Using LabVIEW in the Real World

Although LabVIEW is a very powerful simulation tool, it is most often used to gather data from an external source, and it contains many VIs built especially for this purpose. For example, LabVIEW can command plug-in data acquisition, or DAQ, devices to acquire or generate analog and digital signals. You might use DAQ devices and LabVIEW to monitor a temperature, send signals to an external system, or determine the frequency of an unknown signal. LabVIEW also facilitates data transfer over the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB), or through your computer's built-in USB, Ethernet, Firewire (also known as IEEE 1394), or serial port. GPIB is frequently used to communicate with oscilloscopes, scanners, and multimeters, and to drive instruments from remote locations. LabVIEW software can also control sophisticated VXI hardware instrumentation systems, Ethernet, or USB-based instruments. Once you have acquired or received your data, you can use LabVIEW's many analysis VIs to process and manipulate it.

Often you will find it useful to share data with other applications or computers in addition to an instrument. LabVIEW has built-in functions that simplify this process, supporting several networking protocols, external calls to existing code or dynamic link libraries (DLLs), and ActiveX automation.

We'll spend the rest of this chapter talking about some of the tasks LabVIEW was designed to accomplish. But, before we start talking about exactly what LabVIEW can do, let's take a moment to reflect on how LabVIEW got to be the powerful tool that it is today. This next section gives a brief history lesson, showing the LabVIEW timeline and the introduction of its many features and capabilities.