“Building a system fast is important, but it’s equally important to build it right – that means using solid architectures and proven development practices,” said Dr. James Truchard, President, CEO and Co-founder of National Instruments. “New features and resources in LabVIEW 2012 promote training and drive development practices to help our customers deliver high-performance and high-quality systems in less time, thereby minimising development and maintenance costs.”
He was speaking at the annual NIWeek meeting as he introduced NI LabVIEW 2012, the latest version of its industry-leading system design software for engineers and scientists. Users gain ready-to-run starting points for a breadth of LabVIEW applications and access to new training options that help improve the quality of their systems. These new features demonstrate NI’s ongoing commitment to provide a platform that accelerates the success of any measurement or control system and ensures that users can innovate with confidence.
LabVIEW 2012 Features
• Templates and sample projects
• Self-paced online training
• Improved stability
• New tools for high-performance analysis and advanced image processing
• Productivity enhancements powered by the user community
• Mobile apps for display and control on an iPad
Early bird registration for NIWeek remains open until May 31.
Dr. James Truchard, NI CEO at NI Week'11
National Instruments has announced plans for NIWeek 2012, the company’s 18th annual technology conference, which takes place from August 6 to 9 at the Austin Convention Center. Each year this event attracts more than 3,000 engineers, educators and scientists to explore groundbreaking technologies and learn how graphical system design can improve test, measurement and automation.Attendees can participate in interactive demonstrations, roundtable discussions and keynote speeches to gain advanced technical knowledge and network with peers and NI developers.
The exhibit floor showcases interactive demonstrations from more than 75 companies, such as Averna, Cal-Bay Systems, Intel, JKI, Optimation and Xilinx. NIWeek 2012 also hosts numerous special events, including NI Alliance Day, Academic Forum, Build Your Own Embedded System workshop and The Future of System Design symposium.
“NIWeek explores the many industries using graphical system design to discover and shape the future of technology and discoveries that change our world,”said Dr. James Truchard, NI CEO, President and Cofounder. “Engineers are using NI tools, including NI LabVIEW system design software, to create a variety of life-saving applications that improve everyday life.”
Michael Aivaliotis conducted an interview last year at NIWeek 2011 which we only became aware of recently!
Hunter Smith, Ben James, Humphrey Huang, Peter Gayler - Bottom Row: Dylan Caswell, Tim Lynch, Michael Aivaliotis.
He says, "I sat down with a group of engineering interns at National Instruments. Now these intern positions were not typical. Hunter Smith and Ben James who managed this group of students, gave them the flexibility to do whatever project they wanted, as long as it was extremely awesome. How's that for some parameters to work within?"
This group within National Instruments is called Waterloo Labs, and I had a great time talking with them. It is great, not to say contagious to see so much excitement in engineering.
Some of the projects that have come out of Waterloo Labs is an iPhone controlled vehicle, an Eyeball powered super mario game, a Kinect powered etch-a-scetch. "One of the coolest projects so far, I think is something they go in great detail in this interview. Take a listen to find out what it is!" concludes Aivaliotis!
National Instruments has announced that Tim Samaras, severe-storms researcher and star of the Discovery TV Channel show “Storm Chasers,” will deliver the closing keynote address at NIWeek 2011 scheduled for Aug. 2-4 in Austin, Texas. Samaras uses NI LabVIEW, NI CompactDAQ and NI DIAdem to successfully acquire and analyze data from tornadoes across the United States.
“Tim Samaras and his impressive body of work demonstrate how graphical system design can enable scientific discovery that makes a difference, and we are very excited to welcome him to NIWeek as this year’s guest keynote speaker,” said Ray Almgren, vice president of software and education at National Instruments. “His passion for his work, dedication to innovation and willingness to push boundaries in his research will inspire the thousands of NIWeek attendees who are working on their own projects to improve our world.”
