Newest LabView Release Raises The Productivity Bar

June 23, 2003

This version dramatically simplifies the creation of measurement and control applications and goes beyond embedded PGAs to palmtops and PDAs.

Roger Allan

With many years of engineering effort behind it, the LabView 7 Express graphical development tool promises to simplify as well as expand LabView's scope of measurement and control applications. Its 38 Express virtual interfaces (VIs) streamline the development of common applications like data acquisition, analysis, and file I/O.

This latest version from National Instruments closes the gap between the previous tradeoff that existed between the power, flexibility, and scalability of traditional programming languages and the ease of use and interactivity of configuration-based tools. Its redesigned NI-DAQ driver framework and two new interactive assistants for data acquisition and instrument control simplify measurement taking and information collection.

With its DAQ Assistant, PC users can configure and define sophisticated data-acquisition tasks with a few mouse clicks. LabView 7 Express includes the LabView base, full and professional development systems, and several add-on modules:

The new LabView 7 FPGA module for developing applications to run in FPGAs on NI's reconfigurable I/O hardware;
The new LabView 7 PDA module for creating portable handheld measurement and control applications on a Microsoft Pocket PC or Pal OS PDAs;
The upgraded LabView 7 real-time module for developing deterministic, real-time, and embedded control applications;
The upgraded LabView 7 data-logging and supervisory control module for developing distributed monitoring and control applications.

LabView 7 Express starts at $995. FPGA, real-time, and data-logging and supervisory-control modules cost $1995 each. The PDA module costs $995.

See associated figure

National Instrumentswww.ni.com

About the Author

Roger Allan

Roger Allan is an electronics journalism veteran, and served as Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors, components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military electronics, robotics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics technologies. He is a contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science. Roger has worked for major electronics magazines besides Electronic Design, including the IEEE Spectrum, Electronics, EDN, Electronic Products, and the British New Scientist. He also has working experience in the electronics industry as a design engineer in filters, power supplies and control systems.

After his retirement from Electronic Design Magazine, He has been extensively contributing articles for Penton’s Electronic Design, Power Electronics Technology, Energy Efficiency and Technology (EE&T) and Microwaves RF Magazine, covering all of the aforementioned electronics segments as well as energy efficiency, harvesting and related technologies. He has also contributed articles to other electronics technology magazines worldwide.

He is a “jack of all trades and a master in leading-edge technologies” like MEMS, nanolectronics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, military electronics, biometrics, implantable medical devices, and energy harvesting and related technologies.