Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) applications on PC and smartphones using LabVIEW

[MW67]

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice please.

I like LabVIEW because it is quick to get something up and running on, among other things.

For example I have used the BLE toolkit (thank you to the developer of that) to successfully communicate with my chosen BLE module and electronics in a very short period of time.

I must admit I'm at a bit of a crossroads with our products and my boss has asked me if LabVIEW is up to the task of developing a graphical user interface for our products using BLE on a PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, iOS and Android in a timely and "goog looking" manner.

In all honesty I don't know.

Currently we use C# and Visual Basic to develop some of our product GUIs, but only use LabVIEW for testing them.

Is it worth going down the LabVIEW route (and what extras are there to help me) or sticking with the traditional Microsoft offerings then try to develop on iOS and Android separately?

Martin 

[RTSLVU]

LabVIEW executables only run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Also the version you have will only make executables for the OS it's running on. (LabVIEW on Windows can only make executables that run on Windows)

So you are going to have to develop Android and iOS separately.

[MW67]

So I'm guessing this Data Dashboard no longer exists?

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Smartphones-Tablets-and-Mobile/Data-Dashboard-for-LabVIEW-iOS-Android-Windo...

Martin

[RTSLVU]

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@MW67 wrote:

So I'm guessing this Data Dashboard no longer exists?

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Smartphones-Tablets-and-Mobile/Data-Dashboard-for-LabVIEW-iOS-Android-Windo...

Martin

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Sure it still exists, but do you understand what the Data Dashboard is?

The Data Dashboard is only a data display of a LabVIEW program running on a Windows (or Mac) computer.

It is just that, a "dashboard" it is NOT a LabVIEW program running on Android or iOS.

[MW67]

Understood, using shared variables or something ...

Martin

[MW67]

I've just noticed the WEB Module in NXG, does anybody know if this will communicate with BLE GATT service devices on a smartphone or tablet?

Martin

[joelletham]

Hi Martin, 

There is currently no Bluetooth protocol in the WebVI. You can use the LabVIEW Bluetooth toolkit in the current generation LabVIEW, then write the data you want to display in the WebVI to Skyline tags or messages or LabVIEW Web Services. 

Hope that helps your problem.

[MW67]

Hi Joel,

Thank you for the feedback, I've used the LabVIEW toolkit to good effect thank you.

Unfortunatley it only uses the BLED112 dongle.

I've since moved onto Visual Studio, using the dongle and Android Studio, using a tablet.

I'm about to look at Windows Universal Platform so I can get away from using the dongle.

I would have liked to use LabVIEW throughout but I don't think it's quite there yet.

Cheers,

Martin 

[rolfk]

BLE is a bit of a strange technology. I'm not exactly sure what the issue is, but this platform seems to be fragmented with various controller hardware using all their own driver API and nobody not even Microsoft seems to really have forced a standard on these APIs. The Microsoft API that exists seems fragmented and requiring a specific WDM driver that many manufacturers don't feel like supporting for some reason. It is also highly complicated and sparsely documented and the actual API is in such a way that it is not directly usable from LabVIEW.

I looked in the past into it but due to no practical use for such a solution it never went anywhere substantial. The fact that each platform uses highly different interface implementations also makes this more complicated.

As to support for Android and iOS: LabVIEW likely won't help you there in any way and there is no real hope that this is going to change anytime soon. iOS was for a long time a problem that Apple did not want to have any applications on their market that could be used to develop applications, and other distribution methods than the Apple Store are pretty difficult to use. Andoid has other difficulties that make porting a software like LabVIEW, even if it is only the runtime engine, a very large development effort.

And then the additional effort to develop the necessary cross compilation tool chain in Windows as you hardly will want to fully develop and build the application on the iOS or Android target directly.

They did that for their cRIO platform but there was a way to monetize the development effort through the sales of the RIO hardware. Nothing like that exists for Android or iOS devices, which makes such a solution either an extremely expensive software add-on or a money burner for the additional development effort.

[MilanR]

Hey Martin,

This is a topic I'm interested in as well so I thought I would throw in my two cents.

WebVIs as a technology do get you running on a lot of the platforms discussed as long as you are using modern web browsers (latest versions of Firefox, Edge, Chrome, and Safari) on Desktop and Mobile.

The Chrome browser specifically is implementing the Web Bluetooth APIs but it is currently very experimental and the platforms supported by Chrome are spotty: https://github.com/WebBluetoothCG/web-bluetooth/blob/gh-pages/implementation-status.md

A native implementation of Web Bluetooth is not in the cards for WebVIs at the moment but one feature we have been working on is the JavaScript Library Interface (JSLI) which allows the WebVI block diagram to communicate with JavaScript. There is a Beta of this feature that can be used in the LabVIEW NXG Tech Preview: https://www.ni.com/techpreview

I think we are at an interesting place. WebVIs allow LabVIEW to run in the Web. WebVIs in tech preview are exposing capabilities to call JavaScript from the diagram. And JavaScript in bleeding edge experimental builds of Chrome is getting the ability to communicate with Bluetooth GATT over Web Bluetooth. We definitely are not quite there yet but I think interesting things are to come.