LabVIEW Embedded

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Will it be possible to program an ARM Cortex-R4 device using LabVIEW Embedded for ARM?

Hi John,

 

Good to hear you got your project going. 100 Hz loop rate is not too demanding and it's probably a good fit with existing Tier 1 boards. For our application we will have a loop running at 1 kHz and another running at 200 Hz, so we are going to have a much harder time. Preliminary testing indicates that the current tier 1 boards will not be enough, but a MCBTMS570 would be OK. I'm trying to convince NI to introduce a new Tier 1 board, but who knows what they are thinking.

 

As you state, a new more capable Tier 1 board will make life a lot easier. Not sure why NI has not increased the number of Tier 1 boards. I suspect that the number of active users of LabVIEW Embedded for ARM would be only a few dozen and perhaps NI don't see value in investing time and effort in a new Tier 1 board.

 

It looks like it's Catch 22. Their aren't enough user's to warrant a new more capable Tier 1 board and their aren't enough Tier 1 boards to entice new users!

 

I think if a new Tier 1 board was introduced every 2 years not only would LabVIEW Embedded sales vastly increase, but so would NI's flagship product LabVIEW. This is because more users will invest the time to learn LabVIEW if it has more universal application - even if they think they probably will never use the new capability. It's the just-in-case syndrome.

 

We currently have four engineering groups in our company and our group is the only one using LabVIEW. The others use C/C++. We are seriously considering joining the other groups. Still happy will LabVIEW on a PC where it's a viable programming environment. However for other environments NI don't appear to provide the support we need.

 

Regards,

Vito

0 Kudos
Message 11 of 20
(4,648 Views)

Hi vito,

 

I'm Nico , and reading the forum I saw you tried to use Labview with ARM micorcontroller.

 

I'm struggling with a problem : I want to start to use this evaluation module since I like to program microcontroller (ANSI C) for hobby and  I use Labview for working purposes. I would like to use Labview also in embedded system to speed up the code implementation using data flow.

My question is: I saw  these 2 board cheaper than those NI advices for starting with ARM

 

- TI ARM Cortex M3 LM3S8962 Development Board Network

-  ARM Cortex-M3 MINI Development Board STM32F103RBT6

 

Doy you think I can use them to download labview code on them? If yes, Do I have to port RTX kernel before to use

the NI embedded toolkit? and wich kind of connection should I have to use (JTAG,USB,serial) ?

 

Reading on the web , I saw that with cortex M3 there is no need of porting the RTX.

 

Sorry If a waste your time, hope you can help

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

 

 

 

0 Kudos
Message 12 of 20
(4,586 Views)

Hi Nico,

 

From my experience, it should be possible to program any hardware that uses the LM3S8962 processor, because it is a tier 1 device and all the features should be supported. Provided of course that the required interfaces are on the board, and any pins you want to connect to are exposed.

 

Another tier 1 device is the LPC2378 from NXP, which I have used successfully in my own unique board layout.

 

As far as I know, the code generated by LabVIEW relies on the RTX kernel, so you must build that into your application, and the JTAG interface worked fine for my LPC project.

 

Hope my info is correct and useful.

 

Regards,

 

John.

0 Kudos
Message 13 of 20
(4,584 Views)

Hi Nico,

 

I noticed you can get a LM3S8962 development board for $54.74. However, at least to start with, you would be better getting http://www.ti.com/tool/ekk-lm3s8962 for $89.00. This is exactly the same board as used in the NI evaluation kit. You could also get a Keil ULINK2, but this is not essential (it's covered elsewhere on these forums). You would then download the software from NI which gives you a 60 day evaluation period.

 

The STM32F103RBT6 development board is much cheaper ($21.05), but it would require work to make it happen - so I would skip this option.

 

If what you want to do is not too performance demanding (say 100 Hz loop rates) then the LabVIEW Embedded for ARM product is not too bad (but about $10,000 to buy). Once you get to multiple loops at 1 kHz or faster you are better sticking with C.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Regards,

Vito

0 Kudos
Message 14 of 20
(4,580 Views)

Hi vito,

 

first of all thanks for your quick answer.

 

I supposed youre Italian (your name is a typical name in my city ,Bari in the south of Italy,such a beatiful place).

 

However, everythings started when I decided to switch from  "ANSI C" to Labview for my embedded projects.

 

This because I've been working with labview for several years but at the same time , for hobby purposes, I'm involved in ANSI C programming : I'm just trying to design a wireless alarm station for my home (so I need ANSI C ). So why dont use Labview to program custom embedded Hardware?

 

After this brief description I saw the EKK-LM3S8962 Ethernet+CAN Evaluation Kit with Keil ($89), you mentioned, and it will be the right way to start.

Programming with Labview should increase the designing time in these kind of applications.

 

About "ULINK 2 debug adapter" you think is not useful since the board has a USB port on it?

 

The last question is ! If a succesfully program this board you adviced, I will be able one day to download the firmware (Labview VIs) on a custom HW board (not the evaluation kit) using the same processor (LM3S8962) on board ?

