TUTORIAL OVERVIEW

• Level: Beginner
• Duration: 2 hour
• Instructor: Ba Hai Nguyen
• Email: bahai.ce@gmail.com
• Website:http://sites.google.com/site/labviewtutorial

The contents of this tutorial series is described in figure 1.
Fig 1.1 Tutorial content

1. WHAT IS LABVIEW?
1.1 Introduction to LabVIEW (10 minutes)
LabVIEW is a powerful software used to acquire, analyze data (from sensors) and control actuators (like a DC motor). LabVIEW can be called as an IDE (integrated development environment like Visual Studio). Today, LabVIEW is popular in laboratories and industrial applications. Its advantage is easy to create program within some hours even you have no knowledge about programming. This is posible because LabVIEW programming is based on icons instead of text in other languages like C, Pascal. Therefore, it's very easy to learn, understand, and make programs. The language programmed in LabVIEW is called G programming language. See photos for examples of LabVIEW applications.
Fig 2. LabVIEW Data Acquisition Onboard at NASA (NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Fig 3. An underwater robot (Spider) is developed based on LabVIEW programming software (Nexans Company)

Fig 4. LabVIEW is used for rapid prototyping of medical devices with CompactRIO (NI company)

Fig 5. LabVIEW is used to make steer-by-wire experimental testbed (Biorobotics Lab, KUT)

1.2 What can we do with LabVIEW?
LabVIEW offers unrivaled integration with thousands of hardware devices and provides hundreds of built-in libraries for advanced analysis and data visualization. The LabVIEW platform (IDE) is scalable across multiple targets and operating systems, and since its introduction in 1986 has become an industry leader (ni.com).

• LabVIEW and NI's hardware can connect any sensors, and any actuators
• LabVIEW can be used for data acquirsition signal processing, audio/image processing, and computer communication
• LabVIEW is powerful to connect to external hardware via diferent protocols like RS232, RS485, TCP/IP, PCI, PXI, and so on.
• You also can create stand-alone executables and shared libraries, like DLLs, because LabVIEW is a true 32-bit compiler
  

1.3 Download and Install LabVIEW (30 minutes)

• To download LabVIEW, click here.
• To install LabVIEW, see this file. (It is easy to install with step-by-step pictures)

(If there is any problems with downloading and installation LabVIEW, just feel free to type a message by comment function in this page. I am happy to help you).

2 CREATE THE FIRST APPLICATION IN LABVIEW (10 minutes)
If you don't have any hardware which accompany with this tutorial please move to 2.3.
2.1 RS232 communication program for controling a small fan

2.2 USB communication program for controlling a DC motor, LEDs

2.3 My first program: sum of two variables
This example calculate the sum of input A and B. A, B are given by user through the keyboard.
To make this program we need to create input A, B, and the display (or indicator) like a LCD in pocket calculator shown in figure 2.1.

Explanation of the first program
LabVIEW program is call "VI" (virtual instrument). A VI consits of four components - front panel, the block diagram, and the icon, and wire.
In contrast to text-based programming languages, where instructions determine program execution, LabVIEW uses dataflow programming, where the flow of data determines execution.
The user interface is known as the front panel. You then add code using graphical representations of functions to control the front panel objects. The block diagram contains this code. In some ways, the block diagram resembles a flowchart.
Motivation to Different types of control and indicator (or input and output)