LabVIEW / LabVIEW Graphical Programming / Jennings & Johnson / 45146-3/ Front Matter

blind folio : i

LabVIEW Graphical Programming

Fourth Edition

Gary W. Johnson
Richard Jennings

McGraw-Hill
New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London
Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan
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 LabVIEW / LabVIEW Graphical Programming / Jennings & Johnson / 45146-3/ Front Matter
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 LabVIEW / LabVIEW Graphical Programming / Jennings & Johnson / 45146-3/ Front Matter

Contents

Preface ........................................................ xi
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Chapter 1 Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
LabVIEW and Automation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Virtual instruments: LabVIEW’s foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Why use LabVIEW? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The Origin of LabVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Introduction ................................................... 9
A vision emerges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
All the world’s an instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A hard-core UNIX guy won over by the Macintosh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Putting it all together with pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Favoring the underdog platform for system design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Ramping up development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Stretching the limits of tools and machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Facing reality on estimated development times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Shipping the first version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Apple catches up with the potential offered by LabVIEW ................ 19
LabVIEW 2: A first-rate instrument control product becomes
a world-class programming system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
The port to Windows and Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
LabVIEW 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
LabVIEW 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
LabVIEW branches to BridgeVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
LabVIEW 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
The LabVIEW RT branch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
LabVIEW 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
LabVIEW 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
LabVIEW 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Crystal Ball Department . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
LabVIEW influences other software products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
LabVIEW Handles Big Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Chapter 2 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

About the Diagrams in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Sequencing and Data Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

iii

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LabVIEW under the Hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The parts of a VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
How VIs are compiled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Multitasking, multithreaded LabVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
The LabVIEW Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Front panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Property nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Block diagram ................................................. 48
SubVIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Polymorphic VIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Typedefs ..................................................... 52
Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
See what the subVIs are up to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Peeking at data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
One step at a time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Execution highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Setting breakpoints ............................................. 57
Suspend when called . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Calling Other Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
CINs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Dynamic link libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Programming by Plagiarizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Chapter 3 Controlling Program Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Data Dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Adding Common Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Looping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
While LOOPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
For Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Shift registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Uninitialized shift registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Globals ........................................................ 71
Global and local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Built-in global variables—and their hazards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Notify and Filter events .......................................... 81
Mechanical actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Dynamic events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Design Patterns ................................................. 87
Initialize and then loop .......................................... 87
Independent parallel loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Client-server .................................................. 90
Client-server (with autonomous VIs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
State machines ................................................ 94
Queued message handler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Event-driven applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

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Chapter 4 LabVIEW Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Numeric Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Building strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Parsing strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Dealing with unprintables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Spreadsheets, strings, and arrays ................................. 110
Arrays ......................................................... 114
Initializing arrays ............................................... 117
Array memory usage and performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Waveforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Data Type Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Conversion and coercion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Intricate conversions and type casting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Flatten To String (. . . Do what?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Enumerated types (enums) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Get Carried Away Department . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Chapter 5 Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Where Do Little Timers Come From? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Using the Built-in Timing Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Timed structures ............................................... 140
Timing sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Execution and priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Timing guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Sending timing data to other applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
High-resolution and high-accuracy timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Chapter 6 Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Polling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Occurrences .................................................... 155
Notifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Semaphores .................................................... 161
Me and You, Rendezvous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter 7 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Accessing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
File Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Writing Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Reading Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Formatting to Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Writing binary files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Reading binary files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Writing Datalog Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Reading Datalog Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Datalog file utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

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Chapter 8 Building an Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Define the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Analyze the user’s needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Gather specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Draw a block diagram ........................................... 189
Specify the I/O Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Prototype the User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Panel possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
First Design and Then Write Your Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Ask a Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Top-down or bottom-up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Modularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Choose an architecture: Design patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
The VI hierarchy as a design tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Sketching program structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Pseudocoding ................................................. 203
Ranges, coercion, and default values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Handling errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Putting it all together ............................................ 213
Testing and Debugging Your Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Tracing execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Checking performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Final Touches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
VBL epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Studying for the LabVIEW Certification Exams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
CLAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
CLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Example 1: Traffic light controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Example 2: Car wash controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Example 3: Security system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Chapter 9 Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

VI Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Control Descriptions .............................................. 232
Custom Online Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Documenting the Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
VI History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Other Ways to Document .......................................... 235
Printing LabVIEW Panels and Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Putting LabVIEW screen images into other documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Writing Formal Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Document outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Connector pane picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
VI description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Terminal descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Programming examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Distributing Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Chapter 10 Instrument Driver Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Finding Instrument Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Driver Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Communication standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Learn about Your Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Determine Which Functions to Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

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Establish Communications ......................................... 251

Hardware and wiring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Protocols and basic message passing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Chapter 11 Instrument Driver Development Techniques . . . . . . . . . . 257

