Search icon
Arrow left icon
All Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Newsletters
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Programming Arduino with LabVIEW
Programming Arduino with LabVIEW

Programming Arduino with LabVIEW: Build interactive and fun learning projects with Arduino using LabVIEW

$15.99 per month
Book Jan 2015 102 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$16.99 $10.99
Print
$26.99
Subscription
$15.99 Monthly
eBook
$16.99 $10.99
Print
$26.99
Subscription
$15.99 Monthly

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $15.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing

Product Details


Publication date : Jan 27, 2015
Length 102 pages
Edition : 1st Edition
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849698221
Vendor :
Arduino
Category :
Concepts :
Table of content icon View table of contents Preview book icon Preview Book

Programming Arduino with LabVIEW

Chapter 1. Welcome to LabVIEW and Arduino

National Instruments Corporation, NI, is a world leader when it comes to automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. LabVIEW is a product that they have developed, and it is being used in many labs throughout the world. LabVIEW, which stands for Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench, is programmed with a graphical language known as G; this is a dataflow programming language. LabVIEW is supported by Visual Package Manager (VIPM). VIPM contains all the tools and kits to enhance the LabVIEW product.

Arduino is a single-board microcontroller. The hardware consists of an open source hardware board that is designed around the Atmel AVR Microcontroller. The intention of Arduino was to make the application of interactive components or environments more accessible. Arduinos are programmed via an integrated development environment (IDE) and run on any platform that supports Java. An Arduino program is written in either C or C++ and is programmed using its own IDE.

Welcome to programming Arduino with LabVIEW. During the course of this book, we will take you through working with Arduino through NI's LabVIEW product. The following are what you will need:

  • A Windows or Mac-based machine

  • Arduino (Uno preferred)

  • LabVIEW 13 for students (or any other LabVIEW 13 distribution)

We will work with Servos, LEDs, and Potentiometers in both analog and digital configurations.

What makes Arduino ideal for LabVIEW


The Arduino community is extremely vast with thousands and even hundreds of thousands of projects that can be found using simple searches on Google. Integrating LabVIEW with Arduino makes prototyping even simpler using the GUI environment of LabVIEW with the Arduino platform.

Officially, LabVIEW will work with the Uno and Mega 2560; however, you should be able to run it on other Arduino platforms such as the Nano. Building your own Uno board is just as simple as linking up the Arduino to LabVIEW. For detailed instructions on how to build your own Arduino Uno, check out the following URL: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-Your-Own-Arduino/.

Significance of using LabVIEW

LabVIEW is a graphical programming language built for engineers and scientists. With over 20 years of development behind it, it is a mature development tool that makes automation a pleasure.

The graphical system design takes out the complexity of learning C or C++, which is the native language of Arduino, and lets the user focus on getting the prototype complete.

LabVIEW significantly reduces the learning curve of development, because graphical representations are more intuitive design notations than text-based code. Tools can be accessed easily through interactive palettes, dialogs, menus, and many function blocks known as virtual instruments (VIs). You can drag-and-drop these VIs onto the Block Diagram to define the behavior of your application. This point-and-click approach shortens the time it takes to get from the initial setup to a final solution.

Skills required to use LabVIEW and Arduino

With LabVIEW primarily being designed for and targeted at scientists and engineers, it has not excluded itself from being used by hobbyists. Users who have zero programming skills have been able to take entire projects to completion by just following the intuitive process of dragging controls onto the diagram and setting it up to automate.

We have designed this book to be completely intuitive, using parts that can be easily found at your local electronic store.

Tip

To get additional support when using LabVIEW with Arduino, have a look at their forum at https://decibel.ni.com/content.

Downloading LabVIEW


To download or purchase LabVIEW, head out to http://www.ni.com/trylabview/. LabVIEW can also be purchased with an Arduino Uno bundle from SparkFun. At the time of writing this book, the URL for this bundle is https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11225.

Tip

If you did not download LabVIEW, do so now. To try LabVIEW without purchasing it, click on Launch LabVIEW.

To install the product, click on all the default options. Note that the Arduino plugin is not found in the initial install of LabVIEW.

Once LabVIEW is installed, launch the Visual Package Manager.

The VIPM will now launch. The VIPM application will look like this:

The VIPM will start downloading references to the package bundles into its repository. The status bar is located at the bottom of the application; when the references are downloaded, the status bar will switch to Ready.

Downloading the Arduino IDE

To download the Arduino IDE, go to http://arduino.cc/en/main/software. This book covers the Windows versions of LabVIEW and Arduino; however, the Mac versions will work just as well.

Click on Windows Installer to download the Windows version of the Arduino IDE.

Tip

At the time of writing this book, the current version of Arduino IDE is 1.5.8.

To install the product, click on all the default options.

Once the Arduino IDE is installed, click on the shortcut shown here to launch the application:

The Arduino IDE will launch with the following screen:

Now that the default settings for each of the applications are set up and launched, we are ready to start programming in each application.

