A couple weeks ago (24 Feb 2010), I gave a presentation to the Bay Area LabVIEW User Group on recursion techniques in LabVIEW.
Title: Recursion in LabVIEW
Abstract: Many software engineering challenges can be solved efficiently using recursion. Learn about several ways to implement both recursive algorithms and recursive data structures in LabVIEW and learn how to leverage the full power of multicore CPUs with parallelly recursive algorithm design.
Do you have comments or questions about this presentation, or do you have a topic you’d like to see JKI do a presentation on? Post your ideas in the comments!
There is a known issue using VIPM 3.0 that prevents VIPM from managing VI Packages installed in LabVIEW 2010 beta. We’ve identified the cause and will have a new version of VIPM (3.0.1) out soon that fixes the issue. If you need this fix immediately and/or would like to help test the release candidate, please contact us.
This past week’s Ice Hockey semifinals and finals were some of the most anticipated sporting events of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, and JKI scored big. Nations represented by JKI engineers swept the medals in both the Men’s AND Women’s events!
GOLD
Canada
(Michael)
SILVER
United States of America
(Jim, Justin, Omar)
BRONZE
Finland (Tomi)
At JKI we’re proud to have a diverse staff of talented professionals from around the globe. That makes international events like the Olympics particularly exciting, but it’s not often that our home countries make so many of us proud.
A weird thing happened a few days ago. The JKI State Machine went viral.
If you follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friend, you would’ve known right away about the LabVIEW-, LEGO Mindstorms-, and Twitter-powered popcorn-popping contraption a friend and I built recently. We built it to enter a contest, where the object was to make a video showing the “most inventive way to pop this all-American snack.”
Our first idea was a winner: Crowd-sourced Popcorn.
Since we uploaded it last week, the video has gone viral. It was picked up first by Engadget, but things got really big when it hit Mashable. Even now, there’s a steady stream of #popcorn tweets on Twitter, as people send the link around and around to their friends. Most importantly, we won the contest.
What does this have to do with JKI?
If you watch the video, you can clearly see that the famous JKI State Machine plays a starring role. I got to thinking, though, that the JKI State Machine is by no means the only important piece of the puzzle. I used a whole bunch of JKI products!
I used the JKI State Machine as a template for the whole application.
We didn’t spend a lot of time designing and building the Popcorn Tweets system. After all, I have a real job at JKI. But luckily, I live in a world where NI makes great products like LabVIEW, and where NI partners like JKI can extend the platform and provide great tools to help people turn any idea into reality!
JKI is very pleased to announce the addition of Tomi Maila to our team of LabVIEW and system integration experts. Tomi comes to JKI with a deep theoretical background in computer and biomedical sciences, practical expertise in a broad array of programming languages including LabVIEW, C++, SQL & modern web languages, and business experience as founder of Agile 4 Ltd, a software consulting start-up in Helsinki, Finland.
Tomi is also a well-known figure in the LabVIEW developer community. His ExpressionFlow blog covers some of the most advanced software engineering topics of any LabVIEW blog, and his work in the field of object-oriented programming in LabVIEW is highly regarded. He’s also a principal developer of the OpenG Class Templates for LabVIEW Object-Oriented Programming. This continuing support for the LabVIEW community has garnered him the title of National Instruments LabVIEW Champion. All of these things make him a great addition to the JKI family, and we’re excited to have him.
The JKI Team: (from left) Jim, Michael, Philippe, Omar, and Justin
To all our friends in the LabVIEW Ecosystem,
Thank you very much for being part of an exciting and eventful 2009 for JKI. We wish you all a terrific holiday season, and great success in the coming year!
JKI is very excited to announce the availability of VI Package Manager 3.0 with Enterprise Package Sharing. This release allows you to take share your reusable VIs over the network with your team, via a centralized VI Package Repository.
VI Package Manager™ allows you to get your reusable LabVIEW VIs into the palettes, organized the way you want, in just minutes. It has powerful, easy-to-use features that make sure you’re always in control of your reusable VIs, without the worry of missing subVIs in your LabVIEW projects. And, it allows you to share your reusable VIs with your entire team, over the network.
Want to hear what others are saying about VI Package Manager? See our Customer Quotes.
