LabVIEW 4 to ... ?

[Yair]

The web monitoring tool does not work in PDAs because it requires an ActiveX object for control.

The LV PDA module allows you to write applications for PDAs running Windows CE and (in 8.x) allows you to send SMS if your device supports it. If you want general info about sending SMS, you will need some other solution. Searching for SMS here and in the NI forums should give you some results. You should be aware that the PDA module (at least the last version I used) produces buggy executables and you usually need to do some extra work to get your applications working as you want.

The current LV version is 8.5 (although I'm not sure if it's been announced yet and it will probably be a few months before you can get the toolkits) and you should be aware that there are a lot of changes to the environment which will require a lot of adjusting. I suggest you download the evaluation version from NI's site and play around with it. It is a fully functional version of LV which will work for 30 days. In fact, if you buy LV, you only need to activate the version you already installed.

I suggest you also talk with your local NI office, because they can probably give you specific details which will be relevant to you.

[DidikChandra]

Hi Yen, Thanx for your ideas.

I'm planning to use the PDA for the field supervisor in the area to monitor the operations remotely (aside from the dedicated process operator), while the web monitoring will be for management people to see the process remotely.

Sending SMS will be performed from a dedicated server for the whole 10 systems for assigned maintenance staffs using GSM modem (USB or Serial based probably) instead of sending from PDA.

Locating local NI office is quite difficult since I could not find any in my area (I searched using google and returned only individual user of LabVIEW).

There are basically 4 types of packages from NI for LabVIEW, CMIW, they are Base, Full, Professional and Developer Suite. Now which of those are just enough for me cause the pricing is quite expensive, I would not want to buy a Developer Suite for jobs that I can do with only Full (with a little sweat to go around working for it) (It would be like buying a buying a big gun just to kill a small rat)

[Yair]

I suggest you check out this page and then try contacting NI through the link in the bottom.

I would suggest staying away from the base version becasue it doesn't include support for events, remote monitoring, building applications and much more. Full would probably work for you, but you would need to buy the application builder seperately, so I would say go with full. For certain SCADA application, you might wish to use the DSC module which will also cost you. Also consider that the PDA module would be a seperate buy anyway and that it may have additional licensing costs.

I think that the biggest issue might be the readjusting you will need to make, because the basic dataflow logic is the same, but 8.x is a much richer environment than 4 and it would definitely require some adjusting.