LabVIEW Community Edition Announced

[hooovahh]

So I wasn't there but there was a public announcement at GDevCon about a new edition of LabVIEW called Community Edition which is the LabVIEW Professional version (I read that as application builder included), and completely free with no watermarks for non-commercial use.

NI hasn't made any post about timelines, or other details yet but I hear those are in the works.

This is obviously a huge thing for LabVIEW as any monetary barrier to entry will discourage new developers from experimenting with LabVIEW.  And then there is the fact that those that are familiar with LabVIEW, can keep up with the newest version outside of their company, or when they are between jobs.

[Porter]

It would also allow open source developers to maintain their projects after they have changed jobs. I'm glad to hear that NI is moving in this direction.

How are they going to prevent companies from just using the community version though?

[jacobson]

Not a lawyer but I suspect it's a bit of a good faith kind of thing similar to Visual Studio Community Edition or Visual Studio Code. I also imagine the licensing cost might be cheaper than the potential of getting caught and NI wanting to do something about it.

[Porter]

I wonder if they will also release a community edition for Linux.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Porter

[Sparkette]

On 8/25/2019 at 10:33 PM, Porter said:

I wonder if they will also release a community edition for Linux.

I hope so. It would be nice to not have to bother with a VM.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

On 8/26/2019 at 4:33 AM, Porter said:

I wonder if they will also release a community edition for Linux.

I'm afraid the chance for that is very small. Maintaining a separate install is a lot of work and the Community Edition is a different installation than the standard LabVIEW installer. More importantly: There is no license manager for the Linux version. So there is no way to put up something like the yearly renewal request for activation of the Community Edition. Basically it would be way to easy to distribute the LabVIEW Community Edition for Linux by bad actors and with no way for NI to even know about where it is used. The yearly reactivation requirement for the Community Edition is the only way that allows NI to at least track the use of it in some ways and give potential abusers at least once a year a bad feeling.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[Michael Aivaliotis]

The following slide was just presented at the CLA summit:

[RomainP]

The Beta of LabVIEW Community Edition is now available at http://ni.com/beta

[Bob Edwards G4BBY]

Will the 2020 community edition still be issued in May please? This locked-down ex-engineer would be very grateful if it was.

[Yair]

NI is trying to release it earlier. See here - https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-LE/idc-p/4030035#M41946

[Michael Aivaliotis]

I thought I'd reply to this thread for posterity. LabVIEW Community Edition is now fully released starting today. Just to summarize:

• LabVIEW 2020 and NXG 5.0 are part of the release.
  • Includes everything that comes with LabVIEW and NXG Professional Edition, Including App Builder (exe builds).
  • No watermarks or feature restrictions
  • LabVIEW NXG Community Edition includes the LabVIEW NXG Web Module
  • Extending SystemLink Cloud evaluation to 6 months during 2020  
• LINX toolkit included with install. Supports:
  • Arduino via serial port.
  • Digilent uChip board
  • RasPi and Beaglebone Black as LabVIEW targets via Ethernet Port.
  • You can build/deploy a LVRT application on the above targets (RasPi and Beaglebone Black) and run headless. Exact same process as traditional NI embedded targets etc like cRIO.
  • You can use the LINX toolkit separately if you need it for commercial usage. Just install it on a non-community system. The license for LINX allows this now.
• License allows usage for anything and everything except:
  • NO Commercial use. If you want to do commercial work, buy a full license for your business or use your company's license.
  • NO College University courses/labs (post-secondary). Academic Site Licenses apply in these cases.
  • Note: Students and teachers in K-12 classrooms can also use LabVIEW Community and LabVIEW NXG Community.
  • License is activated through your ni.com account and lasts for 1-year (renewable each year).
  • Clear definitions are detailed in this link.

*Arduino is only serial support (not a target)

 

[Jordan Kuehn]

14 hours ago, Michael Aivaliotis said:

• LINX toolkit included with install. Supports:
  • Arduino via serial port.
  • Digilent uChip board
  • RasPi and Beaglebone Black as LabVIEW targets via Ethernet Port.
  • You can build/deploy a LVRT application on the above targets (RasPi and Beaglebone Black) and run headless. Exact same process as traditional NI embedded targets etc like cRIO.
  • You can use the LINX toolkit separately if you need it for commercial usage. Just install it on a non-community system. The license for LINX allows this now.

*Arduino is only serial support (not a target)

 

Is there a dedicated place for information and discussion about this? LabVIEWMakerHub is a bit sparse and I'm not sure it's completely up to date (mentions LV Home, etc.). I'm curious as to target support (RaspPi Compute 3?, Hats?, etc) and getting started. I have a RaspPi 3 and 4 on order as of last night. I'm very curious to see if this can fit a niche where a cRIO is overkill and $$, and I really need something like a USB-61xx in an embedded target.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Jordan Kuehn

[hooovahh]

2 minutes ago, Jordan Kuehn said:

Is there a dedicated place for information and discussion about this? 