Summary


In this chapter, you learned more about LabVIEW and Arduino. We also installed all the software that we need to get LabVIEW and the Arduino IDE up and running. In the next chapter, we will get the Arduino package for LabVIEW installed and upload a basic sketch to the Arduino board.

Left arrow icon Right arrow icon

Key benefits

What you will learn

Install LabVIEW and set it up to interface with Arduino Automate your Arduino projects with LabVIEW via a USB cable or XBee Control a servo motor and a smart power switch from LabVIEW Make a simple weather measurement station using Arduino and LabVIEW Build a simple wireless alarm system Manoeuvre an Arduinobased robot wirelessly via LabVIEW Collect feedback from the robot sensors using Arduino and LabVIEW

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $15.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing

Product Details


Publication date : Jan 27, 2015
Length 102 pages
Edition : 1st Edition
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849698221
Vendor :
Arduino
Category :
Concepts :

Table of Contents

14 Chapters
Programming Arduino with LabVIEW Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Credits Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
About the Authors Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
About the Reviewers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
www.PacktPub.com Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Preface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Welcome to LabVIEW and Arduino Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Getting Started with the LabVIEW Interface for Arduino Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Controlling a Motor from LabVIEW Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A Simple Weather Station with Arduino and LabVIEW Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Making an XBee Smart Power Switch Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A Wireless Alarm System with LabVIEW Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A Remotely Controlled Mobile Robot Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Filter icon Filter
Top Reviews
Rating distribution
Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 0
(0 Ratings)
5 star 0%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%

Filter reviews by


No reviews found
Get free access to Packt library with over 7500+ books and video courses for 7 days!
Start Free Trial

FAQs

What is included in a Packt subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

A subscription provides you with full access to view all Packt and licnesed content online, this includes exclusive access to Early Access titles. Depending on the tier chosen you can also earn credits and discounts to use for owning content

How can I cancel my subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

To cancel your subscription with us simply go to the account page - found in the top right of the page or at https://subscription.packtpub.com/my-account/subscription - From here you will see the ‘cancel subscription’ button in the grey box with your subscription information in.

What are credits? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Credits can be earned from reading 40 section of any title within the payment cycle - a month starting from the day of subscription payment. You also earn a Credit every month if you subscribe to our annual or 18 month plans. Credits can be used to buy books DRM free, the same way that you would pay for a book. Your credits can be found in the subscription homepage - subscription.packtpub.com - clicking on ‘the my’ library dropdown and selecting ‘credits’.

What happens if an Early Access Course is cancelled? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Projects are rarely cancelled, but sometimes it's unavoidable. If an Early Access course is cancelled or excessively delayed, you can exchange your purchase for another course. For further details, please contact us here.

Where can I send feedback about an Early Access title? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

If you have any feedback about the product you're reading, or Early Access in general, then please fill out a contact form here and we'll make sure the feedback gets to the right team. 

Can I download the code files for Early Access titles? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We try to ensure that all books in Early Access have code available to use, download, and fork on GitHub. This helps us be more agile in the development of the book, and helps keep the often changing code base of new versions and new technologies as up to date as possible. Unfortunately, however, there will be rare cases when it is not possible for us to have downloadable code samples available until publication.

When we publish the book, the code files will also be available to download from the Packt website.

How accurate is the publication date? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

The publication date is as accurate as we can be at any point in the project. Unfortunately, delays can happen. Often those delays are out of our control, such as changes to the technology code base or delays in the tech release. We do our best to give you an accurate estimate of the publication date at any given time, and as more chapters are delivered, the more accurate the delivery date will become.

How will I know when new chapters are ready? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We'll let you know every time there has been an update to a course that you've bought in Early Access. You'll get an email to let you know there has been a new chapter, or a change to a previous chapter. The new chapters are automatically added to your account, so you can also check back there any time you're ready and download or read them online.

I am a Packt subscriber, do I get Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Yes, all Early Access content is fully available through your subscription. You will need to have a paid for or active trial subscription in order to access all titles.

How is Early Access delivered? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is currently only available as a PDF or through our online reader. As we make changes or add new chapters, the files in your Packt account will be updated so you can download them again or view them online immediately.

How do I buy Early Access content? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is a way of us getting our content to you quicker, but the method of buying the Early Access course is still the same. Just find the course you want to buy, go through the check-out steps, and you’ll get a confirmation email from us with information and a link to the relevant Early Access courses.

What is Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Keeping up to date with the latest technology is difficult; new versions, new frameworks, new techniques. This feature gives you a head-start to our content, as it's being created. With Early Access you'll receive each chapter as it's written, and get regular updates throughout the product's development, as well as the final course as soon as it's ready.We created Early Access as a means of giving you the information you need, as soon as it's available. As we go through the process of developing a course, 99% of it can be ready but we can't publish until that last 1% falls in to place. Early Access helps to unlock the potential of our content early, to help you start your learning when you need it most. You not only get access to every chapter as it's delivered, edited, and updated, but you'll also get the finalized, DRM-free product to download in any format you want when it's published. As a member of Packt, you'll also be eligible for our exclusive offers, including a free course every day, and discounts on new and popular titles.