LabVIEW Applications and Solutions [Paperback]

Rahman Jamal (Author), Herbert Pichlik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0130964239 | ISBN-13: 978-0130964236

9642C-9 Put LabVIEW to work with solutions tailored to your specific field. LabVIEW brings the power and flexibility of graphical data-flow programming to virtually every technical subject. This robust, elegant language is used in communications, mathematics, statistics, and commercial data processing, as well as engineering. Once you have learned the basics of LabVIEW, you can master the nuances and fine tune your skills to create the customized tools you've been looking for. It's perfect for measurement, simulation, automation, and analysis of all types of data. LabVIEW Applications and Solutions gives you the expertise to develop your own virtual instruments, starting with a review of the theoretical foundations, illustrating each function with copious practical examples, and introducing LabVIEW 5.0 features. Among the specific applications are: *Process visualization and control, including automation and fuzzy logic. *Testing and measurement for quality management. *Fourier transforms. *Communications and networking issues. *Mathematics. LabVIEW's newest capabilities are covered in depth, including: *Image processing. *Digital filter design. *Control and simulation.* BioBench and other medical applications. LabVIEW Applications and Solutions is a great textbook or reference for working engineers, professors, and students. Managers and decision-makers will also love the way it explains how to put LabVIEW to work in your own organization. It's the perfect follow-up to Lisa Wells and Jeff Travis' LabVIEW for Everyone, the classic introductory text published by Prentice Hall PTR. A free evaluation copy of LabVIEW 5.0 for Windows and Macintosh is included on CD-ROM to let you get right to work developing your own hands-on solutions. THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS AND PRENTICE HALL PTR'S VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION SERIES.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

From the Inside Flap

PREFACE Measurement and automation technology is experiencing a phase of radical change. After a brief Windows 95 euphoria, the trend is clearly pointing toward Windows NT, as far as operating systems are concerned. With regard to hardware, ISA/EISA bus systems are increasingly replaced by the superior PCI bus. Formerly stiff boundaries between measurement and automation technologies blur, clearly because the flexible possibilities of data acquisition, analysis, control, and visualization merge more and more to form a software environment entirely in the sense of a holistic approach. We no longer distinguish between classical measurement technology software and process visualization tools. As a global player in the area of measurement and automation technology, National Instruments drives this trend to "unification" under the slogan "the software is the instrument." The company introduced the concept of virtual instruments with its graphical LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench) programming system in the eighties. This concept represented the first leap from conventional measuring devices to adaptable virtual measurement and automation systems. LabVIEW, originally developed for the measurement and automation technology, has been advancing more and more as an alternative to conventional programming languages. Along with the C/C++ programming languages, LabVIEW is among the most frequently used programming languages for technical and scientific applications today. LabVIEW is a revolutionary paradigm that can be used to solve technical and commercial problems. The implicitly parallel and modular development system with its graphical G compiler is impressive in its offering of high runtime speeds and very short program development cycles. A number of extensive libraries built in LabVIEW allow rapid prototyping as well as elegant and powerful application development. In addition to measurement and control engineering, process visualization, laboratory automation, and image processing, the fields of application of this platform-independent development software extend to communications technology, statistics, mathematics, simulation, and commercial data processing. This holistic approach has been widely adopted by users and manufacturers alike to build applications based on industry standards, standard computers, and standard operating systems. The number of organizations that discover and use the efficiency of scalable applications based on virtual instruments increases continually. Annual user symposia are organized worldwide under the motto "virtual instruments in practice," where users exchange hands-on experience, concepts, and results in applying virtual instruments. Today, many consider this approach to be the only way to achieve cost and time savings and, consequently, a short time to market. Particularly in the age of the global Internet, this new system generation also gains increasing importance with regard to distributed, modular applications. It opens new horizons in the sense of an open and communicative measurement and automation technology. Objectives of This Book This book provides an insight into the capabilities of LabVIEW, describing graphical flow programming with LabVIEW, illustrated by many examples and practical applications. It lets you dive into a totally new programming world using "virtual instruments." Information technology problems are reduced to a graphical formulation of solutions. Coding and documenting happen in the background. Applications from almost all areas of graphical flow programming and relevant background information impressively demonstrate the range of potential applications and the power, quality, and reliability of LabVIEW applications. This book represents crucial reading for instructors, scientists, students, hardware and software developers, and decision-makers in research, academia, and industry. Professional LabVIEW developers, novices to the field, and those curious look beyond conventional paradigms are provided with an extensive overview on supported hardware, fields of applications, and interfaces to other hardware and software systems. In addition to documenting the current state of the art in virtual instrumentation, this book suggests potential future LabVIEW uses. Organization of This Book This book is divided into three main parts: introduction; communication technologies and mechanisms; and analysis and evaluation methods and application examples. Each part is divided into chapters, and the overall structure reflects the following sequence of basic questions: What are virtual instruments? What is LabVIEW? What requirements does LabVIEW place on the underlying hardware? What can we do with LabVIEW today? What are the benefits of using LabVIEW? What is the outlook of LabVIEW? The structure of the book follows a top-down approach. However, the text enters, at each step, into rather more detail than a strictly logical organization would require. We hope that the resulting redundancies are in practice beneficial to the overall understanding, providing explanations given in different contexts and from different perspectives. Acknowledgments Many people deserve credit for their contributions, their direct help, fruitful technical discussions, or their contributions in the form of basic material and application examples. In particular, we wish to thank the following contributors (in alphabetical order): Gerd Bauer, Peter Herrmann, Dr. Christian Nef, Martin Studtfeld, and Andreas Zimmer. We are particularly grateful to Prof. Dr. Norbert Stockhausen, who enriched this book with valuable examples and suggestions in the field of digital signal processing, and Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Norbert Dahmen who, with his sound fuzzy knowledge, helped fuzzy logic attain its solid position in the world of graphical data flow programming, next to the classical control engineering. We also extend our gratitude to Dr. Lothar Wenzel for his valuable contribution in the field of control and simulation. We thank all those LabVIEW users who have supplied new ideas for this project by asking technical questions and providing comments. We are grateful to the Technical Support Department of National Instruments Germany GmbH, particularly Heinrich Illig, Matthias Vogel, and Georg Sinkovic; and Michael Dams, Manager of NI Germany. Our special thanks go to the LabVIEW developers in Austin, Texas, in particular to Brian Powell, Steve Rogers, Dean Luick, Greg Fowler, Greg McKaskle, David Beisner, Ray Almgren, Tamra Kerns, and Ravi Marawar. Last but not least, we wish to warmly thank LabVIEW coinventor Jeff Kodosky for his invaluable encouragement and comments in numerous discussions. Finally, this text would probably not have been finished without the continuing encouragement from our families: Karin, Sabine, Tobias, Benjamin, and Melissa Pichlik; and Farida, Munira, Hamida, and Sadrudin Jamal. Munich, Germany, May 1998 Rahman Jamal and Herbert Pichlik About the Authors Following his electrical engineering studies at the University of Paderborn, Germany, Rahman Jamal joined National Instruments, Austin, Texas, in 1990, as application engineer. Six months later, he moved to National Instruments Germany GmbH, where he played an important role in establishing this subsidiary. In 1993, he assumed the position of Application Engineering Manager. Since 1997, he has been Technical Manager, responsible for applications, training, and strategic marketing at NI Germany. Rahman Jamal was born in 1965; he is enthusiastically dedicated to graphical data flow programming. In his spare time, he is primarily concerned with interdisciplinary themes that bridge the gap between science, music, art, and literature. He has written several books and is the author of over 100 national and international papers and articles. Rahman Jamal, who is well known from his many lectures as a true LabVIEW expert, deals mainly with the philosophic and cognitive aspects of optimum man-machine interfaces, in addition to the purely pragmatic aspects of graphical paradigms. Herbert Pichlik was born in 1958; he studied electrical engineering at the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Nuremberg. He started his professional career in 1985 when he joined Philips Kommunikations Industrie AG (PKI) as a software development engineer. Later, he moved to the quality management department at PKI. After a short period at LGA, he joined Quelle AG in 1990, where he has been in charge of measuring and test instrument management as well as test instrument development. Herbert Pichlik has written and coauthored several books and dozens of papers and articles. Since 1992, when he assumed responsibility for a large number of different projects, he has worked intensively with LabVIEW. Herbert Pichlik is an internationally awarded synergist, enthusiastic squash player, father of four children, and owner of several patents in the field of analog and digital integrated circuit technologies; he started lecturing in graphical data flow programming at the Nuremberg University as a sideline in 1997.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 468 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (December 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130964239
• ISBN-13: 978-0130964236
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,083,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Book Introduces Concepts/Capabilities in Labview - Not More, March 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: LabVIEW Applications and Solutions (Paperback)

