Editor’s Pick: LabVIEW 2013 Released

National Instruments recently released the 2013 version of its LabVIEW system design software for engineers and scientists. It’s filled with enhancements that sound like they’ll make it easier to use new technologies and program everything from a basic measurement system to full test platforms.

For example, a key enhancement in NI LabVIEW 2013 is native support for the newest hardware from vendors like ARM and Xilinx. Now remember that LabVIEW supports programming for multithreaded applications and offers the tools to develop monitoring and control applications, as well as to handle the data stream in real time. So, what this means is that you can develop high-performance systems that leverage such hardware as a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, a Xilinx system on a chip, and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays).

An interesting tidbit announced in cahoots with that technology used in the company’s new open platform CompactRIO cRIO-9068 controller is the introduction of the NI Linux Real-Time operating system. Linux should make for some interesting developments.

But I digress. Another part of the 2013 rollout that caught my attention is LabVIEW’s support for mobile devices has been updated to keep pace with the latest versions of iOS and Android platforms. This means that you can use LabVIEW mobile dashboards to monitor and control LabVIEW applications remotely. And if you subscribe to the NI Technical Data Cloud you can also access data directly with your iPad.

To make matters easier for you guys who program applications for clients, LabVIEW 2013 offers a new streamlined application deployment technology called Deploy. A NI partner called Wirebird Labs developed this setup authoring and application distribution tool. Deploy helps you build a professional software release method for your LabVIEW applications. Professional means things like one-click build and deployment as well as customizable deployment sequences.

Along those lines, LabVIEW 2013 also introduces an in-product storefront for the LabVIEW Tools Network. The Tools Network is a community of LabVIEW software add-ons. NI says the Tools Network recently surpassed 2 million product downloads, BTW.

In all, NI LabVIEW 2013 includes more than 100 new features and improvements in the LabVIEW editor and you can read more about it from the Pick of the Week link. Your best bet, however, is to hit the “See what’s new in the 2013 release of NI LabVIEW” link after the end of the main write-up and take in the four short videos you’ll find front and center.

Thanks, Pal. — Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s pick of the week write-up.

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