NI Week is here!

It's finally the NI Week time of year and I am excited! I drove down early this morning. I found I couldn't sleep in spite of my need to get up early and be awake for the 3 hour drive down.

I've come on an Expo pass this year so my learning opportunities will be more limited than previous years but that doesn't dampen my desires to learn, network, and generally be nerdy...one of my favorite pastimes.

I am waiting for the Keynotes to start and thinking...WHO came up with the easy-listening, AC/DC re-mix of T.N.T. along with all the other sad remixes of good music. Basically, this my first disappoint in NI-Week in the last 3 years. I have a feeling I will get over it as the day goes on.

The NI Demonstrations were good but I really enjoyed Jeff K. future state of NI speech. I'm impressed evey year by his talks.

The Expo floor, of course, is very informational, lots of good information and potential uses. The unfortunate thing is, most of the information I gather will either be to new and different to be useful or will fall on deaf ears.

I am going to document what I find out and pass it on.

Again, this year, there is only one CVI demo and they won't let it run because it's to dangerous. It's a desructive test of a CD. Basically the CD crumbles. I guess CVI programmers are braver than LabVIEW programmers. I'm proposing a CVI controlled icamera and potato gun to take out the LabVIEW demo's...I don't think they'll go for it.

NI Week...Woohoo

NI Week is almost upon us, it's the time of year to look forward to the new NI products and to network with all the NI people. I'm looking forward to the NI Week. I would be looking forward to all the seminar's and learning opportunities except that this year, some people at the place I work sees no immediate, short term benefit to conferences like this and AutoTestCon. Even in the long term it is hard to show measurable benefit. Since it's mostly secondary benefits, long term learning and networking, that is hard to measure, some groups will be poorly represented.

I am, however, going to to NI Week on an EXPO pass. I am excited about going and I am planning on making the most of my learning opportunities that I will have on my EXPO pass. I want to find out what various vendor's believe is the future of testing. I want to learn about the various products available to help us do our testing, I want to learn all I can...no matter what others think of conferences. I know there are learning opportunities, I know I am going to learn, I know I'm going to learn all I can, and I know it will help me in the future.

Overall, I'm excited about NI Week and all of it's opportunities.

TestStudio, Hmmm...

It's been a while, I've doing a lot of playing with my Genetic Algorithms program, writing a Neural Net program, and studying Chaos.

First, Congratulations to the Wendy, former Queen of CVI. She's moved on MIT, graduate school, and opportunities up there. Way to go!

Second, Welcome Adri K, the new Queen of CVI and all NI things Text. Everyone needs to go to NI Week and say hi to her or the NI CVI community.

Now to the meat of the subject. TestStudio, not TestStand but TestStudio.Teradyne's offering in the test sequencing arena. It seems to be cheap knock off of TestStand put out by Teradyne. This is the product we'll be using on our next test set. It was not my choice or the choice of anyone who will have to develop on it.

Since this choice has been made for use and I've been told to accept it, I want to write about comparisons between TestStudio and TestStand.

First comparison...none. Teradyne, who is apparently very big on keeping the purchaser of the product in the dark, will not allow us to have an evaluation copy or access the support site until they get their PO.

We are told it's great, or at least the only product that will run its proprietary switch manger. We're also told the switch manager is a .dll. .dll's will run under TestStand, so why is TestStudio the only way to run the switch manager?

I guess I'll have to wait until we actually get the software before I can compare it. Since TestStand allows a 30 day evaluation and TestStudio doesn't, plus we can't get to the support. Is Teradyne's product so bad they can't even allow people to evaluate it?

TestStand 2, TestStudio -2. Negative since I can't even get to any documentation except Propaganda sheet.

What I learned at NIWeek

While I could say what I learned about FPGAs or LabVIEW I know that's not the most important lesson I learned. On the last day of NIWeek Andrew Hargadon spoke on "Green Entrepreneurship" ...more or less. He really spoke on Innovation but he told NI he would speak on Green so he could get on the stage at NIWeek.

His talk made me think; It made me think about thinking, about using my brain, about getting things moving in an innovative way, not a new way, but a different, better way.

And that's what I like about National Instruments and NIWeek. Not that there's new products that are Smaller, Better, Faster than the older products. It's about innovation, taking things known, re-combining them, and making something better and getting it out there.

