interface) standpoint is available either as a module or part of the base unit, the custom board non-recurring engineering design costs may sway you one way or another.įor test system applications, check out our guide Which NI Platform is Right for Your Test Needs? cRIO, PXI, cDAQ, sbRIO?.National Instruments presents LabVIEW, a graphical development environment to design electronic circuits especially focused on specialists from the electronic, scientific and engineering instrumentation field. I/O availability – depending on how much of what you need from an I/O (including comm.Production volumes – at some quantity, it’ll likely make more sense from a financial standpoint to use the sbRIO.Size / envelope – if your application requires a small envelope, the cRIO form factor may just be too big and you’ll be forced to go the sbRIO route.There’s more details than provided here, but the decision process will usually be based on 3 main criteria (feel free to reach out here if you want to discuss those details): Of course, you’ll want to be mindful of version compatibility as well.įor embedded applications, you’ll generally want to default to using a cRIO (we love the cRIO and use it a LOT) and let your project requirements convince you that a different platform (e.g. The specs of your application will drive your choice of hardware platform. An NI Single-Board RIO (including the NI SOM).LabVIEW can run on any of these platforms: It’s similar to drawing a block diagram, except you’re drawing your code, as opposed to text-based languages like C# & VHDL where you type out in text what you want the software to do.

LabVIEW is graphically-based, meaning you drag around various building blocks and connect them in a data flow architecture. The language is actually called “G”, but most people refer to LabVIEW as if it’s a language (i.e., most people would say “it’s coded in LabVIEW”). Strictly speaking, LabVIEW is not a coding language, it’s a development environment. Originally it was focused on taking measurements from various lab instruments, but it’s expanded drastically from its inception.

LabVIEW is a software development environment created by National Instruments.

Historically, LabVIEW has been widely adopted in the automated test realm, essentially becoming the de facto standard in that application space, whereas more recently it’s been gaining traction within the realm of industrial embedded monitoring and control. There are likely some additional corner cases out there, but this covers the vast majority of applications we see at Viewpoint. If you’re just looking for some basics about what LabVIEW is, see What is LabVIEW?) If you’re looking for why you might consider using LabVIEW, see our article Why use LabVIEW. (If you need LabVIEW help and want to know what your options are, check out LabVIEW Help – What are my options?.

Free labview software