We had need for system of hardware and software for several different measurement devices we use. The cost of the software packages for our HPLC, GC, Mechanical testers, Flow injection analyzers and custom units was too large to consider reasonable. We therefore developed a complete system which would work with all of these. It is easy to use, inexpensive, **fully programmable using Excel(R)**, and It beats anything we have looked at. I'm giving a paper on it at the May 2016 ISA meeting in Dayton. A copy of the slides for the paper is at my linkedin profile (Scot Abbott) and Researchgate profile for publications. The system has high resolution i/o of many forms (analog, digital, current loop, frequency, RS485) which provides the connections to take data, control devices and communicate with the 'net. It comes with** ready to run **user input interface, data acquisition and control, real time stripcharting, storage and post processing of data. We used the macro/worksheet/workbook architecture so it is easy to make and modify instrument functions and personalities. We have made worksheets for user control of experiment (including sample queues and autosampler control), i/o control of devices, appearance of the strip charts, etc. using all the power of the graphics and math in Excel. Because it is in VBA language of Excel(R), it is easy to modify, customize, or use in a completely new context.
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Much, much less awesome for the poor plonker who's left to grapple with this nightmare of inter-connected spaghetti where you can drill down for miles, and at every stage have less and less clue as to what's going on. An invaluable tool for making any project deliverable 10 tmes later or 1/10 of it's projected quality.
Sadly, this crap is now a de-facto industry standard. Blame the salesmen.
I tend to agree with the other reviewer here. I have been dealing with, and mostly avoiding, LabVIEW for well over a decade. It does indeed function as it should, but is a real pain to use. It has gained traction since a working system looks pretty (hence the system is easy to sell), and is very popular among industry test-labs and academic lab environments, where folks don't want to write their own code to control hardware and display and/or archive data.
I think it is a pretty good tool for the academic lab environment, since you can setup hardware, graphics, and archival stuff and get to work quickly. Less so for the industrial environment, since they need really stable custom code for manufacturing support.....unfortunately that is where it has real history and the advocates are dug in. I support it just because I have to, but I don't like it.
Bloatware.
We had need for system of hardware and software for several different measurement devices we use. The cost of the software packages for our HPLC, GC, Mechanical testers, Flow injection analyzers and custom units was too large to consider reasonable. We therefore developed a complete system which would work with all of these. It is easy to use, inexpensive, fully programmable using Excel(R), and It beats anything we have looked at. I'm giving a paper on it at the May 2016 ISA meeting in Dayton. A copy of the slides for the paper is at my linkedin profile (Scot Abbott) and Researchgate profile for publications.
The system has high resolution i/o of many forms (analog, digital, current loop, frequency, RS485) which provides the connections to take data, control devices and communicate with the 'net. It comes with** ready to run **user input interface, data acquisition and control, real time stripcharting, storage and post processing of data.
We used the macro/worksheet/workbook architecture so it is easy to make and modify instrument functions and personalities. We have made worksheets for user control of experiment (including sample queues and autosampler control), i/o control of devices, appearance of the strip charts, etc. using all the power of the graphics and math in Excel. Because it is in VBA language of Excel(R), it is easy to modify, customize, or use in a completely new context.