LabVIEW for Raspberry Pi

[vitoi]

The recently introduced Raspberry Pi is a 32 bit ARM based microcontroller board that is very popular. It would be great if we could programme it in LabVIEW. This product could leverage off the already available LabVIEW Embedded for ARM and the LabVIEW Microcontroller SDK (or other methods of getting LabVIEW to run on it).

The Raspberry Pi is a $35 (with Ethernet) credit card sized computer that is open hardware. The ARM chip is an Atmel ARM11 running at 700 MHz resulting in 875 MIPS of performance. By way of comparison, the current LabVIEW Embedded for ARM Tier 1 (out-of-the-box experience) boards have only 60 MIPS of processing power. So, about 15 times the processing power!

Wouldn’t it be great to programme the Raspberry Pi in LabVIEW?

[vitoi]

The share price figures for the two years 2012 and 2013 are now available:

* National Instruments: Up 20.9%

* Agilent: Up 59.6%

* Nasdaq: Up 57.2%

* Russell 2000: Up 55.0%

The relevant indices and Agilent are all up about 55 to 60% (and remarkably close to each other). National Instruments share price up only 20.9% over the two years (or down 23.3% relative to the Nasdaq).

Over the past two years, on average, the National Instruments share price has dropped about 1% per month relative to the Nasdaq.

National Instruments has the innovative technology to outperform the market. However, marketing is flogging the hardware and retarding revenue growth and customer satisfaction. LabVIEW could be much more prevalent than it is now if the LabVIEW Everywhere concept is reignited and truly pursued.

[ErnieH]

How about a version of the MyRIO for engineers to use for our little projects that don't need a PC? Would cost more, of course, but would give us something we could possible use instead of using other vendors software and hardware.

[Hong.Zhang@agresearch.co.]

I realy like the idea:

 NI-6008 --> Raspberry Pi --> WiFi Access Point --> iPad (Data Dashboard)

Our systems are battery power so saving power is very impotent. 

I really love to use Labview to programm  Raspberry Pi. 

How is NI going about it?

Thanks

Hong

[ZF_Steiner]

Maybe this helps NI think about RaspberryPi running Labview Vi's.

What NI can't do others do!

Matlab Simulink now supports RaspberryPi:

http://www.mathworks.de/hardware-support/raspberry-pi-simulink.html

[vitoi]

YesZF_Steiner,

Others are doing what National Instruments chooses not to do. In the end the embedded market and powerful categories such as the Internet of Things will be lost to other companies. These other companies may then leverage off their new found popularity to attack LabVIEW's power base that is the desktop.

Unless LabVIEW breaks free of the desktop and embraces embedded and mobile devices I suspect that its market share will drop dramatically.

This is a concern to both National Instruments, due to falling revenue and profits and to LabVIEW developers, due to decreasing market share reducing our business value and career prospects.

I would love to see National Instruments fully implement LabVIEW Everywhere. National Instruments and LabVIEW developers woudl both win!

Food for thought.

[Peter_B]

At face value Mathsworks can probably afford to support the RaspberryPi as it wouldn't cannibilise any of their own hardware sales.  That is how NI must think.  However they need not be stuck in that paradigm.     NI should be able to offer a low cost yet capable embedded solution.    Those two requirements seem mutually exclusive until you realise it would be a loss leader to get more people programming in LabVIEW.    Texas Instruments do exactly this with their Launchpads and such a move would  stimulate uptake of LabVIEW across a wider audience.

[vitoi]

While National Instruments stands still, the world moves on...   http://www.mathworks.de/hardware-support/raspberry​-pi-simulink.html

[vitoi]

Yes Peter,

National Instruments need to look at the big picture, which is how to increase LabVIEW sales.

More LabVIEW sales means more LabVIEW sales as it reaches critical mass as a credible alternative to other programming languages for many applications. This in turn would mean more hardware sales.

I don't know the LabVIEW sales figures, but I bet that they are declining. The National Instruments net income figure has dropped for the past two years, so something is wrong.

Hopefully the business outcomes will speak louder than we can.

Regards,

Vito

[RoboGret]

First, let me say thanks to all of you for your enthusiasm for LabVIEW and the National Instruments platform. We appreciate the level of excitement that this community has clearly demonstrated given the number of Kudos on this thread. It's exciting for us to see and hear how the LabVIEW community uses LabVIEW to control both NI and third party hardware and solve some of the most challenging and interesting problems in the world. 

I want to reassure you of our continued, dedicated efforts in making a flexible platform of both hardware and software to meet the needs of our user base. We've had our eye on the Raspberry Pi (A huge congrats to the Raspberry Pi Foundation for releasing the B+!!) and other similar embedded targets.  While there isn't a way to independently run LabVIEW code on such targets, there is a community of developers that have created an innovative way to communicate with and control these useful embedded devices.  

I want to draw your attention to one example of the LabVIEW community's innovation and enthusiasm.  LINX is a LabVIEW-based API that allows you to control and interact with a number of 3rd party embedded targets. For a full list of targets that continues to grow see: here. In the most recent blog post you'll see that the Raspberry Pi is the next in a long list supported devices. We are excited to see that list continue to grow given the open source nature of the project and the enthusiasm of our user base.

To get up and running with LINX in LabVIEW you'll see explicit directions from the getting started section. Sam has done a great job making the installation and setup of LINX easy and quick. You can download LINX for free from the LabVIEW Tools Network today.

I believe examples such as LINX are a testament to the creativity and vitality of our LabVIEW community. My thanks again to all of you for your feedback on how we can continue to expand LabVIEW and the NI Platform so that even more engineering challenges can be solved.  Keep up the great work!

- Shelley (I look forward to seeing many of you @NIWeek soon!) 

[TNie]

This would be a great addition to Labview when devising smaller projects and cost effective for the end user! :manvery-happy:

Status? :manfrustrated: