Contents
Getting Started with LabVIEW Virtual Instruments
Customizing a VI
Full and Professional: Analyzing and Saving a Signal
Hardware: Acquiring Data and Communicating with Instruments
Using Other LabVIEW Features
Getting Started with LabVIEW
Virtual Instruments
LabVIEW programs are called virtual instruments, or VIs, because their appearance and operation imitate physical instruments, such as oscilloscopes and multimeters. LabVIEW contains a comprehensive set of tools for acquiring, analyzing, displaying, and storing data, as well as tools to help you troubleshoot code you write .
In LabVIEW, you build a user interface, or front panel, with controls and indicators. Controls are knobs, push buttons, dials, and other input mechanisms. Indicators are graphs, LEDs, and other output displays. After you build the user interface, you add code using VIs and structures to control the front panel objects. The block diagram contains this code .
You can use LabVIEW to communicate with hardware such as data acquisition, vision, and motion control devices, as well as GPIB, PXI, VXI , RS232, and RS485 instruments .
Building a Virtual Instrument
In the following exercises, you will build a VI that generates a signal and displays that signal in a graph. After you complete the exercises, the front panel of the VI will look similar to the front panel in Figure 1-1.