LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi

[vitoi]

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?

[Dennis_Knutson]

I guess record profits mean different things to different people and cultures. I really doubt stockholders and employees think 2012 was a bad year. I also don't see the reasoning to pursue a hobbyist market but that is not my decision to make.

[vitoi]

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@James_McN wrote:

They seem to have changed their mind now! Bankers are a fickle bunch, but engineers seem to be consistently behind. Yes, things have improved for the NI share price this year, which is good to see. It makes me feel more comfortable. Let's hope it's sustained.

IMHO it would be cool to get RT on a £50 piece of hardware but first which one? Many of these boards don't use standard interfaces so would have to be a different LabVIEW for each one and for commercial products they are likely not up too spec (environmentals, mtbf) or too expensive for a volume product. Rather than say it's too hard to pick one, make a selection and run with it. Companies that innovate and pursue new markets are those that thrive. It's a lot harder to make something happen than to do nothing.

Im afraid I would rather see the time invested in improving core LabVIEW for now. I'm pretty happy with LabVIEW Desktop. I'm happy with LabVIEW 8.6.1f, so you can see that what's been developed over the past few years is not a priority for me. I hear that others are happy with even older versions. The last LabVIEW feature of interest to me was Events and FPGA programming, and they were introduced over 10 years ago. I'm hanging out for the next LabVIEW feature that will increase what I can do with LabVIEW and increase my productivity.

What I would like is LabVIEW on microcontrollers, an easy-to-develop user interface using a standard web browser and the ability to target mobile devices such as phones and tablets. The time to be working on them is now rather then when they are needed. I'm looking for a game-changing innovation from NI. This will help NI stock holders, NI employees and NI customers. Don't just sit there and become another RIM (Blackberry).

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[vt92]

I think this is a great idea!   There are many applications where a full blown PC is not needed.  The Rasberry Pi would be perfect.

[Curiouspuya]

Fantastic Idea!  Im all for it

[Ironjack]

I've got my PI loaded with Fedora Remix (RPM) and would like to run some flavor of LabView on it. We are in the processes of developing a distributed sensor capture point product and the Raspberry PI would would great. So if anyone hears when this might be doable SING OUT. 

[ColinCR]

I love my RaspberryPis. I love my LabVIEW. To me, however, they just don't make sense together.

The spirit of a $35 computer that can run a distro of linux comfortably is one of open-source and community development around platforms accessible to all. LabVIEW is simply not that. I love LabVIEW, but it is what it is, and it isn't what it isn't.

On a Pi, you run *nix, python, sqlite, apache, and other open standards. You build lightweight and portable applications to make the best of what limited overhead you have and minimize unnecessary system services. In this context, trying to jam a runtime engine into a tiny package with a weak CPU and very limited resources simply doesn't make sense. You of course lose the beauty of plug and play, drag and drop applications that make the life as easy as possible on both the coder and the user. But that isn't the point.

If I can afford a distro of LabVIEW, I can afford to spend more than $35 on the hardware to run it. I will continue to love LV and RPi both, but separately.

C

[ColinCR]

By the way, guys, reading back to those complaining about no analog inputs or outputs on the Pi:

You can add analog inputs for abotu $2 and a tiny breadboard ...

http://learn.adafruit.com/reading-a-analog-in-and-controlling-audio-volume-with-the-raspberry-pi/ove...

You can also do it using hardware SPI:

http://jeremyblythe.blogspot.com/2012/09/raspberry-pi-hardware-spi-analog-inputs.html

There are dozens of DAQ chips on SPI, I2C, shoot even 1Wire (check out owfs!):

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/08/17/tutorial-mcp4725-12-bit-dac-with-raspberry-pi-piday-raspberr...

You can add any IO you want using standard linux/python libraries, with a few logic-level converters, some mosfets, bjts and whatever tools you have at hand. These things are a hacker's dream.

C

[awi.nahrowi]

Hi. i am newbie here. 

I found this http://etchingpathways.blogspot.com/2013/04/raspberry-pi-temperature-profile-using.html which using LabVIEW to display output of temperature sensor. Maybe someone could develop and describe it here. Thanks.

We love LabVIEW, RaspberryPi, and also Python.. 

[ColinCR]

That visualization is quite nice. I use python and sqlite often, which play very well together. If I were to do the same thing, I would use some ajax and javascript/jquery with highcharts to plot it in a web page and serve it with Apache on the Pi itself. Alternatively, you could use a python image package such as pychart to create an svg server-side and display it in a simple webpage.

C

[jakidd]

How great would it be if we could target other hardware boards with LabVIEW embedded? This parallella board costs $99 and has a Xilinx Zynq with a 16 core co-processor. NI really needs more/better hardware options, or have the tools to allow developers to target other hardware. It is sad that as a full-time LabVIEW developer I have to use C/C++ with my home hobby projects.