Funny you should mention that.  LAVA has created a new subforum dedicated to the LabVIEW Community edition, and this thread (among a couple others) have been moved into it.  Feel free to post questions comments, and information regarding the community edition there.  

[Jordan Kuehn]

Just now, hooovahh said:

Funny you should mention that.  LAVA has created a new subforum dedicated to the LabVIEW Community edition, and this thread (among a couple others) have been moved into it.  Feel free to post questions comments, and information regarding the community edition there.  

Is LINX its own separate topic or should be co-mingled with LV CE? Thanks for the new space!

[hooovahh]

(Thank Michael).  I do see this as a slight issue.  For now the new LINX is only in the Community Edition, so this one subforum will support both sets of topics.  In the future LINX will be its own updated package on the Tools Network, and won't necessarily be part of the Community Edition.  That being said I don't think we will be making another subforum just for LINX stuff.  I expect the majority of Community Edition topics will be related to LINX, and splitting LINX into Community and Non Community subforums would only split the conversation up.  For now the Community Edition subforum has pretty icons showing the Pi, Arduino, and Beagleboard.  This will hopefully drive people wanting to make topics on this hardware, into that subforum.  Co-mingle away.

[crossrulz]

My understanding is that the Linx Toolkit will be available in the professional LabVIEW 2020.  But that hasn't been released yet (hopefully mid-May).

[Michael Aivaliotis]

The LabVIEW community edition, community is tiny right now and it's up to all of us to build it up and help others. We are the pioneers so to speak. Don't forget we have the LabVIEW Wiki to use as a place to create compatibility tables and information. Creating a LabVIEW compatibility table should be the first thing on there, actually.

[Jordan Kuehn]

2 hours ago, Michael Aivaliotis said:

Creating a LabVIEW compatibility table should be the first thing on there, actually.

I'm shocked that one isn't already available.

[Aristos Queue]

On 4/30/2020 at 8:06 AM, Jordan Kuehn said:

I'm shocked that one isn't already available.

Note above where I quoted another NI engineer about the complexity of answering that question given the variations of Pis available. We (NI) does not own one of every possible Pi. We are able to give the tech specs of what is supported, but the model numbers are not so straightforward in their mapping. Therefore, the table will have to be crowd sourced over time.

If you're shocked that the community has not built it yet, well, LV2020 CE only dropped on Tuesday. 🙂

Edited May 1, 2020 by Aristos Queue

[Jordan Kuehn]

1 minute ago, Aristos Queue said:

Note above where I quoted another NI engineer about the complexity of answering that question given the variations of Pis available. We (NI) does not own one of every possible Pi. We are able to give the tech specs of what is supported, but the model numbers are not so straightforward in their mapping. Therefore, the table will have to be crowd sourced over time.

If you're shocked that the community has not built it yet, well, LV2020 CE only dropped on Tuesday. 🙂

Fair enough 😀

[Michael Aivaliotis]

On 4/29/2020 at 6:14 AM, Jordan Kuehn said:

I'm very curious to see if this can fit a niche where a cRIO is overkill and $$, and I really need something like a USB-61xx in an embedded target.

I'm investigating this hardware which might fit your requirement: https://www.mccdaq.com/DAQ-HAT.aspx

[Jordan Kuehn]

6 minutes ago, Michael Aivaliotis said:

I'm investigating this hardware which might fit your requirement: https://www.mccdaq.com/DAQ-HAT.aspx

I too was looking at those hats. I haven't gotten too deep into it, but it does seem like they haven't built LV drivers for them yet and would require calling some custom commands from the Raspberry Pi. At least according to the existing LINX webpage:

https://www.labviewmakerhub.com/doku.php?id=libraries:linx:faq#6

However, I have used MCCDAQ products before (TC-32) and they do seem to have some good LV support in house. I wouldn't be surprised if they add support to the product. If I'm wrong about needing custom commands/drivers that would be great!

Edited May 1, 2020 by Jordan Kuehn

[Michael Aivaliotis]

1 hour ago, Jordan Kuehn said:

I too was looking at those hats. I haven't gotten too deep into it, but it does seem like they haven't built LV drivers for them yet and would require calling some custom commands from the Raspberry Pi. At least according to the existing LINX webpage:

https://www.labviewmakerhub.com/doku.php?id=libraries:linx:faq#6

However, I have used MCCDAQ products before (TC-32) and they do seem to have some good LV support in house. I wouldn't be surprised if they add support to the product. If I'm wrong about needing custom commands/drivers that would be great!

Well considering NI owns MCCDAQ... It could be a good thing or a bad thing.

[Jordan Kuehn]

21 minutes ago, Michael Aivaliotis said:

Well considering NI owns MCCDAQ... It could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I was unaware of that. Good to know!

[Jordan Kuehn]

Quote

MCC offers support for C (Linux) and/or Python only. LabVIEW is not a supported programming option for the MCC HATs. Currently there is no LabVIEW development in process for the HATs.

The reply I got back from MCC.