Seneca5 Software Blog » User Group

September 2010 User Group Invite

Craig Bedward — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:31:11 +0000

September 7th is the next user group meeting.

Topic: Medical Monitor Display - Steven Quint and Alex Chescheir will be presenting a medical monitor display project they are working on. It uses a multi-plot chart similar to one you would see in an emergency room or intensive care.

Pizza! As a special bonus, Steve will be bringing pizza.

This meeting will be at Seneca5, Tuesday September 7th at 6:30.

Check out the LabVIEW Advanced User Group page for more details.

July User Group – Circular Buffer in LabVIEW

Craig Bedward — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:35:57 +0000

Ludwik Kordas presented the concept of a Circular Buffer (CB) and various ways to implement it in LabVIEW.

His presentation and example VI’s are included in this post.

Definition

An area of memory used to store a continuous stream of data by starting again at the beginning of the buffer after reaching the end. A circular buffer is usually written by one process and read by another. Separate read and write pointers are maintained. These are not allowed to pass each other otherwise either unread data would be overwritten or invalid data would be read.

Simple CB Models

FIFO: first IN first OUT
(first WRITTEN first READ)
Number of elements: n+1
Predefined # of elements: n
“n+1” element is forbidden for write/read pointers
Elements could be of any data type including arrays, clusters or even clusters of arrays of clusters

July 2010 User Group Invite

Craig Bedward — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:33:40 +0000

July 6th, first day back from 4th of July vacation is the next user group meeting.

Topic: LabVIEW Design Patterns – Producer/Consumer, other demos

This meeting will be at Seneca5, Tuesday July 6th at 6:30.

Please note: We will NOT be serving pizza.

Check out the LabVIEW Advanced User Group page for more details.

May User Group Pictures – Popcorn Tweets

Craig Bedward — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:08:12 +0000

A cool contraption, a bunch of geeks, and pizza. What more could you want?

Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) Example Tests

Craig Bedward — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:14:21 +0000

There was a lot of interest at our last group meeting about NI certification tests.

The Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) is the first step in getting certified. The test shows knowledge of LabVIEW basics. If you have had the LabVIEW Basics class (now called Core 1) or if you have some real-life experience with LabVIEW, you might be ready. If you want to find out, there are some sample tests you can download from NI’s web site:

clad_sample_exam1.pdf

clad_sample_exam2.pdf

Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) Sample Exams

How Can I Prepare for the Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) Exam?

Popcorn Trivia

Craig Bedward — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:03:56 +0000

There was some discussion during the Popcorn Tweets demonstration about where the interest in the device came from. Although people from all over the world watched the video, Justin was surprised that a lot of the interest came from Brazil. Another member of our group Andrés, who is from Brazil, said that popcorn is a big deal there…and he has provided photographic evidence, a street vendor in São Paulo:

June 2010 User Group Invite

Craig Bedward — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:36:51 +0000

Mark your calendar. First day back from Memorial Day vacation is the next user group meeting.

Topic: LabVIEW Design Patterns – VIG Timer, Producer/Consumer, and more

This meeting will be at Seneca5, Tuesday June 1st at 6:30. We serve pizza, so you can come straight from work.

Check out the LabVIEW Advanced User Group page for more details.

April 2010 User Group Follow-up

Craig Bedward — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:28:42 +0000

We had a great meeting discussing motor control of all types. Thanks to all who attended.

Many people offered information on websites and products they have used. I wanted to capture some of them here in case anyone wants to check into them:

Motor drivers for hobby servos

phidgets.com
geckodrive.com
seetron.com/ssc.htm (serial control of 8 hobby servos)
parallax (serial controller that Michael used in his demo)
servocity (good source for hobby servos and accessories)
US Digital (optical rotary encoders)

National Instruments Tools

Other Items

Any additions? Comment them here. This group works best when we share ideas!

March 2010 User Group Invite

Craig Bedward — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:33:20 +0000

This time we will be looking into the Houston, we have a problem code in detail. This is the cRIO air jet control system that we demonstrated at the National Instruments User Group in February.

We will have a chance to really dig into the details of the program and discuss the ins and outs of FPGA and RT programming on the cRIO. You will also have a chance to program your own control algorithm for the inverted spring pendulum device. Can you stabilize it? Harder yet, can you make it hold at an arbitrary position? It may be harder than you think!

Come with your laptop, your questions, and your idea for a clever algorithm to control two air jets on a spring.

This meeting will be at Seneca5, Tuesday March 2nd at 6:30. We serve pizza, so you can come straight from work.

Check out the LabVIEW Advanced User Group page for more details.

February 2010 User Group Follow-up

Craig Bedward — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:01:29 +0000

This month, we presented at the quarterly National Instruments LabVIEW User Group. We had a great turnout! The 27 people that attended crowded the room at Manchester Grill. We had some good food (Thanks NI!) and we had a great time learning about LabVIEW programming on the cRIO FPGA and RT.

Below are pictures of the event and the LabVIEW code for the program that we demonstrated.

We host the regular meeting of the LabVIEW Advanced User Group at our office each month.

See more pictures here

LabVIEW code

FPGA Code: FPGA experiment.zip

RT Code: [JetDemo] RT.v002.zip

Remote Control Code: [Remote] HoustonWeHaveAProblem_LV86.zip