Labview compatible with TX controller

[geab]

Hej
some great news

Summer 2011 http://www.studica.com/blog/?p=843
"And speaking of National Instruments, one of the reasons the fine folks from NI will be attending SkillsUSA with fischertechnik is to present the latest release of LabVIEW software, which is now compatible with the fischertechnik ROBO TX Controller! As long time fischertechnik users will remember, LabVIEW could be used with previous versions of the fischertechnik controller, such as the old ROBO Interface, but this is the first release of LabVIEW to make use of the power and capability of the new ROBO TX system. For those of you who are not yet familiar with LabVIEW, it is a graphical programming environment used by millions of engineers and scientists, and in countless schools all over the globe to develop sophisticated measurements, as well as to test, and control systems using intuitive graphical icons and wires that resemble a flowchart. It offers unrivaled integration with thousands of hardware devices and provides hundreds of built-in libraries for advanced analysis and data visualization – all for creating virtual instrumentation. The LabVIEW platform is scalable across multiple targets and OSs, and, since its introduction in 1986, it has become an industry leader."

Lego Mindstorms has been using a downscaled version of labview for years and it will be intesting to see how the FT library will look like. This opens up for use of TX controller with many elaborate functions existing in Labview e.g. graphical display/charts.

http://www.k12lab.com/products/NI-LabVI ... -Education
and pricing for the education version http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/204940

It is just a suprise that FT is not more actively promiting this news. Any reason?

Gernot

[Dirk Fox]

Hi Gernot,

... to present the latest release of LabVIEW software, which is now compatible with the fischertechnik ROBO TX Controller! As long time fischertechnik users will remember, LabVIEW could be used with previous versions of the fischertechnik controller, such as the old ROBO Interface, but this is the first release of LabVIEW to make use of the power and capability of the new ROBO TX system.

that sounds interesting!
I must confess that I never heard about LabView before...
But not only fischertechnik is hiding the cooperation from the public - on the NI website I couldn't find one allusion to the compatibility with the Robo Interface.

Do you know LabView? Is it worth a try (and some more "internal advertising" in the community)?
Is there any technical (pdf?) documentation giving an idea about the functional range? The LaView web pages screwed me up a little...

Best regards,
Dirk

[vleeuwen]

Labview is using the TX-C in the some mode as Microsoft Robotics Developers Studio in doing, namely in the online mode only.
Labview, MathLab and MS-RDS are not realy replacements for RoboPro.
Labview has a nice Robot oriented plugin.
They are different product with different objectives.

See the website of National Instruments (NI) for the specification.

Labview is very well known in higher technical education.
Mathlab is another well known product.
However Labview and MAthlab is not free of charge,
Microsoft Robotics Developers Studio is free of charge.

[Dirk Fox]

Hallo zusammen,

nach längerem Suchen habe ich das deutsche Benutzerhandbuch der Version 7.0/7.1 von LabVIEW (Stand Juni 2003) gefunden:
http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/321200e.pdf
Es gibt m.E. einen guten Überblick über die Funktionsvielfalt von LabVIEW.

Ansonsten findet man - abgesehen von Gernots Zitat - weder auf den Webseiten noch in den Handbüchern Hinweise auf die fischertechnik-Kompatibilität.
Entweder ist es damit nicht weit her, oder fischertechnik hat versäumt, sich um eine bessere Sichtbarkeit zu kümmern.

Beste Grüße,
Dirk

[UMueller]

Hallo,

auf http://www.ftcomputing.de/lawerk.htm gibt es schon seit mehreren Jahren einen Beitrag von Christian Lachmann zum Einsatz von fischertechnik Interfaces unter LabView (hier Nutzung von umFish40.DLL / Robo Interface).
Eine Umstellung auf den TX Controller (Basis umFish50.DLL) dürfte für einen LabView-Kenner recht einfach sein.