I'm not a LabVIEW fan, I may have said that before, but I am a fan of the innovation of LabVIEW. Dr. James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin combined the computer, programming, and graphics into LabVIEW, an innovative graphical programming product. It's more than just the Test, the Software, or the Hardware aspects of NI, it's the innovation.

To me, innovation is the whole point of NIWeek, the Innovative thoughts behind the new products. NIWeek inspires me to be innovative, combine old things into new, better things. It get's me thinking along different lines, about more than Test, Software, or Hardware, it's about what can be, about more.

The Experience of NIWeek and the products showcased are great. And it's a good way to get everyone together, to network, and focus on test. But, at least to me, it's much bigger than that. NI Week is like Disney world is to a child. Disney World makes kids imagine what could be. And that's me with NIWeek, I'm imagining what can be.

Now I need to move past the kid in me, and move the imagination to innovation. The next step.

NI Week - Day 3

First, the NI Week block party was great fun last night. The band was great, the food was great, and everyone there had fun. Whomever didn't go, missed out! A lot of the people wound up on 6th street after that. It was a great night!

It's the last day of NIWeek and I'm sad that it's over. I went to the last of the seminars, I always enjoy learning more. I will admit that my mind is getting tired. Or maybe it's from only getting about 5 hours sleep.

Today, I learned some about TestStand, more about FPGAs, and about DAQmx synchronization. I feel good about everything I learned, especially the FPGAs and DAQ information.

The new NI PXIe5673 is a very cool device since you can use it to generate a test GPS signal. We won't need the Spirent thing to generate a GPS tests anymore.

All in all, it was a great week. It was good to see the NI people that I know, especially Wendy and Santiago. It was good to see Luis was still working hard on CVI, keeping it better than LabVIEW.

But now it's good to be home, see the kids, and I look forward to sleeping in my own bed.

I can't wait until NI Week 2009. I'm planning on going even if it's just on an Expo Pass for a day. Remember, it's only 362 days away!

NIWeek - Day 2

Another day of Fun and Frolic at NIWeek. I'm getting a lot of good information again today, but it's not as good as yesterday because there's no CVI sessions. Somehow I'll survive no CVI today...I think.

The keynote started the morning off really well. My favorite news was that NI allows different OSs to run on separate cores. That means you can have RT running on one core and Windows running a User Interface on the other core.

After that it's all a blur of LabVIEW, FPGA, DAQmx, and some TestStand thrown in. There are a lot of really nice features in LabVIEW FPGA that make it really flexible and usable. I learned some about DAQmx data streaming and I got to hear the TestStand roadmap for the next couple of years.

I really beleive NI is doing a really good job of developing new and innovative products. But I think what NI does best is listening to their customers. They do VERY well at asking what the customer wants and showing the customer what is coming up and asking "Is this something you would use". Of course, half the time, we customers don't know what we would use until we actually get to use it.

"The futures so bright I've got to wear shades" to re-use lyrics from a song. NI should be wearing shades!

NIWeek - Day 1

What a great day! Keynote this morning was very good. CVI information was great! (see end of the blog) NI Rolled out LabVIEW 8.6 with cool new features that even I may use! The auto complete for LabVIEW VI's is nice and keeps you from mousing through the pallets. Of course you have to know the VIs name so those of us who know "Modulo" rather that "Quotient & Remainder" or with DAQmx where some name differences start around the 30th character may still have some trouble.

I went to a LabVIEW FPGA seminar and it's continuing to evolve and getting more and more powerful.

I went to a seminar on Intelligent control because AI is my hobby. It sounds as if LabVIEW may have some Intelligent control vi's coming out. More details to come.

Joel [Garner] and Travis [I-dont-know-his-last-name] put together a get together talking about new FPGA stuff. It's some good information.

But the highlight of my day was CVI. There was a lot of good CVI information between the CVI round table discussions at lunch, the using multi-core seminar, and the CVI Users group. Wendy [Logan] and Luis [Gomes] did a good job of talking about the future of CVI. They emphasized CVI will be around for a long time to come. But then again, most of us have heard that over and over. Plus they have some good, forward thinking plans for CVI. The only down side was the CVI demo, where they were destroying a CD, was flinging shrapnel and so they wouldn't run it live.

Also, you (yes you!) can sign up to get a beta copy of CVI 9.0 by going to ni.com/beta. Wendy only mentioned it at every slide and two or three on times on some slides.

CVI...Learn it...Love it...Live it!

OK, I'm tired and getting a bit little loopy.

NI Week - Day 0

Tonight was the first night of NI Week. Just the meet and greet and get to know the Expo floor. There was only one CVI display, but of course it was great. They were stress testing CD's by spinning them up until it disintegrates which, of course, is cool! It was Good to see Wendy (Logan) again, Queen of LabWindows CVI. She is energetic as always. And CVI is exciting as always.

It was also good to see Santiago Delgado, king of TestStand. He always amazes me. Tonight he was playing the guitar at a LabVIEW sound demo...and he was VERY good.

I did get to go to 6th Street, heard some good music and drank some beer. There were a lot of obvious NIWeek participants out tonight (Nerds). I'm excited about Tuesday, the first full day of NI Week...at least for me.

To everyone not here, your missing some good stuff!

NI Week! Nerdvana

Nerdvana - State of total geekdom.

It's NI Week, I'm in Bastrop with a friend and I'll move over to Austin tomorrow. I'm very excited about the start of NIWeek, I will be in Nerdvana!

Most of my friends think this is nerdy, that I'm excited about going, and it may be. However, it's a great networking and learning opportunity. They go to their industry own conferences and networking opportunities, but "Market-vana" doesn't sound that good. Most of them are in sales and marketing and, to them, everything is a networking opportunity.

NIWeek is a time to live immerse myself in Test, Software, Hardware, and like minded people. A time to become one with Test, a time to reach...

Nerdvana!

NI Week - LabVIEW-fest

NI Week is getting close and I'm excited. NI Week is a huge LabVIEW-fest, it's almost all about LabVIEW...LabVIEW presentations, demonstrations, and key-notes. I'm still excited about being at NI Week in spite of that. Luckily there are some LabWindows/CVI presentations and, at least last year, there was a CVI section in the NI display. I want to thank Wendy Logan for her work on the CVI stuff. Here's a link to some of the CVI events.

I'm not a huge LabVIEW fan, mainly because of the mouse use and Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Recently I realized there were other reasons too. I read a book called "In the beginning was the command line" by Neal Stephenson. It talks some about the history of OSs and about controlling the computers. It made me start thinking about how I use computers...not at work but at home. At work, everything is setup for you, you use the OS, tools, etc that work wants you to use.

At home I use Linux (Ubuntu). I like it because if there is a problem, I can look into it, I can figure it out. I can look under the hood...so-to-speak. With LabVIEW, when one of the Vi's doesn't work, or seems to not work, you have to call NI and let them know and they fix it. It's out of my hands. Whatever is under the hood is proprietary, I'm told. You can't just open a Vi with a text editor or compile it from a command line. I can open a file for a C/C++ or Java program, enter it, compile it and run it. Very simple. LabVIEW introduces another layer of abstraction and I just can't see what's below the layer. I've written (in college) a simple C compiler so I understand it, I'm comfortable with it.

LabVIEW is the language of test, the language of the Future, and will be around a long time. You just can see what's under the hood.

NI Week - Boondoggle?

It's about two weeks until NI-Week and I'm excited. However, some at work say it's just a boondoggle (Definition: Boondoggle - To do work of little or no practical value merely to keep or look busy. [Dictionary.com]). They say people go to Seminars just to get out of work, get paid, and goof off. I say that NI-Week (i.e. Seminar's) are what you make of it. You go to learn...you learn. You go to party...you get a hangover. No boondoggle here.

Most of them had a chance to go themselves. However, since we're suppose to report on what we learn from NI-Week, most people chose didn't ask to go.

Last year I went and I learned a lot, not just about NI products, but about how other companies do things, equipment is out there, and what services are available. There was a lot of helpful seminar' on many different subjects.

One problem I had last year was I brought back a lot of good information, but then I was indirectly told to do my job like we've always do it. So is it really a boondoggle if you learn and not allowed to use what you learn? I say no.

At least this year I'll get to report on what I learn whether I get to use it or not.

I'm planning on learning:
- What are the future trends in Test Software Development?
- Trends in shrinking Test Set design.
This is where my learning experience starts, but once I get there my focus may change. I also want use the digital video camera to come up with some good man on the street views on these things.

My goal for this year is to go, learn, come back and teach anyone who will listen. Of course I want to network and have fun, too.