 

If yes I supposed I should   configure the Hardware with custom template files as mentioned in the porting guide for ARM, to get it recognized  in the Labview development system when I create the project.

 

 

Thanks again for you time , hope you can help

 

Nico 

0 Kudos
Message 15 of 20
(4,575 Views)

Boungiorno Nico,

 

I'm actually an Australian born and living in Sydney. However, both my parents are from Bari, or Putignano to be more specific. Yes, it's a beautiful place and I look forward to visiting it again one day.

 

Like you, I've done LabVIEW programming on the desktop and C programming on microcontrollers. The microcontrollers was a long time ago and involved Z80 and 8051 micros. Back in December last year I started to evaluate LabVIEW Embedded for ARM. You will see numerous posts in this forum about my experiences. The initial reaction was pleasurable, however with time I realised that NI have chosen to keep the performance down, which is inadequate for all but the least demanding of tasks. NI will then steer you to sbRIO or the LabVIEW C Generator, both of which are unsuitable. I instead decided to steer myself to C, but this time using one of the wide variety of powerful 32 bit ARM microcontrollers. I will be using the TI LM3S9B96 and the free Code Composer Studio and C to develop my embedded application. And this is for a work application that could easily justify a few thousand dollars of expenditure!

 

NI could do wonderful things with LabVIEW embedded for ARM, but chose not to. Their greed will be their undoing.

 

If your wireless alarm station can be developed in under 60 days, you can use the evaluation version and not have to spend a cent. Maybe an Arduino would serve you better.

 

You do not need the ULINK 2 debug adapter at all. Everything can be done without it.

 

You can download the firmware to a custom board, but only while the license is active.

 

Good luck with your endeavours. I'm also planning to programme a Home Automation system that will include passive climate control, security, lighting, mode setting, etc. The current plan is to use LabVIEW desktop with three wall embedded iPads as the user interface. LabVIEW desktop is a great product (unlike any of NI's embedded offerings). However, use of LabVIEW is diminishing in our company, so maybe I should take a peek at .NET and C#.

 

Ciao,

Vito

0 Kudos
Message 16 of 20
(4,565 Views)

Ciao Vito o come dicono a bari "MBAVIT",

 

thanks so much for your time, and your advices.

 

I hope you can return in Putignano one day. You know, I often was in Putignano for my football matches when I was young    but then my destiny was to became an electronic engineer (  😞  )

I'm already using Arduino Board for my home project and it is not bad at all, since theare a lot of library they already made for a lot of projects. 

However, I'm trying to use Ni ARM tool because i have not too much experience in C/C++ Real time since I used to programmed PICs (pic16,pic18) without RealTime Kernel on them. Just yesterday I saw the Keil uvision IDE and that the on line help is not bad for starting with it (RTx operating system).

So I will try both programming Real time applications on ARM (Ni ARM and ansiC from Keil) with that board you adviced.

Surely I agree with you they steer you to SBRIO,CRIO (I used them for I couple of projects) but i think they are not suitable for Building Automation, dont you think?

I agree also with the fact they could improve this powerful tool increasing the performances (e.g loop rate ) since is more friendly for a medium User dataflow proramming than procedural one.

Hope if i'll have some problem with that board, you could help me (even if I know to be experienced with micro, a man never stop to learn)

 

I'm currently in Rome for work but next week I'll fly for Bari (my friend's wedding) to enjoy some sea and sun.

 

My skype contact is "bebadusamba", feel free to contact me when you want.

 

Have  a nice day and

"Forza Bari"

 

 

 

 

0 Kudos
Message 17 of 20
(4,559 Views)

Hi Nico,

 

I guess if you can't become a football player then an electrical engineer isn't a bad second choice 🙂

 

If you like Arduino then maybe the Arduino Due (32 bit ARM processor running at 96 MHz) will interest you. The first 100 went out to beta testers a couple of weeks ago and it's due for release in about a month.

 

You're strategy of trialling ARM using both LabVIEW and C is good. Once you've played with both you will be in a good position to make an informed decision. Let us know what you think.

 

sbRIO is nice, but you need to buy in lots of 100, it's a bit too expensive and the form factor does not suit OEM applications. Something like http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-FPGA-Idea-Exchange/Smaller-and-cheaper-sbRIO-based-on-Xilinx-Zynq/id... would be a move in the right direction.

 

I'm happy to help in any way that I can.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not on skype, but I should do that.

 

If you'd like NI to expand it's embedded offerings, you should vote for http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Make-labview-everywhere-a-reality/idi-p/1994483 

 

Forza Bari,

Vito

0 Kudos
Message 18 of 20
(4,555 Views)

Hi Nico, sent you a Private Message. Please read. Ciao Vito.

0 Kudos
Message 19 of 20
(4,534 Views)

I have a plate and a programmer seeger mcb2400 for arm7 / 9, can be programmed using LabVIEW smoothly? ie there will be no problems with the soft ukeil3

0 Kudos
Message 20 of 20
(4,489 Views)