I basically went through the tutor in Labview, and started programming. Now that I'm more 'advanced' I looked to this book for help. I bought this book with the hopes that it will give me some pointers on improving my programming. IT DID NOT.

Basically, this book gives a good overview of how Labview works, what's in Labview, and what you can do with Labview. How you can do it it isn't explained. Lots of re-hash of material from other books not Labview related (pages on Fourier transform, optimization ideas *not much*, process control, etc).

If you're looking for a book that'll help you do programming, this isn't it. If you're looking for a book with ideas on what you can do with Labview (but with no help), this is the book for you.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A tour of Labview applications, August 6, 2004

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+++ (OR, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LabVIEW Applications and Solutions (Paperback)

This book is obviously written for a developer who wants to choose a suitable programming language, heard about labview, but is not sure if it can do what he wants. The idea of the book is to give you an overview of the many real-world problems which can be solved with lab view. It covers many potential areas of applications, from image processing and digital filters to interfacing with measurement equipment - but everything is described in very generic terms. Indeed, if image processing is discussed on 10 pages, how much can you learn from such a short discussion? You will get an idea what hardware you may need and what toolkits can be used for each particular purpose, and you may learn a few technical terms along the way - but you will not move an inch towards becoming a better LabView programmer. In fact, there is practically nothing in this book about programming. A few labview programs/ diagrams that are reproduced in the text are for illustration purposes only: they are never discussed in detail and often contain undescribed VIs -or, as another example, include structures like frames which contain, say, 4 frames, but only one of them is shown in the figure. The enclosed CD contains only a trial version of labview and electronic version of labview manuals - nothing else. Some chapters are written a little better than the others - for examples, those on fuzzy logic and Fourier Transform are the better ones - but they are still insufficient for practical work. My impression from this book reminds me a feeling which one gets from a tour of a high-end research facility offered to general public. You see the equipment, see the curves on a computer screen, get an idea what is being done here, may even memorize some slang words used by the scientists, but it neither makes you qualified to work in that lab nor teaches how to do a similar things at your own place of work. So is this book. Don't waste your money on it if you want to learn how to program LabView.