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vitoi

LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi

Status: Completed

Available in LabVIEW 2020 Community Edition and later. LabVIEW Community Edition includes the LINX Toolkit, which provides the ability to program the Raspberry Pi 4 (among other devices).

The recently introduced Raspberry Pi is a 32 bit ARM based microcontroller board that is very popular. 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 (or other methods of getting LabVIEW to run on it).

 

The Raspberry Pi is a $35 (with Ethernet) credit card sized computer that is open hardware. The ARM chip is an Atmel ARM11 running at 700 MHz resulting in 875 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. So, about 15 times the processing power!

 

Wouldn’t it be great to programme the Raspberry Pi in LabVIEW?

78 Comments
tst
Knight of NI Knight of NI
Knight of NI

> Deployment to the Pi using LINX is (currently) only licenced for home or student use though

 

Which I didn't know at the time, so I would say that while my comment was technically correctly (the best kind of correct), it's not as if the idea can be marked as completed. It's also currently limited to 2014 SP1 only.


___________________
Try to take over the world!
vitoi
Active Participant

Would you need LabVIEW for Linux? I've only got LabVIEW for Windows and I'm not sure if my purchase includes the licence to run in Linux (and Mac).

 

My preference would be to compile the code directly to the microcontroller and have no operating system, as is done with LabVIEW Embedded for ARM. Better still, allow both options.

 

From what I can gather, technically there's not a lot of work required from NI as we already have LabVIEW for Linux and LabVIEW Embedded for ARM.

 

As I've said, the benefit would not be directly from sales in this area, but the generally greater appeal for LabVIEW which would then be able to program Windows, Mac, Linux (including Raspberry Pi), real-time controllers, FPGA and microcontrollers (Raspberry Pi, but one other would be nice). No other programming language currently provides the ability to programme such a wide range of platforms. Add the ability to programme Android and iOS devices and we pretty well have the entire computing platforms universe covered.

 

Imagine what that would do for LabVIEW sales! Imagine what that would do for the capability of LabVIEW developers. It's a win-win.

vitoi
Active Participant

I would really like to leverage on my investment in LabVIEW expertise. I don't want to be restricted in what target I can run my LabVIEW code on. Each application has different size, perfomance, mobility and price criteria. I would really love to be able to target:

 

* Windows

* Mac

* Linux

* NI real-time controllers

* FPGA

* Raspberry Pi (under Linux)

* Raspberry Pi (natively)

* Arduino

* Android (mobile devices, such as phones and tablets)

* iOS (mobile devices, such as phones and tablets)

 

We are almost there technically. Take the last step.

 

LabVIEW would become the greatest programming language!!! Release the remaining targets all at once and I bet the National Instruments share price will go up by more than 25%.

RavensFan
Knight of NI

There we go again about NI's share price.  You'd think someone was a majority shareholder in NI.

vitoi
Active Participant

Given that LabVIEW is single sourced, the financial health of the single source is paramount.

vitoi
Active Participant

Perhaps this idea is about to be implemented:

 

1) For bare bones (no operating system): https://www.tsxperts.com/labviewforraspberrypi/ [waiting for release]

 

2) Under Linux: https://www.labviewmakerhub.com/doku.php?id=blog:users:makerhub:2016-04-07-linx-3  [waiting for commercial licence]

 

It would be great to have cost-effective, no-nonsense LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi solutions; both for bare bones (no operating system) and under Linux. The pros and cons of each approach will become apparent as users try them. It also keeps developer innovation desire alive. Looking good.

 

(Would be nice to get to 1000 kudos first, just to show its significance 🙂 )

Javier_V
Member

Hello,

 

While we wait until release of Labview for Raspberry PI by TSX Experts...

 

You can test MyOpenLab on Raspberry:

 

MyOpenLab on Raspberry PI

 

It is a open source software based on Java.

 

MyOpenLab Info

 

Thanks.

Robinson Javier Velásquez
Ingeniero en Electrónica y Telecomunicaciones.
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)
vitoi
Active Participant

I think inexpensive hardware platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi are causing a rethink about how to effectively program them. MyOpenLab appears to have been around for years, but I've only just heard about it here. Looks very LabVIEW like.

 

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll have a robust inexpensive solution for graphically programming microcontrollers. Exciting times ahead.

 

I wonder if the community is also working on a graphical method of programming the Xilinx Zynq chip. An interesting combination of FPGA and two ARM A9 microcontrollers in the one package. This combination is powerful and lends itself well to graphical programming. All we need now is inexpensive hardware (~$50 - $150) and programming environment (~$150 - $500) and community support and a whole new arena will open up.

 

Activity in this space may be a catalyst for National Instruments that has them reexamining their marketing strategy. This could very well be a win-win for users and NI, which has a good current lead in this arena.

faisal.darus
Member

I'm looking forward for Raspberry Pi 3 B with LabVIEW