Gruß Ulrich Müller

[vleeuwen]

The main problem for the integration of the fischertechnik brick into Labview/Mathlab and MS-RDS could be the missing of a native dotNet version of the FtLib and FtMscLib. With full support for delegates and events.
The actual version does not always work because of problem with the thread compartments.

[UMueller]

Hallo @vleeuwen,

deswegen wurde ja auch umFish40.DLL und nicht ftLib genutzt.
Das größere Problem dürfte sein, dass es für den aktuellen Firmwarestand des TX Controllers keine ftMscLib.DLL gibt (umFish50.DLL arbeitet mit der ftMscLib von RoboPro 2.1.4).

Gruß Ulrich Müller

[vleeuwen]

Hallo @UMueller,
As you know I know your implementations well. In the past I even corrected some small bugs in the version for RoboInterface version.

The real dotNet delegates (direct access to the callbacks) and events (generated by the change bits) are missing.
The TA and the basis operation on the TA as defined in the FtMscLib are not available at native dotNet framework level and this without a C++ wrapper construction. A native dotNet framework is possible because the virtual COM port is also define at native dotNet framework level.
In fact it is not necessary to hide the TA.
The FtMscLib basic operations are overhead, they only simplifying the use of the TA but also they also have some limitations.

[geab]

Hallo zusammen,

nach längerem Suchen habe ich das deutsche Benutzerhandbuch der Version 7.0/7.1 von LabVIEW (Stand Juni 2003) gefunden:
http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/321200e.pdf
Es gibt m.E. einen guten Überblick über die Funktionsvielfalt von LabVIEW.

Ansonsten findet man - abgesehen von Gernots Zitat - weder auf den Webseiten noch in den Handbüchern Hinweise auf die fischertechnik-Kompatibilität.
Entweder ist es damit nicht weit her, oder fischertechnik hat versäumt, sich um eine bessere Sichtbarkeit zu kümmern.

Beste Grüße,
Dirk

I have contacted our local NI office and they work on to get the information on capability of the FT driver.

As Carel points out Labview is meant for online control; it can plug to arduino, support RS232 and many sensors even via USB amongst many features. One of the things that I really enjoy is the charting capability where you can directly plot data and zoom in and out.
Very complex operations can be programmed in much smaller space compared to Robopro; Labview has a steeper learning curve and a large user pool can support in developing programs.
For students and academia quite cheap editions are available;

Lets wait what is supported in the education. As Studica mention that Laurenz Wohlfarth, the Sales Director at fischertechnik GmbH was attending the release one would expect FT to know a bit more and I would be happy to receive more information from FT directly.

Cheers, Gernot

[vleeuwen]

Labview is great for higher education.
Labview, Mathlib and MS-RDS great for higher education but they differ a lot in their objectives.
The choice depends on the perspective that you have:
control enginering and testing, mathametics or message flow oriented programming and simulation.

MathLab is very interesting in case you need heavy math and matrices to control a robot.
Both Labview and MathLab are very professional and both are not free of charge.
Labview has a plug-in for Robot controlling.
NI (National Instruments) has also very nice and fast professional hardware to control actuators and make use of sensors.
But it is design for the high end market (expensive).

MS-RDS, a research spin off, has also a couple of nice interesting and strong points.
(3D simulation environment, distribution, concurrency, decentralized and easy to combine with other Windows resources)

However all 3 are not replacements for RoboPro.

For all 3 you don't need the complex TX-C, with one of more TX-L's you can often obtain similar results.
This make the use of fischertechnik interfaces in higher education much cheaper.
The use of the TX-L has a second advantage; it makes use of the same FtLib.dll as the Robo Interface.
So it the old Labview drivers (Mexico) support the last FtLib from Knobloch, you are able to work with the TX-L already.

The LEGO labview is a special downgraded edition. NI is using it for publicity.

[vleeuwen]

Labview and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio does integrate very well, see

http://labviewrobotics.wordpress.com/tag/msrds/