Plug-and-Play Instrument Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
General Driver Architectural Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Error I/O flow control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Modularity by grouping of functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Project organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Initialization ................................................... 267
Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Action and status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Utility ........................................................ 271
Close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Chapter 12 Inputs and Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Origins of Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Transducers and sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Actuators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Categories of signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Grounding and shielding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Why use amplifiers or other signal conditioning? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Choosing the right I/O subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Network everything! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Chapter 13 Sampling Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Sampling Theorem ............................................... 305
Filtering and Averaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
About ADCs, DACs, and Multiplexers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Digital-to-analog converters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Digital codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Triggering and Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
A Little Noise Can Be a Good Thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Throughput ..................................................... 319
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Chapter 14 Writing a Data Acquisition Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Data Analysis and Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Postrun analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
Real-time analysis and display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Sampling and Throughput . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Signal bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Oversampling and digital filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Timing techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Configuration Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
What to configure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Configuration editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

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Configuration compilers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

Saving and recalling configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
A Low-Speed Data Acquisition Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Medium-Speed Acquisition and Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Chapter 15 LabVIEW RT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Real Time Does Not Mean Real Fast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
RT Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Designing Software to Meet Real-Time Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Measuring performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Shared resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Multithreading and multitasking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Organizing VIs for best real-time performance ........................ 391
Context switching adds overhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Timed structures ............................................... 395
Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

Chapter 16 LabVIEW FPGA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

What Is an FPGA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
LabVIEW for FPGAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
RIO hardware platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Plug-in cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
CompactRIO .................................................. 404
Timing and synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Compact Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Application Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Compiling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Synchronous execution and the enable chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Clocked execution and the single-cycle Timed Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Parallelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Pipelining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Chapter 17 LabVIEW Embedded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

Introduction ................................................... 417
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
LabVIEW Embedded Development Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
The technology: What’s happening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Running LabVIEW Embedded on a new target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Porting the LabVIEW runtime library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Incorporating the C toolchain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
The Embedded Project Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
LEP plug-in VIs ................................................ 425
Target_OnSelect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Other plug-in VIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Incorporating I/O srivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
LabVIEW Embedded programming best practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Interrupt driven programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
LabVIEW Embedded targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

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Chapter 18 Process Control Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

Process Control Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Industrial standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Control = manipulating outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
Process signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Control system architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Working with Smart Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Single-loop controllers (SLCs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Other smart I/O subsystems ...................................... 463
Man-Machine Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Display hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Other interesting display techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Handling all those front panel items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Data Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Input scanners as servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
Handling output data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Display VIs as clients ........................................... 479
Using network connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Real-time process control databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Simulation for validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Sequential Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
Interlocking with logic and tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
State machines ................................................ 487
Initialization problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
GrafcetVIEW—a graphical process control package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
Continuous Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Designing a control strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
Trending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
Real-time trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
Historical trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
Statistical process control (SPC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Alarms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Using an alarm handler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
Techniques for operator notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

Chapter 19 Physics Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Special Hardware ................................................ 514
Signal conditioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
CAMAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
Other I/O hardware ............................................. 518
Field and Plasma Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Step-and-measure experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Plasma potential experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
Handling Fast Pulses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Transient digitizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
Timing and triggering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Capturing many pulses .......................................... 539
Recovering signals from synchronous experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Handling Huge Data Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
Reducing the amount of data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
Optimizing VIs for memory usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

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Chapter 20 Data Visualization, Imaging, and Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

Graphing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
Displaying waveform and cartesian data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
Bivariate data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Multivariate data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
3D Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
Intensity Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
Image Acquisition and Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
System requirements for imaging .................................. 574
Using IMAQ Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
IMAQ components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
Sound I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
DAQ for sound I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Sound I/O functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Sound input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Sound output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Sound files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589

Index .................................................... 591

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Preface

Twenty years have passed since the release of LabVIEW. During this
period, it has become the dominant programming language in the world
of instrumentation, data acquisition, and control. A product of National
Instruments Corporation (Austin, Texas), it is built upon a purely
graphical, general-purpose programming language, G, with extensive
libraries of functions, an integral compiler and debugger, and an appli-
cation builder for stand-alone applications. The LabVIEW development
environment runs on Apple Macintosh computers and IBM PC compat-
ibles with Linux or Microsoft Windows. Programs are portable among
the various development platforms. The concept of virtual instruments
(VIs), pioneered by LabVIEW, permits you to transform a real instru-
ment (such as a voltmeter) into another, software-based instrument
(such as a chart recorder), thus increasing the versatility of available
hardware. Control panels mimic real panels, right down to the switches
and lights. All programming is done via a block diagram, consisting of
icons and wires, that is directly compiled to executable code; there is no
underlying procedural language or menu-driven system.
Working with research instrumentation, we find LabVIEW
indispensable—a flexible, time-saving package without all the frustrat-
ing aspects of ordinary programming languages. The one thing LabVIEW
had been missing all these years was a useful application-oriented book.
The manuals are fine, once you know what you want to accomplish, and
the classes offered by National Instruments are highly recommended
if you are just starting out. But how do you get past that first blank
window? What are the methods for designing an efficient LabVIEW
application? What about interface hardware and real-world signal-
conditioning problems? In this book, we describe practical problem-
solving techniques that aren’t in the manual or in the introductory
classes—methods you learn only by experience. The principles and
techniques discussed in these pages are fundamental to the work of
a LabVIEW programmer. This is by no means a rewrite of the manu-
als or other introductory books, nor is it a substitute for a course in