Everyone should go, learn, and have fun.

NI-Week Seminars

Below are some links to view the NI-Week seminar's along with a message the Conference manager left me on their message board. You can use the links to see what seminar's will be availible.

Now you can start planning your learning experiance at NI-Week. I hope to everyone there!!

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We are working hard to get the NIWeek Final Program onto ni.com/niweek so you can see all the great activity that will be happening at this year's event. It will be the largest NIWeek ever from a technical content perspective with over 240 sessions from which to select.

Until that PDF is available, here are the links that will allow you to see the content online, register if needed and start to build your personal NIWeek schedule.

If you are not registered for NIWeek and want to see the content that will be presented. Go here to View Sessions. This shows you the content but not the dates, times and locations of each session. Only registrants are able to see that information at the link below.

For registrants, you can now go here to Build a Schedule.

See you in 21 days!
Rod

I'm going to NI Week!!

The company I work for has decided to allow me to go to NI-Week. My boss said that anyone who goes will have to give a presentation on "What I learned at NI-Week". Apparently not many wanted to do that, but I'm more than willing to give a presentation to go to NI-Week.

I've also had some e-mail correspondence with a PR person from NI and she said I could check out a USB video camera to record my experience at NI-Week. It will a video for NI but I'm also going to put some of the video here, so I want to get some good footage. I'm looking for any interesting and unique aspects of NI-Week I can find; Or any interesting or unique people I can get on video.

I would also like to meet anyone who reads this and is at NI-Week for the video, too.

I want encourage everyone who is able to go to NI-Week, at least on the free Expo Pass. It's a great experience! Plus Austin is fun, the music on 6th street is great, and UT is there.

NI Week - I'll get there some how!

It's all but official, I'm Not going to NI Week through my company this year. Due to training budgets shrinking and a "one person can train everyone else" philosophy, the company is thinking of only sending one person down to collect information and then let him pass it on to the rest of us. [sarcastic voice] I know how well that always works. [/sarcastic voice]

The reality of it is that I AM going to go on my own, if nothing else on the "Exhibition Only" pass. I live in the Dallas Tx area which is about 3 hours (2 1/2 hours the way I drive) away. I'm planning on leaving one morning, early, with a gallon of coffee in hand, making it there for the opening address that day, seeing the exhibits, then coming back that evening. Simple...right!

I may get a cheap motel and stay one night but I have a while to figure that out.

The bottom line is I'm will be at NI Week, one way or another. This is something I'm passionate about! Even if just for one day. It is an experience that everyone should have. I was fortunate enough to go last year and I'm thankful for that. If I can find the money, I'm going to register for some of the other options, you know, things like food or the sessions for one day. However, as a single Dad with a Son in college and a Daughter about to go to college (UT Austin, near NI), I can't justify much more than the gas for the trip on my own right now.

I would like to blog some more on NI, since I've been pulled off to write processes I haven't had a lot of testing to write about. (In 2009, I'm going to make sure that's not the case!)

I will blog about my road-trip and my experiance at NI Week.

Here's the link to register for NI Week, sign up early. June 1st is the deadline for the Early Bird Special.

NI Week is Coming!!

NI Week is getting close!

August 5 - 2008



I went to last years NI week, and it was incredible!! It was a very valuable experience. I would love to go to this years but typically the company I work for won't let the same person go to something like this two years in a row. They tend to want to send different people every year. I'm going to try convince them I should go, I guess we'll see how it goes in the next few weeks.

Below is a link to the preliminary program for this year. By the way, a quote from me is on page 27.



View the NIWeek 2008 Preliminary Program

NI Week residuals

NI week was awesome, a great learning experience. It made me think more about LabVIEW for work. I found out today that another guy at work, who was less of a supporter of LabVIEW than me, was thinking of LabVIEW as something that can be used at work.

I think of LabVIEW of more viable of a product in more area's at work than before. It's something that can be mixed with LabWindows. Both can be used in places to meet the goals of product testing.

Now, I need to work on learning LabVIEW a little better so I can understand the best ways to use it to achieve my goals, a better test product. It has some really good aspects already that I haven't fully explored. LabVIEW FPGA (I'm still hoping for LabWindows CVI for FPGA) and LabVIEW for Lego mindstorms.

I'm embarking on my LabVIEW journey, starting with mindstorms since I can download a free student version that interacts with the NXT brick.

