Programming microcontrollers?

[roger8wilco]

Im fairly new to labview, just took a class last month. Im pretty familiar now with the workings of labview but being a mechanical engineer, im not EE guy. Im looking to program a simple microcontroller, essentially to design a lawn sprinkler system with sensor inputs, as well as logging data that I request. Is this possible? For now, id like to use a microcontroller that is as simple as possible with inputs/outputs....
Can labview do this? I find programming in labview much much much much better than C, or any microcontroller coding....

any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Dan

[Dennis_Knutson]

NI sells the LabVIEW Embedded version. You can target any 32-bit processor apparently. I haven't tried it as it is not cheap.

[roger8wilco]

What about PLC's or NI's PAC's? Do I need a special version of labview for that? I have some small PLCs that are very basic and wondering if labview could program those?

[Dennis_Knutson]

I don't think any version of LabVIEW will run on a plc. I'm not familiar with the PACs. I believe you can use LabVIEW Real Time (another add-on) but I don't know if it requires that. Your best option is to contact your local sales engineer or NI directly.

[DuffmanSays]

Dan,

I would definitely endorse Dennis' suggestion to contact your local NI sales representative. That being said, you can easily program for your PLCs in LabVIEW as long as you have an OPC server through which to communicate to those devices. Essentially you will read and write to the PLC memory through communication with tags in an OPC server. With the LabVIEW development environment this can be done using the DataSocket VIs to communicate with the OPC address.

The LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control (DSC) module makes this process significantly easier. This is easier in that it allows a user to bind shared variables to OPC tags. The DSC module also provides other tools that can simplify this binding process such that shared variables become the I/O points for your PLC.

In regard to NI Programmable Automation Controllers, we offer quite a variety depending on your application. These PACs can offer a real-time operating system on an embedded controller. You can select one of many systems depending on your required speeds and I/O counts. The various I/O modules that come as part of each control system can then read and write data to transducers to control real-world applications. LabVIEW programming on the embedded controller and on a host PC can analyze the data and implement your control algorithm. Programming of a PAC that contains a real-time operating system does require that you use the LabVIEW Real-Time module.

I hope this information was useful for you. Please post back if I can provide any additional assistance. Thanks,

Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

Message Edited by Duffman Says: on 11-27-2006 07:54 PM