LabVIEW Champion: Albert Geven

[AlbertLe]

LabVIEW Champions Member Profile - Albert Geven

Name:
Albert Geven 

User Name:
Albert.Geven 

Home:
Eindhoven, Netherlands

Programming Languages:
LabVIEW, Pascal, Modula 2, Algol-60, Applesoft, C, C++, Python

Certification:
Certified LabVIEW Developer since August 2004, Certified LabVIEW Architect since August 2005, but never followed up after that, CLAD after that, speed is lacking, have to move over to CTRL-space....

Used LabVIEW Since:
LabVIEW 2.5.2, 1993

Applications Areas:
We build all kind of measurement applications and in the past five years have also begun developing control applications with GPIB, DAQ, vision and motion.
Our biggest job was a flexible measurement framework for semiconductor chips characterization. Our primary goal for these systems is flexibility, not speed.
Now building systems that take microscopic pictures ( a lot of pictures of one slide) and working on automated light measurements.

Biography:
My background is in chemistry. I developed ION selective electrodes for low level measurements in water from 1974 until 1976. Then I began developing magnetic lacquers for magnetic tape and then, in 1981, I switched to test and measurement and automation applications. This was the result of being too lazy to do all of the those measurements myself during the first seven years. I  always spent more time to automate my measurements than doing the measurements by hand. In 1981 I started developing a 68000 board for multiprocessing with a guy that knew what we were up to and 3 years later we finalized the board and built 3 working systems with each 8* 68k boards inside. That helped to more easily integrate the hardware, software and system design. I even remember that we used a bitslice processor and a meta-assembler for that code. Boy I am glad that is over and out, but we had fun. On the programming side I started in Algol-60, switched over to Applesoft, then to UCSD-pascal and later Modula 2. Modula2 was nice where C was and is awful. I used C++ for two years but then we switched to  LabVIEW and I forgot the rest completely.

Now trying to bring back my object design stuff in LabVIEW and started with an object approach on instrument drivers. I really like the flexibility you get with objects and the administration that now runs under the hood compared to VI-server calling instrument drivers.

At the moment retired but teaching at Fontys university, basic C with Arduino and of course LabVIEW

User Groups:
LVDUTLUG (Dutch LabVIEW user group) and formerly Philips LabVIEW User Group (PLUG)

Discussion Groups:
I have been active with Info-labview for 20+ years now, because it is easily accessible, and I sometimes contribute to LabVIEW Zone. I have  very warm feelings towards LAVA but don't spend as much time as I want to there.

Websites:
Two websites, one for our company, internal about LabVIEW and with special interest in instrument drivers, and one website for our church (Roman Catholic) - a small website but I try to keep it up to date each week.

Articles:
I once wrote an article about polyLED measurements for the NI Quarterly And I did a lot of presentations for our user group, the LabVIEW on Site in Geel Belgium and several presentations on NI-days in the Netherlands.

Books:
No books written, but I read a lot. Last book children fantasy about anything.