LabVIEW for automated instrumentation and realtime systems

Test & Measurement

16 June 2004 Test & Measurement

National Instruments has announced a significant upgrade to the family of LabVIEW graphical development products. LabVIEW 7.1 extends Express technology to automated instrumentation and realtime applications with new Express VIs for NI modular instruments and NI-DAQmx, advanced debugging and low-level execution timing for the LabVIEW 7.1 Real-Time Module.

"Last year, LabVIEW 7 Express introduced a revolutionary way to create test, measurement and control applications with configuration-based development and code-generation tools such as Express VIs and measurement assistants," said Ray Almgren, NI vice president of product marketing. "By extending Express technology to the broad spectrum of NI automated instrumentation, LabVIEW 7.1 simplifies development for all LabVIEW users, regardless of their hardware platforms."

With five new Express VIs for NI digitisers, signal generators and high-speed digital I/O, engineers are able to configure sophisticated measurements and acquire data with just a few mouse clicks, says NI. The redesigned NI-DAQmx measurement services software, available in realtime applications for the first time, increases performance of single-loop PID applications by 30% and simplifies hardware-timed loop implementation, says NI. In addition, the new LabVIEW 7.1 PDA Module delivers more data acquisition functionality, including faster multichannel acquisition and analog and digital triggering. Engineers can use this module to create customised handheld DMM applications and communicate with Bluetooth-enabled devices.

Release 7.1 also introduces advanced execution timing and graphical debugging for low-level control and visibility of realtime system execution. To further optimise the new LabVIEW Execution Trace Toolkit can be used with the LabVIEW Real-Time Module to quickly identify sources of jitter, such as memory allocation and race conditions.

In addition to speeding development of realtime applications on existing platforms, this release extends LabVIEW Real-Time to run on certified desktop PCs. Engineers now can create realtime systems by integrating the large installed base of PCI I/O hardware with desktop PCs. The new FPGA Module improves efficiency and functionality of embedded FPGA applications: the latest version features single-cycle 'while loops' that execute multiple functions within a single 25 ns 'tick' of the 40 MHz global clock. With this FPGA code can be developed that executes as efficiently as hand-coded VHDL, says the company.

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LabVIEW for automated instrumentation and realtime systems

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