Samaras has actively chased storms for almost 30 years and currently spends May and June of each year in a truck tracking tornadoes. He and his team predict where a tornado will occur and then drop several probes in the tornado’s path to measure humidity, static pressure, temperature, wind speed and direction. The information gathered by these probes not only contributes to the knowledge of how and why tornadoes form, but also can be used to save lives by predicting a tornado’s future path. Samaras holds the Guinness World Record for measuring the lowest pressure within a tornado and is the only person to successfully collect video from inside a tornado. In addition, he co-authored the book “Tornado Hunter,”which details some of his most harrowing experiences chasing storms.
Samaras is also the field coordinator for TWISTEX (Tactical Weather Instrumented Sampling in/near Tornadoes EXperiment), a team of engineers and scientists whose goal is to gain a better understanding of the near-surface internal tornado environment. He collaborates with various universities attempting to model weather patterns, and the National Geographic Society awarded him the honor of Emerging Explorer in 2005 for his research.
Successful paper earns trip, flight & accomodation to NI Week in United States!
Engineers and scientists from industry or academia are invited to submit their case study to the Graphical System Design Case Study Contest, organised by National Instruments UK & Ireland. This annual technical paper contest, now in its 6th year, showcases the most innovative solutions for measurement and automation, using NI products and technologies.
Winners of the Graphical System Design Case Study Contest will be announced the night before NIDays conference and exhibition, at a prestigious Awards dinner to be held on 8th November at One Birdcage Walk in Westminster, London (GB), home of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The Awards will be hosted by NI UK leadership with presentations given by Dave Wilson, NI Corporate and Academic Marketing Director.
The author of the winning paper will receive a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 and one ticket, including flights and accommodation, to NIWeek, "the industry's premier worldwide graphical system design conference and exhibition", taking place in Austin, Texas, in August 2012.
Runners-up will each be recognised for their achievement with the prize of a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 together with some of the latest NI measurement hardware or software.
Dr. David Keeling and Ali Alazmani from the University of Leeds and Leeds General Infirmary won last year’s Graphical System Design Paper Contest with their case study detailing how NI LabVIEW and NI CompactRIO were used in the development of an intelligent, mechanical heart simulator, known as the Ventricular Assist Device.
To enter the Graphical System Design Case Study Contest, download the Author Packet (PDF) from the NI Site and send submissions by email to papercontest.ukie@ni.com The deadline for abstracts is 1st July, with final papers due no later than 22nd July, 2011.
Contest entries are published online (ni.com/uk/casestudies and ni.com/ireland/casestudies) and in the NIDays 2011 Case Study booklet, given to every delegate attending the conference and exhibition. Winning authors from the Graphical System Design Case Study Contest will also be recognised on the main stage at NIDays.
Registration is now open for NIDays 2011, the annual professional development conference for engineers, scientists and educators, this year held at a new location, The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, London, on Wednesday 9th November. This free one-day, multi-track conference and exhibition offers hands-on training; in-depth technical sessions covering the latest NI technologies in test, control and design; and demonstrations of innovative uses of graphical system design.
16th Annual Graphical System Design Conference Demonstrates Efficiency of Innovation With NI Tools Executives from National Instruments discussed how NI products are supporting innovation during the 16th annual NIWeek graphical system design conference and exhibition. Speaking to a record crowd of more than 3,000 engineers and scientists, NI executives and engineers demonstrated new products and technologies that help innovators increase efficiency and productivity while reducing costs.
A Flavour
This interview (in two parts) by NI's irrepressible Todd on his "Engineering Mind" give some idea of the personality of the closing Keynote Speaker, Dr. Michio Kaku.
These are links to Deirdre Walsh's Blog made direct from the action as it happened!
Deirdre is NI's Social Media and Community Manager
Dr. James Truchard, NI President, CEO and Cofounder, opened NIWeek 2010 by discussing how NI is taking advantage of computer-based technologies and Moore’s Law to deliver a unique ecosystem of highly integrated software and hardware that increases performance while decreasing cost, complexity and the time spent getting solutions to market. He explained how the well-integrated architecture of tools such as NI LabVIEW graphical system design software and NI CompactRIO modular instrumentation delivers the efficiency customers need so they have more time to create real solutions that address the world’s engineering challenges.
