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coolest LabVIEW/LabVIEW related job

LAVAslide

By LAVAslide
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LAVAslide Newbie

LAVAslide

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*sorry if this thread is posted in the wrong place

hey LAVAs..I am relatively new to LabVIEW but have enjoyed my experience thus far and am curious as to what kind of careers LabVIEW developers have. So with that being said, who has the coolest LabVIEW/LabVIEW related job?

*and please provide a bit of a description of your job

Edited by LAVAslide
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SuperS_5 Newbie

SuperS_5

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Quick answer crelf. "Coolest" might be slightly subjective. Search the web, and you will find a bunch of cool examples of LabVIEW. The FIRST robotics competitions are kind of cool too! So I guess any of those jobs would be fun. Personally I like my position, but can't give details.

Edited by SuperS_5
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Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden Newbie

Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden

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It all fits... :-o... if crelf had enough time on his hands to post 5k messages it must be true : he has the coolest LabVIEW job :-D

Congrats!

Well congartulations to Chris!

Although my job may not be the coolest, it fit my needs very well.

I work as a Senior Architect at Data Science Automation out of their Pittsburgh PA office. My work consists of helping others get their LV project going. Since I consult in many different areas, I get exposed to a lot of different areas of technology and that is one of the bonuses of my job. For a while we had a signover the entrance to our training room (where we offer the NI training) that read "Through these doors pass some of the greatest minds the world ahs known." That expresion applies to many of my customers so it feels like I am "living in a Levis Dockers comercial" (don't worry if you are not old enough to understand that ref). The variety of what I get to work on can be found if you check out the DSA web-site (DSAutomation.com) but can be summarized with a short story.

One of my advisors at the University of Pittsburgh was nominated for the Chancelors Distinguished Teachers Awards (not easy for a Physics type to grab that title), so I wrote a letter detailing how my experience with him has changed to world. After reading it, he replied to me saying "Wow, if that is really true, I have to win!" It was and he did! An example of one of the claims was related to the quality control of DVDs and the cost of production. Before we deployed a LV solution, DVD's had a reject rate approaching 70% and the cost of DVDs was about $80. Not anymore.

So I may not have the coolest job, but it is pleanty cool for me, since along with the LV related activities I have "ZERO" managment and slaes responcibilities.

Ben

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LAVAslide Newbie

LAVAslide

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One of my advisors at the University of Pittsburgh was nominated for the Chancelors Distinguished Teachers Awards (not easy for a Physics type to grab that title), so I wrote a letter detailing how my experience with him has changed to world. After reading it, he replied to me saying "Wow, if that is really true, I have to win!" It was and he did! An example of one of the claims was related to the quality control of DVDs and the cost of production. Before we deployed a LV solution, DVD's had a reject rate approaching 70% and the cost of DVDs was about $80. Not anymore.

So I may not have the coolest job, but it is pleanty cool for me, since along with the LV related activities I have "ZERO" managment and slaes responcibilities.

Ben

cool story Ben thanks for responding..I'm curious, along with the LV code what new method of quality control did you guys come up in regards to the DVDs?

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LAVAslide Newbie

LAVAslide

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alright maybe I'll try and ask for a new trend in this thread..who has worked on the coolest project which they can disclose and what was it?

-side question: Is it accurate to say that the majority of LabVIEW developers are freelancers/consultants rather than on salary in a permanent position?

and congrats crelf; sorry I don't know who you are yet (or what you do with your mad LV skills) but you're reputation defnitely precedes you!

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crelf Apprentice

crelf

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Best. 5000th. Post. Evar.

Well, I agree that it's the best one so far.

Thanks everyone, although I think reputation points are a much better value metric than total number of posts (besides, then we can actually work out a user's perceived SNR).

Me. Whenever I want a new LabVIEW feature, I just walk over to some C-Monkey's desk and ask him for it.

Heeeey! AQ resembles that remark!

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Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden Newbie

Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden

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Posted

alright maybe I'll try and ask for a new trend in this thread..who has worked on the coolest project which they can disclose and what was it?

-side question: Is it accurate to say that the majority of LabVIEW developers are freelancers/consultants rather than on salary in a permanent position?

and congrats crelf; sorry I don't know who you are yet (or what you do with your mad LV skills) but you're reputation defnitely precedes you!