LabWindows for real programmers

Yesterday, I blogged some about LabWindows CVI is for real programmers. I know that LabVIEW is NI's flagship product most of their other products are in support of other facet's of test, I'm still just not enamored with LabVIEWs data flow paradigm and graphical programming.
Throwing together a LabVIEW program is easy for a novice but that doesn't make them a software developer. There's still not the discipline it takes to program with discipline. It's like someone who goes 90 miles per hour on the highway believing they're a NASCAR driver.

The skill and discipline involved in developing a program is more than taking some icons that represent operations, putting them together, and calling it a program. There still needs to be the analysis on what the user wants (the requirements), some design and thought on how to handle errors, some thought behind the coding so that other non-programmers can understand it and follow the data flow.

LabVIEW is targeted to hardware engineers, guys who understand wires, circuits, and not necessarily good programming practices.

Bottom line is that to program correctly in LabVIEW or LabWindow, there still needs to be discipline needs to be applied to both.

After NI Week

Wow, what an NI Week! It feels go to a seminar where I felt like it was worth it. It's in the past now, and I have a 6 inch stack of information to go through. I have a feeling about 5 1/2 inches were picked up just to get the swag at the booth or NI was giving out information on LabVIEW that I was thinking would work great in LabWindows.

I did have some fun...On Wednesday, I put on my LabWindows CVI shirt (thanks to Wendy Logan and the LabWindows Users Group) and then went around to LabVIEW displays and say "That's OK for LabVIEW but I bet LabWindows could do it better". OK...that's nerd fun. But then again, I'm a nerd.

I can't wait until they migrate multi-core operations from LabVIEW to LabWindows. Well, I'm off to listen to the band LeFreak...The worlds greatest Disco Band!

NI Week...another day at 'nerd'vana

I want to make sure it’s clear (in case it’s not clear from my blogs) I’m Joe Engineer, NI Product user and not an NI detractor or any loyalties to NI. I started my blog to express my opinion as an impartial NI user.

Keynote, again, was very good and showed off several of there future products. Something new is NI Labs, NI’s online products beta test site. They are putting their products ready for final beta test out there and letting the NI community at large do the final beta testing.

LabWindows CVI users group was good, we got to voice our opinion on LabWindows CVI and it’s operations. One thing that came out from a guy who did both LabVIEW and CVI development was LabVIEW seems to cause over confidence. People can put together a simple LabVIEW VI and they feel they’re a programmer. Then, after several small LabVIEW successes, they’re given a big project in LabVIEW and they do it poorly. While LabWindows programs are typically developed by programmers, with the understanding, knowledge, and discipline of a programmer.

Also, the VP of applications indicated there are not as many help calls about LabWindows, most likely because it’s done by programmers who can figure things out. Although it was said that if they want more help calls, they should write more bugs into it…like LabVIEW has done. Remember, it was a LabWindows CVI users group.

One guy I work with came last year and said it was boring after the first day. All I can say is he must not have been at NI Week.

NI Week - Tuesday

Quick Note: Last night I went to 6th street after the NI Festivities and the music was very good, even for a Monday night.

Today, the had very good coffee, fuel of the Geeks and Nerds, and breakfast burritos.

My take on NI Week:
Keynote speakers were very good. They generated excitement about NI's latest product releases as well as upgrades to their own standards, like LabVIEW. The VP of development was very personable. He kept things flowing very well with sever quick hit demo’s and kept it form getting boring with jokes and planned “impromptu” demonstrations and “show us more demo’s. It made me think about possibly doing development in LabVIEW...then I had some coffee and that passed.

I did get to talk to some LabVIEW developers about my reason's I don't like LabVIEW. I have mild Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and all the mouse work that it requires gives me pain in my arm. My doctor says either use the mouse less or get an operation. I don't want to be cut on so it's less mouse. I can use my left hand for the mouse but I don't have the dexterity to connect the wires to the right terminals.

I did suggest, apparently like many other they have some kind of magnify feature so that my left hand can connect the wires. I also suggested that, once a wire is connected, you could "tab" the wire connection to the correct place. That someone like me, could just connect a wire then "tab" it to the right place. They seemed very receptive, but then again, NI is very good at listening to their customer.

We have a Block party for later in the Expo hall...more free beer.

Have a great day!