xi

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xii Preface

LabVIEW basics. You are encouraged to consult those sources, as well,

in the process of becoming a skilled LabVIEW developer.
This fourth edition is founded on LabVIEW 8, but we’ve worked
closely with National Instruments to ensure its relevance now and
through future versions of LabVIEW. Chapter 1, “Roots,” starts off
with an entertaining history of the development of LabVIEW. New to
this edition is coverage of material on National Instruments’ certifica-
tion exams. There are three levels of LabVIEW certification: Certified
LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD), Certified LabVIEW Developer
(CLD), and Certified LabVIEW Architect (CLA). Each exam builds on
the knowledge required for the previous exam. We have worked closely
with National Instruments to highlight study material in this book
for the first two certification exams. Throughout Chapters 2 through 9
you will find or icons next to sections covered on the cer-
tification exams.
In Chapters 2 through 9, we get down to the principles of program-
ming in G. After a discussion of the principles of dataflow programming,
we discuss programming structures, data types, timing, synchroniza-
tion, and file I/O. Chapter 8, “Building an Application,” shows you how
to design a LabVIEW application. Here we assume that you are not a
formally trained software engineer, but rather a technically skilled per-
son with a job to do (that certainly describes us!). We’ll walk through
the development of a real application that Gary wrote, starting with
selection of hardware, then prototyping, designing, and testing the
program. Chapter 9, “Documentation,” covers this important but oft-
neglected topic. We discuss recommended practice for creating effective
documentation as it pertains to the world of LabVIEW. If you know the
material in Chapters 2 through 9 you should have no problems with
the certification exams. At the end of Chapter 8 we provide three prac-
tice exams for the Certified LabVIEW Developer (CLD) Exam. Use the
knowledge you gained in Chapters 2 through 9 to complete these prac-
tice exams in four hours and you are well on your way to certification.
If you connect your computer to any external instruments, you will
want to read Chapters 10 and 11, “Instrument Driver Basics” and
“Instrument Driver Development Techniques.” We begin with the
basics of communications and I/O hardware (GPIB, serial, and VXI),
then cover recommended driver development techniques and program-
ming practices, especially the virtual instrument standard architecture
(VISA) methods. Instrument drivers can be fairly challenging to write.
Since it’s one of our specialties, we hope to pass along a few tricks.
The basics of interface hardware, signal conditioning, and analog/
digital conversion are discussed in Chapter 12, “Inputs and Outputs,”
and Chapter 13, “Sampling Signals.” Notably, these chapters con-
tain no LabVIEW programming examples whatsoever. The reason is

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Preface xiii

simple: more than half the “LabVIEW” questions that coworkers ask us
turn out to be hardware- and signal-related. Information in this chap-
ter is vital and will be useful no matter what software you may use for
measurement and control. Chapter 14, “Writing a Data Acquisition Pro-
gram,” contains a practical view of data acquisition (DAQ) applications.
Some topics may seem at first to be presented backward—but for good
reasons. The first topic is data analysis. Why not talk about sampling
rates and throughput first? Because the only reason for doing data
acquisition is to collect data for analysis. If you are out of touch with the
data analysis needs, you will probably write the wrong data acquisition
program. Other topics in this chapter are sampling speed, throughput
optimization, and configuration management. We finish with some of
the real applications that you can use right out of the box.
LabVIEW RT brings the ease of graphical programming to the arcane
world of real-time system programming. In Chapter 15, “LabVIEW RT,”
we show you how LabVIEW RT works and how to achieve top per-
formance by paying attention to code optimization, scheduling, and
communications.
When software-timed real-time applications won’t fit the bill,
LabVIEW FPGA is the way to go. LabVIEW FPGA applications are not
constrained by processor or operating system overhead. With LabVIEW
FPGA you can write massively parallel hardware-timed digital con-
trol applications with closed loop rates in the tens of megahertz. Chap-
ter 16, “LabVIEW FPGA,” gives a solid introduction to programming
FPGAs with LabVIEW.
Embedded computer systems are all around us—in our cars, VCRs,
appliances, test equipment, and a thousand other applications. But until
now, LabVIEW has not been a viable development system for those min-
iaturized computers. Chapter 17, “LabVIEW Embedded,” introduces a
new version of LabVIEW capable of targeting any 32-bit microprocessor.
Chapter 18, “Process Control Applications,” covers industrial con-
trol and all types of measurement and control situations. We’ll look at
human-machine interfaces, sequential and continuous control, trend-
ing, alarm handling, and interfacing to industrial controllers, particu-
larly programmable logic controllers (PLCs).We frequently mention a
very useful add-on toolkit that you install on top of LabVIEW, called
the Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module (formerly available
as BridgeVIEW), which adds many important features for industrial
automation.
LabVIEW has a large following in physics research, so we wrote
Chapter 19, “Physics Applications.” Particular situations and solutions
in this chapter are electromagnetic field and plasma diagnostics, mea-
suring fast pulses with transient recorders, and handling very large
data sets. This last topic, in particular, is of interest to almost all users

