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NI stresses on innovation, launches LabVIEW 2010!
National Instruments hosted the the annual India LabVIEW Conference 2010 in Bangalore today, where it launched LabVIEW 2010 – the latest version of its graphical programming environment for design, test, measurement and control applications.
Jayaram Pillai, MD, NI-India Russia and Arabia.
Jayaram Pillai, managing director, NI-India Russia and Arabia, delivered the India LabVIEW Conference 2010 keynote by discussing how LabVIEW in India has evolved from a product to a powerful ecosystem.
“Innovation is key,” said Pillai: “I earlier cribbed about innovations not happening in India. Now, I have been seeing a lot of innovations over the last five years. Today, people are very involved. They understand situations better, and therefore, innovations are possible. Growth has to come with everybody involved. Innovations are required to solve problems. We need more innovations!”
Pillai presented an example of the solar powered milk refrigeration system as an example of innovation. This is a very simple solution addressing a massive problem, especially in rural areas of India. Vehicles with solar powered milk refrigeration systems visit villages and rural areas to collect the milk and chill it for distribution and use later. LabVIEW was the silent hero behind the scenes.
He added that designers need better and simple tools, which have to be very flexible. Tools such as LabVIEW provide immense flexibility to scientists, engineers and designers. The LabVIEW vision is: bringing software programming to the masses. For over 24 years, NI has consistently delivered performance and features based on existing technologies via LabVIEW. Another interesting highlight is that LabVIEW has always been multi-core enabled.
LabVIEW ecosystem in India
Speaking about the India LabVIEW Sphere, which is one platform providing infinite solutions across industries and applications, Pillai said that from taking simple temperature measurements to controlling the world’s largest particle accelerator, engineers and scientists use the LabVIEW platform to meet a wide range of application challenges across various industries. He added that many features of LabVIEW 2010 are based on actual feedback received from users.
LabVIEW has a robust ecosystem in India. Currently, there are over 5,000 industry applications being served via LabVIEW, though this number could be higher. Over 400 engineering colleges are teaching LabVIEW in their curriculum and there are over 25,000 LabVIEW trained engineers in the country.
LabVIEW also boasts of over 4,000 active users online and more than 200 attendees during its weekly web user groups. This number rises as and when NI’s customers present. “The sphere is all about things that help and sustain the NI and LabVIEW ecosystem.” added Pillai.
NI DAQ workshop: Sun tracker suitable for Indian (and global) solar/PV industry
There were several live demonstrations on systems with acquisition from various sensor types with in-built signal condition on different buses and form factors, building management system, sun tracker demo, and high speed audio recorder. There are much more applications and demos, but I shall only touch upon a few here.
National Instruments' Sun tracker demo at its DAQ showcase and workshop.
First, I quite liked the Sun Tracker demo (see picture here). This solution should be of considerable interest for folks in the solar photovoltaics (PV) space, especially in India. A solar tracker is a device for orienting a daylight reflector, solar PV panel or concentrating solar reflector or lens toward the sun. The sun’s position in the sky varies with the seasons and times of the day.
NI’s multisensor DAQ demo actually highlighted the company’s ability in making measurements from various types of sensors using NI hardware, without the need of any third party signalling, and then implementing test cases on this data in LabVIEW. The company’s high speed audio recorder is a DAQ device that acquires sound signals at very high speeds and stores the acquired data by streaming to a RAID array at over 100 MB/s.
NI’s automated test demo hgihlighted the ability of NI hardware to automatically carry out multiple tests of various types on different products without any human intervention. The company’s building management system (BMS) is actually a complete facility monitoring and control system, which takes care of lighting, automated motion detection, temperature monitoring, attendance system, power consumption monitoring, etc.
Earlier, field applications engineer, Denver D’Souza made a presentation of NI’s DAQ portfolio, aptly titled “Acquire Everything. No Constraints.” Practically, any signal can be acquired from anywhere. Such a system also needs to be scalable, in terms of hardware and software, and flexible. The system should be able to acquire data from diverse bus and form factors as well.
Finally, may I also take this opportunity to thank Jayaram Pillai, MD, India, Russia & Arabia, NI, as well as Ramya Nair and Nandini Subramanya for their hospitality, and to Denver for a most enlightening presentation.
Pradeep Chakraborty 