Re: LabVIEW Use

["John E. Sohl" <JSOHL@cc.weber.edu>]

Bob,

WARNING LONG MESSAGE ABOUT DATA ACQUISITION FOLLOWS!!

> courses.  My particular interest is to use it with the GPIB interface
> and HP instrumentation to control experiments in the advanced physics lab,

	I currently use SnapMaster for our advanced physics lab. This is a GUI
based data acquisition software that is vaguely similar to LabVIEW. I have my
students program the computer with SnapMaster to collect analog signals from a
damped simple pendulum. The students also do an FFT (fast fourier transform) on
the data to get the frequency spectrum of the pendulum's oscillations. All this
is done using SnapMaster and its GUI interface. 

> and would appreciate any comments on this application.  It is now available
> in a student version for about $50 which makes it more desireable for a
> number of possible uses.  Thanks.

	Several of our students are applying for a summer position at Rockwell
for which the job posting specifically listed LabVIEW as a desired skill. The
problem for me is that the full version of LabVIEW is very expensive. Hence,
when the student version came out I checked into it. It does not have all of
the functionality of the full version of course. Several of the crippled
features struck me as kind of annoying, but I can't recall which those were off
the top of my head. The main reason that I stopped pursuing it was that the
ONLY dac boards that are supported are those made by National Instruments. All
of my boards are made by either Keithly/Metrabyte or Cyber Research (CyberDAS).

	I called National Instruments several times and tried to get a version
of a driver for my boards but all to no avail. The best they would do is offer
me a trade in of my boards at 50% value for their boards at full value. This
remarkable offer would cost me more then simply buying the full version of
LabVIEW.

	I finally decided that SnapMaster was close enough to LabVIEW and ASYST
(which seem to be the industry standards) that if a student could learn
SnapMaster then they could quickly pickup similar GUI data acquisition
software.

	The other packages that I tried and/or still use are:
HP Instrument BASIC for Windows -- This requires GPIB which I don't use. This
was given out for free or nearly so a few years ago. Since I don't have GPIB I
didn't try it out. (I did request a copy just in case. From what I recall, the
software looked pretty nice for a specific task.)
WorkBench PC -- A primitive version of a GUI software that is a good value for
the price if it will do what you want. It didn't have the full capabilities
that I wanted so I didn't buy this one.
LabWindows -- This is (was?) a non-GUI editor that was basically an assistant
for programing DAC the hard way, i.e. via a line by line compilation of
software code as was done 10 years ago. I didn't find it was worth buying.
DriverLINX/VB and VDAS -- A set of extensions for VisualBASIC to run DAC (Data 
Acquisition Cards). If you REALLY want complete control of the machine, this 
is a nice way to go. You must be skilled at using VisualBASIC first however. 
I bought this but have only played around with it, no serious attempts at 
detailed programing yet. Looks nice so far.

Summary: SnapMaster is not cheap, at the time it was a bit cheaper then LabVIEW
however. Also LabVIEW did not support all of my cards and the student version
supported none of my cards. SnapMaster, LabVIEW, and ASYST are definitely the
way to go for most data acquisition. They are all similar enough that if you
learn one, you can learn the other fairly fast.

	My recommendation is to buy one of those three (be prepared for sticker
shock, they are not cheap), depending one which DAC hardware you have. If you
have National Instruments boards than by all means you should experiment with
the Student Version of LabVIEW to see if it will meet your needs. National
Instruments will send you an evaluation copy of the Student Version, call them
at (512) 794-0100. They also have e-mail: info@natinst.com and a web page
(which I have not viewed) the URL is http://www.natinst.com

Good luck,

John Sohl, Associate Professor, Department of Physics
Director, Layton P. Ott Planetarium
Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, USA 84408-2508
voice: (801) 626-7907    FAX: (801) 626-7445
JSOHL@CC.WEBER.EDU