VIPM Community
Install VI Packages
Download free OpenG VIs
Keyword search for VIs
VIPM Professional - In addition to all the features available in VIPM Community, VIPM Professional offers the following additional features:
Create VI Packages
Configuration Management of Projects
Source Code Control Integration
VIPM Enterprise – In addition to all the features available in VIPM Professional, VIPM Enterprise offers the following additional features:
Network Package Sharing
Team-based code reuse
User Management
You can learn more about VIPM 3.0, as well as download it on the Web at: jkisoft.com/vipm
We’re very proud of this release and hope you find that it’s full of great new features that help you in your LabVIEW projects. Thank you for all your feedback and support.
JKI is pleased to announce the recent release of the JKI Right-Click Framework, from the JKI Labs, which allows you to install new features into LabVIEW right-click menu. And, we’re excited to show you some of the new LabVIEW features (right-click plugins) that the community has already created.
Community Contributed RCF Plugins
Build Array of References – builds an array control references on the block diagram for the selected FP controls or BD control terminals.
Case Selector – allows you to view a list of frames in a Case Structure and select one outside of the native interface. Also, reorder/copy/insert/delete frames easier than ever.
Explore… – Windows Explorer Plugin – Opens a explorer window with the VI or CTL selected.
Insert Typecast – automatically inserts a typecast on selected wires if needed.
Size Window to Contents – resizes the contents of the selected window to enclose its contents.
Hands-on Demo of the RCF at NIWeek 2009
If you’re coming to NIWeek 2009, make sure you check out JKI’s NIWeek 2009 Schedule and stop by the JKI Booth (#335) for a hands-on demo of the RCF and other JKI Software technology in action. See you there!
Download and More Info
For more information about the JKI RCF including download, getting started, a how-to articles, please visit the JKI RCF Homepage.
JKI is pleased to announce the 2.0.1 release of the JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW. This is a maintenance release with minor fixes. Please see the release notes for more details.
You don’t have to look very hard to find JKI Engineers raving about how TortoiseSVN (TSVN) is our software version control system of choice. It’s a critical part of our workflow, and we couldn’t imagine living without it. However, using TSVN requires leaving LabVIEW and going to the Windows Explorer for every operation. We like to do our work inside LabVIEW.
The JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW adds a new TortoiseSVN submenu to the Tools menu in LabVIEW. To invoke a given TortoiseSVN operation on the current VI, just select the command you want from the menu.
“But,” you may be saying to yourself, “it’s already easy to use TortoiseSVN from the Windows Explorer! Why do I need to integrate it with LabVIEW?” That’s a good question. The JKI TSVN Tool solves a few significant problems that you may be so used to working around, you don’t notice them anymore!
No more searching for a VI’s location on disk. To use TSVN in the Windows Explorer, you have to know where a given VI in LabVIEW’s memory lives on disk. This requires you to stop thinking about your code, switch to Windows Explorer, find the window your VI lives in (or worse, open a new window & navigate to the right folder), and locate your VI. With the JKI TSVN Tool, all you have to do is go to the Tools menu in the VI window you’ve already got open, select Commit… and then get back to work.
No more manually syncing VIs after TSVN modifies them. Some TSVN operations can affect VIs that LabVIEW already has in memory. For example, if you perform an SVN Update or Revert on a file on disk, you have to remember to also revert the file in LabVIEW. At the very least, this is an annoying distraction. But it can be downright painful if you forget to do it and discover an SVN Conflict (or worse, a corrupted VI) when you commit your code later! The JKI TSVN Tool takes care of this for you. When you do an SVN operation on a VI from the TSVN Tool menu, it automatically makes sure that your VI in memory is synchronized to the VI file on disk.
It’s just easier. Mental context-switching is a productivity killer. The JKI TSVN Tool for LabVIEW eliminates a lot of mini-context switches and helps you stay focused on solving the problems at hand.
There are other benefits to using the JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW, as well. For example, if you want to see a VI’s SVN Log, simply go to Tools–>TortoiseSVN–>Show Log … This will allow you to see the commit history of your VI, in just a couple clicks, whenever you need it. We’ve identified the SVN functions we use most often, and made them accessible from within your LabVIEW environment.
You can try the JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW for free. So feel free to try it out and improve your LabVIEW and TortoiseSVN workflows today!