“With the integration that we create with LabVIEW and other tools across multicore and distributed systems, we can make ever more powerful systems, integrating hardware and software,” Truchard said. “This is all about system-level design making a platform that increases the efficiency and productivity of engineers’ designs, so small teams can do a lot more.”
Following Truchard, John Graff, NI Vice President of Americas,Sales and Marketing, hosted NI engineers on stage to demonstrate how new NI products are paving the way for efficient, long-term innovation. These products include LabVIEW 2010 with its optimised compiler, the industry’s first vector network analyser available in a compact PXI form factor, high-performance data acquisition hardware, optical sensing instrumentation and several others. NI engineers showed how these products address advanced demands, expanding the variety of solutions that NI delivers for test, embedded and industrial applications.
To illustrate how NI continues to help customers advance the state of the art in technology, John Pasquarette, NI Vice President of Software Marketing, along with NI R&D developers, began the second day of the conference with previews of several current and forthcoming NI technologies. Engineers demonstrated in-development projects including product concepts for using mobile devices and cloud computing technologies for real-time, distributed data acquisition. The team also demonstrated the new LabVIEW FPGA Compile Farm Toolkit and LabVIEW FPGA Cloud Compile Service Beta, which will make it possible for engineers to assign field-programmable gate array (FPGA) compiling tasks to remote servers. Other demonstrations showed new driver technologies for facilitating hardware support across multiple operating systems including Mac and Linux, advanced RF measurement technology and a PXI multichassis communication protocol for high-performance computing.
Jeff Kodosky, NI Business and Technology Fellow, Cofounder and “Father of LabVIEW,” followed Pasquarette by discussing the past, present and future of the role of time in computation and programming languages. He detailed the challenges today’s computer scientists face with synchronising software and hardware in real time, and the solutions that new LabVIEW compiler technology can provide for advancing real-time computation and future innovation.
On the last day of the conference, Ray Almgren, NI Vice President of Marketing for Core Platforms, demonstrated how today’s students are driving the future of technology with NI products. He then invited university student teams to demonstrate how they are using NI technology to improve the world. Members of the Racing Green Endurance team from Imperial College of London showed how they quickly prototyped and deployed an electric car, which can drive 350 miles on a single charge, within eight months using LabVIEW and CompactRIO. Almgren then introduced the Virginia Tech Blind Driver Challenge team, demonstrating a car that the blind can drive, which they prototyped in just four months using NI products.
Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, author, professor and host of numerous scientific documentaries, closed NIWeek 2010 with informed projections about the future of science, technology and innovation. He explained how with Moore’s Law doubling computer power every 18 months, innovation is happening faster than ever. In addition to detailing numerous emerging technologies that will drive the future, he discussed how NI is helping advance those technologies. With examples such as NI involvement in the CERN Large Hadron Collider and ITER fusion projects, he declared that, “NI has set the gold standard for data processing.”
Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku to deliver NIWeek 2010 keynote
National Instruments has announced that Dr. Michio Kaku, best-selling author and professor at City College of New York, will deliver the closing keynote address at NIWeek 2010, the world’s largest graphical system design conference and exhibition scheduled for Aug. 3–5 in Austin, Texas.
“We are excited to welcome Dr. Michio Kaku to NIWeek as this year’s guest keynote speaker,” said Ray Almgren, Vice President of Software and Education at National Instruments. “Dr. Kaku’s expert insight on future technologies is especially beneficial to the thousands of NIWeek attendees who are continually innovating and pushing the boundaries of science and engineering.”
In addition to his Henry Semat Professorship in theoretical physics at City College of New York, Dr. Kaku is an author of several best-sellers, including “Hyperspace,” “Visions” and “Physics of the Impossible,” and host of the national radio program, “Explorations in Science.” He has also hosted numerous documentaries for the Discovery Channel, Science Channel and the BBC about the future of science. Additionally, his doctorate-level textbooks are required readings at some of the world’s leading physics laboratories. Prior to his current position, Dr. Kaku held a lectureship at Harvard University and a visiting professor position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Dr. Kaku received a Bachelor of Science degree from Harvard University and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Kaku co-founded string field theory, a branch of string theory that summarises the five string theories into one equation. Dr. Kaku also continues to search for Einstein’s “theory of everything” that unifies the four fundamental forces of the universe. In addition, Dr. Kaku has interviewed more than 300 scientists to decipher the most accurate prediction of what the next 20 years of science holds.
