Re: LabVIEW Use

["Ari O Hamalainen" <AOHAMALA@penger.helsinki.fi>]

Bob,

> The bottom line is that there are many fairly easy data acquisition programs
> out there for DAQ boards (including PASCO's programs), but not too many for
> relatively straightforward control of GPIB instruments.  The ones that exist
> seem to be fairly high level for industrial applications such as testing
> setups.

Have you taken a look for HP VEE / DT VEE ? It is a graphical programming 
system developed by HP and National Instruments (VEE stands for 
Visual Engineering Environment). I've been using it over a year now 
for developing programs mainly for lecture demonstrations. My programs are 
for serial bus instruments, namely Vernier ULIs and some multimeters. 
But HP VEE comes with an extensive collection of drivers for HP's 
HPIB instruments too. Data Translation adds support for their DAQ 
boards.

I have not actually used LabVIEW except playing with the demo 
version of the software. Still I have a feeling that VEE is somewhat 
easier to start to use, but LabVIEW has better overall performance. 
The prices of the products are very similar, at least here in 
Finland.

Here are some web sites about VEE:

http://www.datx.com/dtvee.html
http://wheat.symgrp.com/symgrp/datx/DTveepr.html
http://www.hp.com:80/pressrel/nov95/06nov95a.html
ftp://hplvopen.lvld.hp.com/dist/mxd/index.html

As far as I know, there is no student version of VEE. But our 
department go an educational site license at a price of one package. 

Ari Hamalainen
University of Helsinki, Department of Physics