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LabVIEW
LabVIEW at 20!
OK LabVIEW wireworkers, here my anecdote:
Being a wireworker since LV 2.0 (1990) I remember well the days when I showed off my very first LabVIEW wirecode to interested faculty and student members of our university institute on my little MacClassic. They did not believe that when hitting the execution arrow the program was actually driven by the drawing underneath the front panel. The capability to place controls and indicators in the form of buttons, knobs and graphs on a front panel was strange enough to them but when starting to connect the terminals by drawing wires manually they really thought I was kidding. The proof which made them believe that there is something to it was showing the execution highlighting, thus watching the little circles traveling down the wires. It gave some credibility that these are indeed values of variables which propagate along the wires. It was a strange and foreign concept and nobody really took it seriously back then in 1990.
In fact I have always faced strong resistance when trying to convince a research group or a professor that LabVIEW would be the ideal tool of choice to implement their sometimes quite ambitious instrumentation plans. They have usually claimed that Assyst, LabPac etc. are definitely the way to go and that LabVIEW would at best be a nice toy to play around and implement simple programs for educational purposes.
Well in the meantime time has given me right. LabVIEW has really made it big and the number of wireworkers increase every day. Assyst, LabPac etc. don't exist anymore. Once in a while I meet some of these individuals who vigorously ruled out a LabVIEW solution and the usual response is: ''Have I ever said that?''.
So one of my eyes shines on brightly because LabVIEW matured so nicely to achieve industry standard and one eye sheds tears because the platform which made it initially possible to create the LabVIEW graphical programming environment has been abandoned by many LabVIEW programmers who were converted to work on the politically correct and mediocre Microsoft Windows, soon to be Vista platform.
I just hope that the increasing popularity of Apple's swell MacOSX (UNIX) operating system which is ever spreading since its emergence in 2001 will give LabVIEW on the heritage platform the momentum it deserves again. For this it's important that as many fellow wireworkers as possible spread the message that LabVIEW does indeed exist on non-MS platforms. That they courageously express and claim their eventual preference to work with LabVIEW on the Mac or Linux to their employer if they personally feel this way. Switching back to the Mac driven by a certain respect and appreciation for real innovation and fine technological craftsmanship should be convincing enough to make a clear stand for ''LabVIEW on the Mac''.
Regards and happy platform independent wireworks to all of you
Urs
Urs Lauterburg
Physics demonstrator
Physikalisches Institut
University of Bern
Switzerland
Being a wireworker since LV 2.0 (1990) I remember well the days when I showed off my very first LabVIEW wirecode to interested faculty and student members of our university institute on my little MacClassic. They did not believe that when hitting the execution arrow the program was actually driven by the drawing underneath the front panel. The capability to place controls and indicators in the form of buttons, knobs and graphs on a front panel was strange enough to them but when starting to connect the terminals by drawing wires manually they really thought I was kidding. The proof which made them believe that there is something to it was showing the execution highlighting, thus watching the little circles traveling down the wires. It gave some credibility that these are indeed values of variables which propagate along the wires. It was a strange and foreign concept and nobody really took it seriously back then in 1990.
In fact I have always faced strong resistance when trying to convince a research group or a professor that LabVIEW would be the ideal tool of choice to implement their sometimes quite ambitious instrumentation plans. They have usually claimed that Assyst, LabPac etc. are definitely the way to go and that LabVIEW would at best be a nice toy to play around and implement simple programs for educational purposes.
Well in the meantime time has given me right. LabVIEW has really made it big and the number of wireworkers increase every day. Assyst, LabPac etc. don't exist anymore. Once in a while I meet some of these individuals who vigorously ruled out a LabVIEW solution and the usual response is: ''Have I ever said that?''.
So one of my eyes shines on brightly because LabVIEW matured so nicely to achieve industry standard and one eye sheds tears because the platform which made it initially possible to create the LabVIEW graphical programming environment has been abandoned by many LabVIEW programmers who were converted to work on the politically correct and mediocre Microsoft Windows, soon to be Vista platform.
I just hope that the increasing popularity of Apple's swell MacOSX (UNIX) operating system which is ever spreading since its emergence in 2001 will give LabVIEW on the heritage platform the momentum it deserves again. For this it's important that as many fellow wireworkers as possible spread the message that LabVIEW does indeed exist on non-MS platforms. That they courageously express and claim their eventual preference to work with LabVIEW on the Mac or Linux to their employer if they personally feel this way. Switching back to the Mac driven by a certain respect and appreciation for real innovation and fine technological craftsmanship should be convincing enough to make a clear stand for ''LabVIEW on the Mac''.
Regards and happy platform independent wireworks to all of you
Urs
Urs Lauterburg
Physics demonstrator
Physikalisches Institut
University of Bern
Switzerland
Message Edited by UrsL on 09-03-2006 01:30 PM
@PIPELON wrote:
I NEED TO MAKE A CONVERSION OF A NUMBER TO A STRING TO TRANSMIT IT VIA SERIAL IN A DECIMAL OR BINARY WAY, FOR EXAMPLE, IF I HAVE THE NUMBER 5 IN ASCII THAT I SPEND AT 00000101 OR 5 IN DECIMAL.
THAT HAPPENS TO ME IS THAT I HAVE THE NUMBER 5 IN A NUMERIC CONSTANT AND IT TRANSMITS IT TO ME AS 53 IN DECIMAL.
