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?

[JasonClark]

The Pi4 is now out and has pretty impressive specs.  USB3, 1GB Ethernet (not limited by USB2 speeds), 2 x 4K video out and up to 4GB Ram.

The desktop environment is much smoother than previous and I'm sure non-UI code will run pretty well.

No real money for NI in terms of hardware (there is a large collection of "HATs" for monitoring/control) but I guess the USB based Modules from NI should work.

The Pi are in use in some industrial environments and digital signage, it's pitched at Educational use, but it's a well supported, capable board.

[Darren]

This year we are introducing a free version of LabVIEW with support for third party hobbyist hardware. The LabVIEW Community Edition is currently in beta and can be used for non-commercial and non-academic applications. LabVIEW applications can be deployed and run headless on a BeagleBone Black or Raspberry Pi 3 or 4. Support is also included to use an Arduino Uno as a low-cost tethered data acquisition device. Software support has not been hard coded or otherwise restricted to these four devices, so while untested by National Instruments, other similar hardware targets may partially or fully function. Support for this hardware is provided by the LINX Toolkit, included with both LabVIEW (for commercial use) and LabVIEW Community Edition (for non-commercial use).

[vitoi]

Darren,

This is great news. For things like home automation this will be great. I assume that if I have LabVIEW at work, I'll be able to program the Raspberry Pi for no additional cost.

Also glad to hear about the free version of LabVIEW. While I'm employed I have access to LabVIEW, but when I change jobs or retire it was going to be  problem. 

Overall things are looking rosy. I like the direction that National Instruments is now taking.

[Zafer.Depe]

Great news from NI.

[Darren]

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).

[vitoi]

Darren, this is great news. After almost 8 years this idea has come to fruition, although to be fair it's been available in LabVIEW MakerHub for about 2 years now. I haven't had a chance to investigate this product, but I assume the code is targeted on the Raspberry Pi. My test would be, can an application that uses no external devices (say, flashing an LED on the Raspberry Pi) be deployed to the Raspberry Pi and then all connections other than power can be removed and the application would continue to execute.

I plan to explore this in the near future both professionally and in my hobby time. I think it will be great. Also, given that I can use it at home for hobby purposes means that I can continue to use it without reliance on my employer's licence or employment.

[Darren]

> ...can an application that uses no external devices (say, flashing an LED on the Raspberry Pi) be deployed to the Raspberry Pi and then all connections other than power can be removed and the application would continue to execute.

Yes, you can deploy LabVIEW applications as startup EXEs to both Raspberry Pi 4 and BeagleBone Black.

[vitoi]

Good to hear. The Arduino was also marked as complete, however I think it should be marked as New (if the idea intention is still planed to be implemented) or Declined (if NI no longer is interested) since from https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-for-Arduino-Due/idi-p/2082196 :

(By the way, the currently-available LabVIEW Arduino toolkit does not target the Arduino (and couldn’t since the Arduino Uno uses only an 8 bit microcontroller). Instead there is fixed C code running on the Arduino to transfer peripheral information to the serial port and back. That is, none of the LabVIEW target code executes on the Arduino. This idea is for LabVIEW code developed on a desktop to be transferred and execute on the target Arduino Due.)