topics to be covered in a 1hour labview session

[Madhav]

I need to give a Presentation adressing 20 people who are much more experienced than me but have no idea about Labview.

As of me i have worked on developing a test application with Labview to access c sharp dll and test its functionality for a month now.

I need to take a session give them an over view of labview and its strength..

Can anyone suggest me what cuold be the possible topics tat can be covered in the session.

It would be great if anyone has some Labview presentation slides or sumthing.

[ShaunR]

Tough call.

Are thay all programmers? What languages?

[jcarmody]

Have you asked your local NI representative? I'd think they'd be happy to have an opportunity to evangelize.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

Have you asked your local NI representative? I'd think they'd be happy to have an opportunity to evangelize.

If they are C programmers you can start out with the classic "Hello World" example followed by a demo of multithreading without thinking... but what to do with the other 59 minutes...

Ben

Edited December 17, 2010 by neBulus

[Black Pearl]

Assuming they are programmers and assuming you want to impress them.

I'd show them how 'highlight execution' works.

(a) that way they see how these funny pictures form together a sort of code

(b) they see how easy it is to debug an application

In a second step, use highlight execution to demonstrate Ben's suggestion of 'multithreading without thinking'.

Felix

[Phillip Brooks]

Add some sort of instrumentation I/O. One of LabVIEW's strengths is the large collection of instrument drivers for acquiring data.

[mje]

Make a little demo about how easy it is to do synchronization between parallel tasks? A simple example using queues can go a long way to demonstrating this, even a simple producer-consumer pattern.

[jgcode]

It would be great if anyone has some Labview presentation slides or sumthing.

Hey Madhav

NI have a bunch of example presentations for User Groups here.

Depending on what you end up doing, you may be able to save some time and pull a bunch of stuff out and create a mashup (even for part of your presentation)?

Cheers

-JG

[Madhav]

They are all programmers...

Almost all of them work on C C++ and C#

I gave a thought to what i can say n have short listed the follwing topics..

Introduction

Basic Loops ,shift registers

Array strings cluster

Bundle unbundle

Timers

Threads

Events

Property nodes

Invoke Nodes

Sub VIs and connectors

Dialog boxex

Debugging tools

error handling

waveforms and graphs

File IO

VISA

Decorations

Data socket

Matrix Vi heirarchy

Help

These are the topics i m planning to say about.. Just an introduction to all of above topics..

Ultimate goal is just that the team must understand somne basics about Labview..

What say???

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

They are all programmers...

Almost all of them work on C C++ and C#

I gave a thought to what i can say n have short listed the follwing topics..

Introduction

Basic Loops ,shift registers

Array strings cluster

Bundle unbundle

Timers

Threads

Events

Property nodes

Invoke Nodes

Sub VIs and connectors

Dialog boxex

Debugging tools

error handling

waveforms and graphs

File IO

VISA

Decorations

Data socket

Matrix Vi heirarchy

Help

These are the topics i m planning to say about.. Just an introduction to all of above topics..

Ultimate goal is just that the team must understand somne basics about Labview..

What say???

Please cover data flow paradigm and make it clear that controls and indicators are not variables as used in C. they are graphic widgets and "the wire" is the variable.

Ben

[jgcode]

Please cover data flow paradigm

Great point. Also my boss loves to talk for hours on that one.

Comparing the procedural vs dataflow paradigm should be interesting for a C programmer.

[Yair]

Aristos Queue once suggested using this scrolling LED XControl example which is simple in LV, interesting and can be used to highlight various aspects. In any case, I would suggest staying away from DAQ and hardware (VISA is probably included in that), as programmers don't care about drivers when being introduced to a language.

Also, be sure to highlight the differences. Demonstrate race conditions. Make it clear from the outset that LV does NOT have variables in the same way that C does (this ties in to the dataflow point the others brought up).

[MoldySpaghetti]

I once did something similar, where I did 40 minutes with a projector to convince a few C/C++ programmers that LV might be the way to go. It was in the form of challenges. Each was very short, and was written from scratch in the presentation.

I'd stay away from trying to show just how LV works, if in fact it's the case that you're trying to show the utility of LV, rather than how to use it. Unless I'm actually being an instructor, I'm unapologetic about flying through tools and screens while they watch.

I asked each question, and allowed a minute or so of conversation to happen before showing a dramatically short LV solution. Go ahead and let the participants bring up concepts like 3rd party graphics libraries, linking, compiling, design patterns to decouple UI from data models, etc. "Oh that's easy, all you have to do is import library X & Y, link them together, change method Z, recompile, then write a hello world with some binary shift functions."

Topics:

1. How would you show the bit representation of a 32 bit unsigned integer as it increases? How long would it take you?

(Using a delayed loop, using just the conversion of the loop counter to a boolean array). Sounds almost tautological, but this is not trivial to do in C with graphical representation.

30 seconds to build. This will get their attention at least.

2. I want to configure this Tek scope to trigger on a rising .5 volts and get the data back and store it in a CSV file. How long would it take you? How would you attack this problem?

(Start with new project, use Tools->Instrumentation->NI Instrument Driver Finder, get driver. Create VI, then drop in initialize, configure, acquire, display on graph. Show this, then show a single conversion & save to CSV file.)

[This isn't exactly what I did, but is probably an even better motivator]

3. I want to create a limit graph that users can annotate. How would you do this? How long would it take, and what would be your plan of attack?

(Single VI. This one takes a little bit longer. Use waveform gen VI for sine wave data, plug into MinMax picture plot. Change amplitude control for waveform gen to slider, watch plot change dynamically. Then, if you're feeling bold, create a little paint program on top of that, just tracking the mouse & left-click and producing points on the graph. If you're not solid in LV, might want to either toss out the latter idea or practice it beforehand.)

4. Then show a couple examples that are prebuilt, to show that it can handle larger projects. I showed the robot arm, and the bouncing cube, and displayed the VI hierarchy. The latter shows that mathematical expressions can still be entered via text, kind of a middle ground for textaholics. They also show how an incredibly terse program can deliver rather complex and accurate results.

Edited January 8, 2011 by MoldySpaghetti

[Yair]

Oh, and one really nice feature (which is even cooler if you present it without drawing explicit attention to it) - multiple return parameters on VIs. No need for pointers here.

[Roderic]

I dont think you should present a lot of things, it's best to show a few examples where LabVIEW is easy to use and how block diagram is much more readable than a C code... I bet C programmers would be impressed how easy it is to design UI in LabVIEW.