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.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsE6tkWCzM

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.
• I used JKI’s VI Package Manager to install the required OpenG libraries and EasyXML.
• I used JKI’s EasyXML to parse the results returned from the Twitter Search API.
• I used the JKI TortoiseSVN Tool for LabVIEW to easily sync the code to my Subversion server.

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!

Want More Technical Info?

I’ve posted a technical overview of the system on NI’s LabVIEW DIY Crew group.  Check it out!

The engineers at Endevo have put together a great video that shows how to use their UML Modeller with the JKI State Machine:

Click here to watch it.

And don’t forget, the JKI State Machine is a free tool from JKI Software.  You can always learn more about it at jkisoft.com, or install it in just a few clicks using VI Package Manager™.

Stefan wrote:

“I just wanted to say that your state machine is incredible.  I am a beginner-to-midlevel Labview user, and I had wanted to implement state machines for a long time, but had no idea how to go about it without using C. I found your state machine last week, and using it I reduced the development time of an automated test rig from about a month down to one day. I was going to suggest putting up some more examples and tutorials, but I found the one tutorial was all I needed to figure out what was going on. Keep up the good work.”

It’s awesome to hear that the JKI State Machine reduced a month’s worth of work down to one day.  And, I’ll bet that Stefan’s code will be easier to maintain in the long run, too, which will save even more time.

Stories like this are why we love to work hard creating great tools for LabVIEW.  So, if you’ve tried the JKI State Machine and it’s made a difference in your LabVIEW work, please send us your feedback.