National Instruments has received four awards from leading industry trade publications for hardware and software, as well as an award recognising the company for excellence in business-to-business marketing. Editors and readers from Test & Measurement World, Design News and Control Engineering selected NI X Series multifunction data acquisition (DAQ) devices for PCI Express and PXI Express, the NI wireless sensor network (WSN) platform and the NI LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Module for their technological advancement and innovation. Additionally, the Marketing Leadership Council selected the NI Energising Engineers at NIWeek campaign for its marketing insight and creative use of social media platforms.
Test & Measurement World recognised X Series multifunction DAQ devices for PCI Express and PXI Express as the Best in Test for Data Acquisition for their integration of high-performance analogue, digital and counter/timer functionality onto a single device. Engineers can use NI LabVIEW graphical programming software and NI-DAQmx driver software to customise X Series devices for a variety of test, measurement and control applications.
Design News selected the NI WSN platform as a Golden Mousetrap Best New Products award winner for its complete monitoring solution and software integration abilities. The NI WSN platform was also recognised by Control Engineering with an Engineers’ Choice Award for I/O Systems in Wireless. Additionally, Control Engineering recognised the LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Module with the Engineers’ Choice Award for Design, Simulation, and Diagnostics for its simplification of configuring motion axis settings and implementing custom motion control applications.
The NI marketing team received the Marketing Leadership Council B2B Marketing Communications Award for its achievements in business-to-business marketing communication for its social media campaign executed at NIWeek 2009 (See our Report on this) The team was lauded for its identification of what drives customers to connect and creative use of social media platforms to help users to achieve their goals. (The next NIWeek is scheduled for early August!)
Attendees at NI Week 2010 "will learn how to use NI and industry technologies to accelerate time to market.
National Instruments has announced plans for NIWeek, which attracts over 3,300 engineers, scientists and members of the academic community. NIWeek 2010, the company’s 16th annual technology conference, opens Aug. 3 at the Austin Convention Centre in Austin, Texas (US), for three days filled with targeted summits and tracks, technical sessions, interactive demonstrations and keynotes. Attendees will gain advanced technical knowledge, explore graphical system design to test, measure and fix inefficient products and processes and network with peers and NI developers.
“NIWeek is the ultimate venue for engineers to meet, exchange information and ideas and learn about innovative advances in technology and NI products,” said Dr. James Truchard, NI CEO, President and Cofounder. “At NIWeek 2010, we address the continuing need for more efficient user-defined solutions, explore the benefits of graphical system design to gain a competitive advantage and learn how technological advances are accelerating the speed of time to market.”
NIWeek 2010 highlights include the following:
Five technical summits focused on RF and wireless, robotics, military and aerospace, vision and energy technology
Four tracks focused on automated test, embedded design, industrial automation and control and software development and technology
More than 200 technical sessions and 45 hands-on technical workshops
Intermediate- and advanced-level NI LabVIEW and NI hardware and software content
More than 150 demonstrations on the exhibit floor by companies such as Averna, Hitachi, Honeywell, LEGO® and Texas Instruments
Daily keynotes with NI executives and industry leaders
New to NIWeek in 2010 is the Energy Technology Summit, which features sessions on developing sustainable practices in the energy industry. NI will also host a Big Physics Symposium where engineers and scientists can collaborate and learn how NI technologies can solve instrumentation and control challenges in physics. On Aug. 2, NI will host the Academic Forum and Alliance Day. NIWeek attendees have the opportunity to interact with the NI R&D, provide product feedback and attend networking opportunities including nightly events and daily lunchtime peer-to-peer roundtables.
You can also get NIWeek updates and connect with other attendees by becoming an NIWeek fan on Facebook and following @NIWeek on Twitter.
