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News Release from: SPECIAL REPORT by the Editor | Subject: NI Days
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 February 2007
Finding out about NI LabVIEW
If you know what NI LabVIEW does, fine: if not, there is really no reason why the training courses available free from NI should not be on your ''To Do'' list this year: Nick Denbow reports
National Instruments is notable from their stories on the Processingtalk database as a major provider of free Seminars and teaching days for engineers and scientists all around the UK/Ireland, as seen for example in http://www.processingtalk.com/news/nti/nti000.html, a pattern that is repeated by NI operations in other countries too So I took up the opportunity of attending one of their current series of Technical Symposiums (or Symposia) at their Newbury HQ last week
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 3 Aug 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Now I have no interest at all in writing software, or the finer points of programming: or for that matter in data handling.
I guess I am interested in measurement sensors, data presentation, analysis and control plus recording.
The best result of the day was that it explained that NI, and LabVIEW, would make these measurement, display, control and recording functions all link together, just like I would want it to, without having to worry about that programming.
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Two things should help explain this further: first, the start of LabVIEW.
It was at the University of Texas, in Austin, where three scientists wanted to interface sonar test equipment data with a PDP-11 computer.
They developed the simple graphical programming technique used in LabVIEW to achieve this (graphical means pictures blocks selected, showing the functions needed).
This allowed them to present the data in the way they wanted it, such as in pictures on the PC screen (PDP-11 CRT in their case) using a set of dials as per instrument indicators, a thermometer with red liquid expanding to show the temperature, and a graph as in a chart record.
These, on a monitor, simulate what would have previously been the hard wired instruments - so become known as Virtual Instruments (VI).
The VIEW in LabVIEW, it turns out, is Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workstation, or something very similar, because the instrument dials etc appear on your PC screen.
Even more light dawns when you realize that the Lab does not mean Laboratory, it just means where you present the data, where you work.
The equivalent of a PDP-11 these days no longer has to be in an air conditioned, filtered air environment, in a special locked room next to, and guarded by, the software programmers, in their 'laboratory'! (Two of those original scientists are still helping run NI, but the LabVIEW product is stuck with the name).
Second, lets look at an application of LabVIEW.
This has been reported on Processingtalk too, last August, see http://www.processingtalk.com/news/nti/nti138.html.
The application is the Mindstorms NXT, the next generation of the popular Lego robotics invention system.
The Lego Group and National Instruments worked together to develop a new programming environment for this product, powered by a special 'robot type functions' version of LabView.
It is a robot kit, to be built with Lego bricks, which includes the programme of instructions in an intelligence module, plus motors and position sensors in Lego packages, that control the robot action.
The required Mindstorms NXT software uses a simple drag-and-drop, graphical interface, optimised so that the target consumer will be able to build it - and these consumers, operators and programmers are children, at 10-14 years of age.
The word 'build' here means 'programme the control functions needed', but those words would make it sound too complicated.
NI explain the objective for older users as follows: ''With the new LabView toolkit, more advanced Mindstorms NXT users, including adults, students and secondary school and university educators, now can programme the NXT using the advanced graphical programming tools available in LabVIEW''.
So go back to the industrial version of LabVIEW programming, and think of that as a virtual Lego set of function bricks shown on a PC screen, (turning the NI 'virtual' concept round), where the bricks available in the box are positioned on a baseboard, and consist of analogue indicators, controllers, chart recorders, set point alarms, start and stop buttons and alarm indicators, and suddenly you understand how to build a LabVIEW DAQ (Data Acquisition) and measurement/control system.
Draw the links between the blocks, and to the output devices such as printers and I/O, and the control and monitoring system is built.
MACHINE CONDITION MONITORING EXAMPLE.
The LabVIEW examples cover many industries, but one presented as an example was for machinery condition monitoring data collection from an accelerometer and tachometer.
Using standard sensors and an NI CompactDAQ with a standard I/O module taking pulses or 4-20mA or 0-10V, the interface into a laptop or PC uses a USB connection.
No datalogger needed.
The data is in your computer, so it is easy to save the electronic 'virtual' chart record.
But LabVIEW allows a lot more: it can provide a Fourier transform to provide a frequency analysis on the signals: it can normalise the frequency analysis based on the machine speed from the tacho input.
Where I really latched on was when LabVIEW even allows mathematical functions, so that the acceleration can be integrated to provide velocity and amplitude measurements of the vibration, from a straight basic accelerometer.
It does not matter whether you started from a Bently Nevada position transducer, an Inertial Aerosystems accelerometer or an SKF vibration velocity transmitter.
On a personal note, this could have done wonders for the signal processing technique development on the Bestobell doppler flowmeters, way back in the 70s: it could even have solved a few problems in Servodyne vibration measurement systems.
If you are a plant engineer wanting to move into the monitoring of your machinery, the options open up wide, with a basic system like this.
The sensors can be moved around the plant, the machinery profiles monitored from month to month, and the ones to watch continuously, identified.
Add to that wireless interfacing, just for the raw transducer signals, then you can start a permanent monitoring system on a static PC at the back of the office.
But by reaching this level of expertise, you will probably be using the NI CompactRIO interface, that has its own operating system, and you will have attended several more NI training presentations.
NI TRAINING DAYS.
The training day I attended was the first of the NI Technical Symposium Days, http://www.processingtalk.com/news/nti/nti156.html, which will take place round the UK/Ireland in four more locations.
This is described as a presentation of some of the information that was previously presented in association with the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) at Savoy Place, in central London: http://www.processingtalk.com/news/nti/nti152.html.
This year the similar major 'NI Day', with presentations multi-streamed by industry or interest, is scheduled for 25 October at the IET.
Maybe I should have waited to attend one of their ''free technical hands-on data acquisition and LabVIEW Seminars, scheduled for 21 locations around UK and Ireland this Spring/Summer, to learn how to build high performance, PC-based measurement systems in minutes'' - but these don't start until March: see http://www.processingtalk.com/news/nti/nti158.html.
I think you should all go, and write up the next report for me! There are other specific industry events also scheduled by NI, aimed at.
* academics who teach the technology.
* aerospace users.
* automotive users.
* ALSO one is scheduled this year for oil and gas processing industry users, which will be in Aberdeen.
If you cannot get to a seminar, because your boss wants to go instead, have a look on the NI website, where you will find numerous training presentations describing what all their products do.
Try http://www.ni.com/swf/presentation/us/labview/aap for a starter on LabVIEW.
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