While you are waiting for the cats to line in a row, you may want to review this thread on the dark side.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Most-Imaginative-Craziest-Interesting-Thing-You-ve-Done-With/td-p/308800

Ben

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ned Newbie

ned

Posted
Posted (edited)

-side question: Is it accurate to say that the majority of LabVIEW developers are freelancers/consultants rather than on salary in a permanent position?

I don't know about the majority of LabVIEW developers, but all my jobs have been full-time, salaried positions. Often LabVIEW isn't the only thing I do - it may be 3/4 of my time, but the rest is dedicated to whatever else is needed to get a test or automation system up and running. That usually includes anything from evaluating components to reviewing mechanical designs to plumbing and wiring.

EDIT: and I should note as well, a lot of my time is reading documentation, and sometimes coding in scripting languages specific to the chosen hardware, such as motion control systems.

Edited by ned
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PaulG. Newbie

PaulG.

Posted
Posted

alright maybe I'll try and ask for a new trend in this thread..who has worked on the coolest project which they can disclose and what was it?

-side question: Is it accurate to say that the majority of LabVIEW developers are freelancers/consultants rather than on salary in a permanent position?

and congrats crelf; sorry I don't know who you are yet (or what you do with your mad LV skills) but you're reputation defnitely precedes you!

I once worked for a company that built a device that collected very large volumes of air samples and concentrated the particulate matter of those air samples into a fluid. It had to work in a wide range of temperatures and humidities and the sample size had to be consistent. The hotter and drier the ambient air the more fluid had to be dumped into the device to get the correct sample size and vice-versa and every combination in-between. To determine the correct flow rate for each combination of temperature and humidity manually would have taken months. So I had LabVIEW, an environmental test chamber, the "blower" that collected the air sample, the "collector" (kind of looked like a small stainless steel horn with tubes running in and out of it), syringe pumps, feet and feet of teflon tubing wrapped in brass wire transferring fluids all over the place, lab stands and jacks holding everything together, a balance, a pump that emptied the sample cup sitting on the balance, etc. etc. My LabVIEW code ran it all unattended for days at a time. It looked like a prop from a science fiction B movie. She was a real beaut. I had a blast putting that thing together and even more fun just watching it run.

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Black Pearl Newbie

Black Pearl

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I don't think I qualify for the 'coolest job', but mine is pretty interesting and fun.

I work part time (30 h) on a permanent position. I really enjoy not having full-time as this gives me a cool time with my daughter and for private LV projects.

I work for a small company, which has the following effects:

* I'm pretty much involved in the complete life-cycle of a project from the initial developement (heavy LV coding) until service visits (maintanance, support) at the customer site.

* It's a nice 'start-up' culture where you have a lot of freedom but also heavy responsibility. I enjoy the freedom but I've experienced others struggeling with the little structure we have. You need to manage yourself.

We are a specialist company delivering high precision measurement setups to the industry. If they can't go with COTS products or know that a certain requirement will be really difficult, they go with us. So work is always full of interesting challanges, and sometimes the developement phase is streched to on-site developement at some big industrial companies. This is interesting because there I see a pretty tightly controlled (managed) enviornment, as opposed to my company.

Also in many situations, the equipement is sited in the secret R&D labs of these companies, where I see the products that won't hit the market for some years (or not at all). Needless to say that I meet some really brilliant/crazy scientists there.

Felix

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OzEChris Newbie

OzEChris

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I think that, since I work for an NI Alliance Member, I'd have close to the best LabVIEW job - as any other NI Alliance Member employee can probably attest to. The coolest thing about LabVIEW is that it opens you up to such a broad selection of projects, applications, new technologies, and industries.

In the past year, I've:

1) Architected and led a team of testers to implement a TestStand/LabVIEW Embedded Software Integration testing strategy and system, that now currently runs every night and covers over 400 test cases for an AUTOMOTIVE product

2) Frantically learnt LabVIEW FPGA, to help build a prototype signal detection/analysis system using FlexRIO and Peer to peer streaming technology, for a BIOMEDICAL application

3) Assisted in the development of LabVIEW RT/FPGA for a viscosity measuring device, to be used by the PHARMACEUTICALS industry.

4) Currently re-designing a high-speed signal acquisition/processing application to be run on an R-Series DAQ Card (more FPGA), for the PAPER industry.

5) Currently playing with an EVS RT Vision Controller, learning about Vision to develop a Vision inspection system for the MANUFACTURING industry.

Writing LabVIEW is the easy part. Understanding the application is the tricky bit!

OK cool, my first post over and done with!!

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