WHAT WAY CAN TRANSFORM THIS INTO DECIMAL OR BINARY FORMAT SO THAT IT CAN BE TRANSMITTED VIA SERIAL AND DOES MICROCONTROLLER UNDERSTAND IT LIKE IT IS?
I would recommend to post this as a new question, it is offtopic here in this thread.
(while you're at it, try to fix your capslock key, it seems stuck) 😉
No posts here for nearly a month, so it's time I chipped in.
Started with LV 6 around March 2003 shortly after arriving with my current employer. I arrived on a short term contract to help fill the void left by two departing engineers. One had ordered kit for a linescan system including LabVIEW - so that's where I started. Until now I thought that was being thrown in at the deep end, but looking at some of the other posts here it seems pretty simple. That application caused me a lot of heart ache. It ran on the development system (didn't have the application builder) and we had a mysterious hardware problem. But eventually it worked.
I enjoyed LabVIEW because my background was in hardware design, with some work in PIC assembler. Creating LabVIEW code is like laying down a circuit schematic, so I find it easier than text code (which I find really hard to read, all the lines seem to merge for me - some kind of coders dislexia?)
Glad I started in LabVIEW, as before that apps here were written in Cvi. My C skills had only been used for the odd bit of maintainence on someone elses code. We have a good CVi coder here - but he's reluctant to move to LabVIEW.
I've done some work on a wide variety of applications (Using PDA, Signal processing toolset) and just modded the original linescan application to use a new camera and acquisition card. This time I get to roll it out as an application (I soon pestered for the application builder), I'm having problems with that but getting NI support so it should be sorted soon.
My current project will soon be driving some equipment 24/7/365 while monitoring temperatures and measuring wear on the drive nut dynamically.
Next up - testing some equipment underwater at pressure, and then...??? Well, my work is varied 
Anyhow, back to the real reason I came on the forums an hour ago, at home, while I baby sit and my wife has a night out with the girls.(My baby girl loves watching the screen while I code, but does try to reach out for the keyboard/mouse and mess things up). Looking for info on using externally created DLL's, and how to better use the error stream. Bound to find something somewhere on the forum.
There - on topic reminisence, and an off topic reference at the end. Something to please everyone I think. 
Bandit
LV7.11 and 8.0, (8.2 still to install)
PDA, Vision and Signal Processing Toolkit
Sound and Vibration Toolkit still shrinkwrapped (Customer got scared by prospects of license fees!)
Targetting Win NT4, 2k and XP, and PPC2003
Message Edited by Bandit on 10-20-2006 03:53 PM
Message Edited by Bandit on 10-20-2006 03:54 PM
Hi to all!
When Labview was created, I was a 5 years schoolboy,
My first contact with the world of Virtual Instrumentation was 2 years
ago, when I had a subject call "Instrumentation Laboratory" at
University, where I learnt Labview. It was the 5.1 version. I started
studing GPIB (Power Source, Multimeter, Osciloscope, Relay Matrix and
Function Generator). The objective was to construct a virtual
instrument capable to measure the bandwith of some circuits. Circuits
were created using the matrix relay, configuring Low pass and high pass
filters. Instruments had to be connected in the right way to feed and measure the
circuit. I think that thing isn't as cool as what you have
made, but it's a good first step. Histories? Well, the most difficult
thing I had to do was manage the relay matrix. It did different things,
depending of the parity of the direction I was writting. I remember I
had to do a double serial poll to reset it. Even positions needed only
one. (It was a matrix from Phillips, system 21, 488.1, Completely
Horrible!!!) Otherwise, it was impossible. Today, I'm working in two
"Final Career Proyect". One of them is to manage a solar thermal
storage, using the fieldpoint platform. The second one is the
implementation of three Virtual Laboratorys, where alumns will be able
to control (remotely) the instrumentation, which will permit them to do
the practical exercises at home.
I'm still young (only five years older than Labview
), Let's see what I will do in the future!! 
Wish my best!
When Labview was created, I was a 5 years schoolboy,
My first contact with the world of Virtual Instrumentation was 2 years
ago, when I had a subject call "Instrumentation Laboratory" at
University, where I learnt Labview. It was the 5.1 version. I started
studing GPIB (Power Source, Multimeter, Osciloscope, Relay Matrix and
Function Generator). The objective was to construct a virtual
instrument capable to measure the bandwith of some circuits. Circuits
were created using the matrix relay, configuring Low pass and high pass
filters. Instruments had to be connected in the right way to feed and measure the
circuit. I think that thing isn't as cool as what you have
made, but it's a good first step. Histories? Well, the most difficult
thing I had to do was manage the relay matrix. It did different things,
depending of the parity of the direction I was writting. I remember I
had to do a double serial poll to reset it. Even positions needed only
one. (It was a matrix from Phillips, system 21, 488.1, Completely
Horrible!!!) Otherwise, it was impossible. Today, I'm working in two
"Final Career Proyect". One of them is to manage a solar thermal
storage, using the fieldpoint platform. The second one is the
implementation of three Virtual Laboratorys, where alumns will be able
to control (remotely) the instrumentation, which will permit them to do
the practical exercises at home.I'm still young (only five years older than Labview
), Let's see what I will do in the future!! Wish my best!
Wow, it is the first time I come to the forums,and I love the place;it's cool. Wish everybody have a nice day!
