News, videos, reviews and commentary from my world of Virtual Instrumentation.
This is a wireless audio processing project. A 550 MHz transmitter transmits FM modulated data to a 5600 down converter. It down converts the data to 25MHz. That gets sent to a 5640R IF-RIO card. The IF-RIO card has an FPGA. That’s where all the demodulation and audio processing happens which then gets sent out the sound card. You get very low latency audio response.
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As you know, here at VI Shots we love video. So I’m excited that one of our favorite blogs has started producing a new series of videos focusing on LabVIEW Object-Oriented programming. I’ve embedded the first video above.
Tomi’s done a great job on the graphics, and he cuts from wide to close up shots nicely. It takes a lot of work to produce decent video and Tomi’s efforts show in the resulting output. The audio needs some improvement. I think this can easily be solved by bringing the mic in closer or switching to a lavalier. I’m looking forward to more episodes.
Well, this video could use some editing but here it is. A totally useless application demonstrating the vision capabilities of LabVIEW. Watch a camera mounted on an X-Y motion platform tracking the movements of a goldfish in a fish tank.
There is a new Mindstorms NXT book currently in production by Michael Gasperi that focuses on using LabVIEW to program your robot. I’m excited about this for obvious reasons. I’m a strong advocate of using LabVIEW in just about everything and of course the popular Lego robot is no exception. NXT-G has LabVIEW at the core, but it has a very limited subset of the entire language.
LabVIEW for MINDSTORMS was written by an expert in LEGO MINDSTORMS with the cooperation of National Instruments to create the definitive guide to programming the NXT using LabVIEW. See Author Bio
Using the robotic construction projects included with the retail Lego Mindstorms NXT product the author shows how advanced tools from the LabVIEW Toolkit can be used to build more versatile and complicated designs. Several new projects of a more laboratory or industrial nature are also included to show computer control with the NXT as a data acquisition and control device. Advanced NXT topics like Data Files, Bluetooth, and I2C communications are also treated as well as how to connect the NXT to the internet with a web server.
The book is further set apart by its packaging. Enclosed with each new book is a CD containing the LabVIEW 8.5 demo version, the LabVIEW Toolkit, and all the programming examples from the book. Everything you need to enhance and extend your robotic design.
Michael Gasperi is an authority and a well known author of several LEGO MINDSTORMS books. His popular website, LEGO Mindstorms NXT/RCX Sensor Input Page, homebrew sensor chapters in the Extreme MINDSTORMS, and his Extreme NXT book have guided hundreds people through the process of building hardware extensions and programming in alternative languages.
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NI has recorded some great webinars on the subject of managing your LabVIEW based applications. These are broken down into 8 segments and cover the topics people are talking about right now:
Chapter 1: Organizing Files on Disk
Best practices and recommendations for how to setup file hierarchies on disk to prepare for large application development in LabVIEW.Chapter 2: The Project Explorer
Learn how to migrate existing applications into the LabVIEW Project Explorer and use tools in the Project to setup your hierarchical structure.Chapter 3: Cross-Linking Tools
Take advantage of tools integrated into the Project Explorer to prevent, detect and repair incorrectly linked LabVIEW code.Chapter 4: Group Development Practices
Learn about tools and practices in LabVIEW that will aide management of development across multiple developersChapter 5: Integrated Source Code Control
Best practices for using source code control providers from within the LabVIEW Project Explorer.Chapter 6: VI Compare and Version Tracking
Take advantage of advanced functionality that source code control integration provides in order to track changes and perform graphical code differencing.Chapter 7: Using the Project Library
Learn about advantages of using the Project Library, including how to modularize code and develop APIs for distribution amongst multiple developers.Chapter 8: Deploying Applications
Use the Application Builder from within the Project Explorer in order to distribute end-use applications developed in LabVIEW.
In this video VI Shots interviews Ray Almgren who leads the worldwide academic relations program for National Instruments. We also interview several mentors and students to get their feedback on this change in direction for next years competition. Teams 2023, 1739, 47, 107 and 2053 are featured.
Photo taken by Deirdre of my interview with Ray Almgren
Are you on a team? What’s your opinion on the new hardware and LabVIEW?
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.”
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