Comments wanted from Embedded Systems Engineers

I have recently been spending time thinking about how tough debugging can be some times, why this is so and what to do about it.

This resulted in a whitepaper "debugging embedded systems" (http://www.clarinox.com/index.php?id=59).

I am hoping to get some comments from the embedded systems community with permission to publish these on the link (http://www.clarinox.com/index.php?id=4).

So far I have had comments from US, UK and Europe and hope to add some interesting comments from the embedded systems community in Australia.

Upcoming NI Workshops in March

Below are some NI Hands-On Workshops coming up in March:

1) Graphically Programming FPGA’s for Advanced Industrial Measurements and Control – Hands-on Workshop. 11 March 2009 in Glen Waverly, VIC. As part of this, CPE Systems will be giving a short presentation on a cRIO application, using LabVIEW RT and FPGA.For full workshop details, visit: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/nievn.ni?action=display_offerings_by_event&event_id=1227&country=AU&site=AU&l=US

2) Introduction to PC-based Measurements and Graphical Programming with LabVIEW - Hands-on Workshop. 13 March 2009 in North Ryde, VIC. As part of this, CPE Systems will be giving a short presentation on the Portable DAQ System (PDAS) in the morning, and Balaton Technologies will be doing a short presentation in the afternoon. For full workshop details, visit: http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/nievn.ni?action=display_offerings_by_event&event_id=1219&country=AU&site=AU&node=160480&l=US

The LabVIEW Blog Explosion

LabVIEW Blogs - there's a lot of them. I found this out while setting up this very blogspot. One thing's for sure, is that the LabVIEW community is committed to using and supporting this great programming language. What was once a niche tool, is now very much the accepted platform in the test and measurement industry, among others.



I'll just take a moment to feature a few of my favourite LabVIEW/T&M Blogs that I now regularly peruse:



http://thinkinging.com/ - Written by Jim Kring, Jim is regurlarly offering wisdom and sound advice on his blog. Jim has innovation written all over him, pushing the boundaries of LabVIEW development, especially the Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) side of things.



http://anengineeringmind.blogspot.com/ - Todd, from NI, provides a humourous video blog of the life and challenges of an engineer, and how engineers seem to differ from the rest of the world. Not really much about LabVIEW, but most engineers will be able to relate to his little anecdotes.



http://labviewartisan.blogspot.com/ - D Natt from NI writes a thorough blog on a variety of topics, from LabVIEW tips, to certification. A very handy resource indeed.



http://forums.lavag.org/blog/champions/index.php? - Chris Relf (from Australia!) writes some very good articles here at the LabVIEW Champions' Blog. Great reading.



http://labviewgeek.blogspot.com/ - A new blog pushing the case for Object Oriented Programming.


Want more? Then check out:

• http://eyesonvis.blogspot.com/


• http://labviewinsights.blogspot.com/


• http://vishots.com/


• http://ideasinwiring.blogspot.com/


• http://expressionflow.com/


• http://bress-paper-chase.blogspot.com/

Still want more? Go here: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4574

Embedded Technologies Forum

On Wednesday the 19th of November National Instruments, along with Symmetry Innovations and Embedded Logic hosted the first Embedded Technologies Forum at Sydney Olympic Park.

Matej Krajnc, the branch manager of NI Oceania presented the welcoming address, which focussed on how graphical system design provides a single platform for engineers to design, prototype and deploy new products.

The presentations that followed explained how LabVIEW can be used to develop software to run on various targets including Windows, real-time operating systems, FPGAs, DSPs and microprocessors.

Symmetry Innovations explained the QNX Embedded Real-time Operating System, and described multi-core and adaptive partitioning with the QNX advanced runtime module. Embedded Logic presented on the Wind River tools, and how LabVIEW integrates with the Keil Microcontroller Development Kit for programming ARM microcontrollers.

A highlight of the forum was the guest speaker, Anthon Voigt, a Senior Electronic Engineer from DebTech in South Africa. Anthon gave a fantastic presentation on how DebTech has used LabVIEW to target PXI, compactRIO, and analogue devices blackfin processors, to develop diamond sorting machines for the South African Mining giant, De Beers.



To view pdf's of the presentations, click here: http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/australia.nsf/web/all/DC76F3021D65096E86257507007BCE6A