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xiv Preface

because it discusses techniques for optimizing memory usage. (There

are tidbits like this all through the book—by all means, read it cover
to cover!)
Chapter 20, “Data Visualization, Imaging, and Sound,” shows off
some of the data presentation capabilities of LabVIEW. Some third-
party products and toolkits (such as IMAQ for imaging) are featured.
They enable you to acquire video signals, process and display images,
make three-dimensional plots, and record and play sound.
As far as possible, this book is platform-independent, as is LabVIEW
itself. Occasional topics arise where functionality is available on only
one or two of the computer platforms. The LabVIEW user manual con-
tains a portability guide that you can consult when developing applica-
tions that you intend to propagate among various platforms.
Many important resources are available only via the Internet. For
your convenience, Internet addresses are interspersed in the text.
While writing this book, we found that user-supplied example VIs were
hard to obtain, owing to the fact that so many of us work for govern-
ment laboratories and places that just don’t like to give away their soft-
ware. Where it was not possible to obtain the actual code, we attempted
to reconstruct the important aspects of real applications to give you an
idea of how you might solve similar problems.
Third-party LabVIEW products, such as driver and analysis pack-
ages, are described where appropriate. They satisfy important niche
requirements in the user community at reasonable cost, thus expand-
ing the wide applicability of LabVIEW.
If nothing else, we hope that our enthusiasm for LabVIEW rubs off
on you.

Gary W. Johnson and Richard Jennings

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the engineers, developers, and managers at

National Instruments who supplied vital information without which this
book would not be possible, particularly Jeff Kodosky, David Gardner,
Joel Sumner, Newton Petersen, P. J. Tanzillo, and Kathy Brown. A spe-
cial thanks goes to Zaki Chasmawala of National Instruments for proof-
reading and highlighting the pertinent parts of Chapters 2 through 9
covered by the certification exams.
Credit also goes to our wives, Katharine Decker Johnson and Patty
Jennings, whose patience during this project cannot be overstated. And
to Elizabeth, Danny, Chris, and David Jennings—thank you for under-
standing.
Finally, thanks to our editor, Wendy Rinaldi.

Gary W. Johnson:
To my wife, Katharine

Richard Jennings:
To my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

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blind folio xvi

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary W. Johnson is an instrumentation

engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. He has a BS degree in electrical
engineering/bioengineering from the
University of Illinois. His professional interests
include measurement and control systems,
electro-optics, communications, transducers,
circuit design, and technical writing. In his
spare time, he enjoys woodworking, bicycling,
and amateur radio. He and his wife, Katharine,
a scientific illustrator, live in Livermore,
California, with their twin Afghan hounds,
Chloe and Derby.
LabVIEW goes aloft. Gary works on a LabVIEW-based
laser wavelength controller for an airborne LIDAR sys-
tem aboard an Air Force C-135.

Richard Jennings is president of Jennings

Embedded Services, LLC in San Antonio,
Texas. His company was founded in 2005 to
serve as a hardware and software resource
for companies engaged in embedded software
and hardware development in emerging
embedded markets such as industrial control,
wireless, and embedded instrumentation. He
is a 15-year veteran hardware and software
engineer. Prior to starting Jennings Embedded
Services, a National Instruments Certified
Alliance partner, Jennings worked as a system
integrator at Sandia National Laboratories and
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
in Livermore, California. He holds an Associate
Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.
Richard wisely wears his laser eye protection while Degree in Laser-ElectroOptics from Texas State
manually aligning laser beams through a piloted jet Technical Institute in Waco, Texas, and is a
burner in the Turbulent Combustion Laboratory. Certified LabVIEW Developer. In 2003 he was
awarded National Instruments’ prestigious
Virtual Instrumentation Professional (VIP)
award. www.jembedded.com

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