LabVIEW Idea Exchange

[#1]

The LM3S9D96 Development Kit is a 32 bit ARM based microcontroller board that is popular and has several plug in boards. It would be great if we could programme it in LabVIEW. This product could leverage off the already available LabVIEW Embedded for ARM and the LabVIEW Microcontroller SDK.

The LM3S9D96 Development Kit costs $425 and is open hardware. The LM3S9D96 is an ARM Cortex M3 running at 80 MHz resulting in 96 MIPS of performance. By way of comparison, the current LabVIEW Embedded for ARM Tier 1 (out-of-the-box experience) boards have only 60 MIPS of processing power.

The LM3S9B96 Development Kit brochure (http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/spmt158e/spmt158e.pdf) already states, “The LM3S9B96 development board is also a useful development vehicle for systems programmed using tools such as Microsoft’s .NET Micro Framework and Embedded LabView from National Instruments”. So, the brochure already states that the board can be programmed using LabVIEW. Unfortunately, this is not so - not without a few months work. No one has done the Tier 2 to Tier 1 port and it would make the most sense for National Instruments to do this once for the benefit of all. Relatively little work to enable this interesting development board. And the marketing is already done!

Wouldn’t it be great to programme the LM3S9D96 Development Kit in LabVIEW?

[#2]

I’ve posted four separate ideas for different microcontroller boards that LabVIEW could target:

1)    LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi

2)    LabVIEW for Arduino Due

3)    LabVIEW for BeagleBoard

4)    LabVIEW for LM3S9D96 Development Kit

I’ve tried to identify popular, capable boards that have a likely long life. Some will be more popular than others and some would be easier for National Instruments to develop as LabVIEW targets.

Hopefully NI will score these boards (and any others of interest) something like:

    Score = Popularity / Effort

where Popularity is the number of kudos (and perhaps other indicators) and Effort is how much development effort it would take NI to develop a “Tier 1” board. For those unfamiliar with the term “Tier 1” it is used by LabVIEW Embedded for ARM to identify boards that work out-of-the-box. That is, you can start programming in LabVIEW straight away. There are currently only two Tier 1 boards but these are getting a bit old and are not as powerful as more contemporary offerings.

I’m not proposing NI makes all four boards a Tier 1 board, but chose the one with the highest score. I think it will do wonders for LabVIEW popularity (and sales) and our productivity.

[#3]

Hey, I feel so left out 

My big brother Raspberry Pi already has 67 votes and I've only got 12. I feel so inadequate. 

I'm useful too. I can do 96 MIPS, and you can take whatever portion of me you want and add it to your design,with my blessing. How nifty is that. I've also been informed that I'm the easiset of the lot for National Instruments to make into a Tier 1 board. That will make me programmable in LabVIEW straight out-of-the-box. You can be an embedded progrmamer overnight.

Pick me, choose me, vote fo rme