LINX,LIFA & Arduino

[DavePW]

Hi - Could someone let me know what LINX offers over LIFA. What should I be using when developing Labview Vi's around Arduino?

D

[Kristoff2]

Hey DavePW,

I'm the developer of both LIFA and LINX.

LIFA was first released about 2.5 years ago and was designed specifically for use with the Arduino Uno, although I later made some modifications to work with the Mega2560 and some other boards.  Over the past couple years I've gotten a lot of feedback on how people are using LIFA, feature requests, shortcomings, etc.

LINX is the successor to LIFA but is a completely new toolkit built from the ground up.  LINX is designed to be a more generic hardware abstraction layer for embedded devices such as chipKIT, Arduino, myRIO, etc, rather than designed for one specific microcontroller platform.  This means that LINX provides the infrastructure to add support for virtually any device.  In addition LINX provides many improvements over LIFA such as better error handling, more sensor support, Ethernet and Wifi support.  LINX also removes the need for the user to build the firmware from source by providing a wizard interface with pre-compiled firmware.  LIFA will not receive any updates going forward, but LINX will get regular bug fixes, new features as time permits and I'll do my best to help out with community feature requests.

Long story short, everyone should start migrating to LINX.  If you're famliar with LIFA LINX should feel very familiar.

Another goal I set for LINX was to increase the involvement of this already great community.  Moving to LabVIEWHacker.com opens up some new options for community involvement.  For example the entire LabVIEW Hacker website is a wiki.  This means that users can help contribute new content, from tutorials, and project logs to contributing to the actual LINX specification and development. 

Please let me know if you have additional questions about this (either here or in the labviewhacker forums at www.labviewhacker.com/forums).

Thanks!

-Sam K

LabVIEW Hacker

Join / Follow the LabVIEW Hacker Group on google+

[DavePW]

Sounds great Sam....

Shall have a go at moving some of my projects over to LINX...

Thanks for providing both LIFA and LINX. I've certainly learnt alot while using LIFA..

Dave

[Kristoff2]

I'm happy to hear you've found it useful.  I'd love to see some of the stuff you've been working on.  If you're interested in posting your projects on LabVIEW Hacker let me know and I'll put together some instructions on how you can do so.  Also if you have a blog or your own website and would rather link to your projects form LabVIEW hacker I'm totally on board with that too.

(The above goes for everyone else here too!)

-Sam K

LabVIEW Hacker

Join / Follow the LabVIEW Hacker Group on google+

[hammad92]

HI

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD THE LINX?

what arduino boards nd its applications does linx offer?

[Nathan_B.]

Everything can be found at LabVIEW Hacker.

[TMC4242]

A mirror site without the word "Hacker" in the site name would be helpful.  Company firewall is not liking that.

[findingthingsout]

I agree, is there a way around this situation? I'm unable to get access to the site, in need of help. Many questions...

[Nathan_B.]

You could ask your IT department to whitelist the domain.

[findingthingsout]

I put the request in, no reply yet... I wonder if its the"hacker" in the title? Or something else?