Power Electronics Development Center
User interface for digital energy
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By the way, for folks who aren't familiar with the digital energy term, there is a new article here about it: The Digital Energy Revolution
The user interface designs for these applications is very important of course, because that's often the first impression of the user-- who may be non-technical or may be an engineer/scientist. Your user interface design skills will be valuable for digital energy applications. It's always a challenge to convey the information in a way that's intuitive while also enabling the user to dive deeper and explore the data when the need/want to.
Here are some thoughts:
I'd recommend joining the LabVIEW User Interface (UI) Community Group. It's one of the largest and most active developer communities. There is a lot of tutorial and training information there.
UI Interest Group
In addition to the built in user interface capabilities of LabVIEW for Windows, LabVIEW Real-Time, etc., the LabVIEW Web UI Builder tools may be of interest. This enables you to build thin client applications that interface with RIO-based embedded systems on the grid.
Another thing you may want to familiarize yourself with is the communication protocols for the smart grid and digital energy systems. A lot of people I talk to are excited to know that these protocols are available for LabVIEW Real-Time. In the United States, one of the most popular protocols is called DNP3. Another one that's common worldwide in outstations is IEC 60870-5, which is also available as a driver. The newer protocol that looks like it will become the standard worldwide is IEC 61850. That one is by far the most complex. We are in active development on it and can share our roadmap information under NDA. Or meet us at the NIWeek Energy Technology Summit this August 7-8 for more information.
DNP3 (Distributed Network Protocol)
Good question. I hope this gets you started. Please reply back if you want more information on any of this.
