. Previously, the cost of the tools has been a big impediment for open source hackers. This development would essentially move the cost of developing for some of their devices from $5-10K to $200, obviously well within the range of many makers obviously. As these devices become more powerful and PC like, the concept of “open” devices is becoming more realistic by the day.
The original announcement is from the neuros website. Neuros makes a digital audio video recorder for the home. This announcement from TI will help them get open source codecs running on the DSP of the Neuros OSD device.
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