:: ... $55arduino replaces ... $18k labview

[3roomlab]

so i was bored, randomly reading things off internet ... and then i read this

http://pheloniusfriar.dreamwidth.org/45390.html

we would all expect expensive high tech stuff to be well supported ... but then again LOLz happened

[electr_peter]

One guy who is not happy about  $18,000 National Instruments 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Labview DAQ system



It is a clear example of "In some situation it does not matter what it is called or how much it costs as long as it works."

[SL4P]

I used to work for a large minicomputer manufacturer, and while technology marches on, and implementing more powerful hardware is not a problem because of price
--- I'm amazed at what a lot of people don't know is possible with an 8/16-bit PIC or Arduino platform.

If you flip back 30 years - there were multi-user 'mini-frame' systems with 20 or 30 concurrent users, disk, printing, and other activities - running on a processor/memory that was comparable to a high-end ATMEGA or PIC16 chipset.

Maybe it's something they put in the coffee at university CS/SE cafeterias?

[Seekonk]

I remember when people were trying to convince me to use a Data General DOS 1.05 instead of a 486 PC, that sounds so quaint now

[3roomlab]

i wonder if NI came around to fix their embarassment ...

[SL4P]

NI gear is well made and respected (or it used to be), but has always been cantankerous and fragile to setup and keep running.
Really intended for set & forget applications. If you breathe on it, something will fall over!

[max_torque]

So it seems that if you just need to do a simple task, then a simple solution is, er, simpler.....  wow who'd of thought it eh!  ;-)


(ie, both an $10 arduino and a $100M super computer can flash an LED, if that's all you want to do. But if you want to say decrypt 1000 parallel streams of 128b SSL encoding in near real time, then the arduino isn't going to perform quite so well)

[tszaboo]

One guy who is not happy about  $18,000 National Instruments 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Labview DAQ system

It is a clear example of "In some situation it does not matter what it is called or how much it costs as long as it works."

I think that picture summarizes what I think about NI.

[Sigmoid]

$55?! Someone got robbed, apparently.

[3roomlab]

One guy who is not happy about  $18,000 National Instruments 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Labview DAQ system

It is a clear example of "In some situation it does not matter what it is called or how much it costs as long as it works."

I think that picture summarizes what I think about NI.

geez ... they are that bad huh? or the bosses skimped and didnt hire enough support engineers ... i would think its the guy up there inside

i have a friend who happen to visit google some years back, he said the work environment is ... like wow.

[mtdoc]

Sounds like a bit like just using the right tool for the job.

From the other side: 

In the early 1990's I was in charge of running an undergraduate neurobiology lab course at UC Berkeley.  We had one lab exercise that involved doing EEGs and measuring evoked potentials. They had been using the same dedicated EEG set up for 25+years. The equipment was far outdated and there was only one set up to share between all the students. I was tasked with finding a modern replacement.

I contacted several companies making EEG equipment - all with complete solutions, costing about $30K for one set up. These were designed for medical use. There was nothing designed for a teaching lab that had the sophistication to measure the kind of evoked potentials we wanted.

So - I did some research and found out that NI data Acquisition boards could be installed in the new Mac computers we were just then about to purchase for student use.  For about $2K for LabVIew and $500 each for the DAQ boards we could potentially have numerous setups to do what we needed.

I spent the next 6 months learning LabView and developing the application for the lab. It was a great success. We saved $25K and now had 5 setups instead of one and with a student friendly computer interface.

Furthermore I went on to use DAQ boards with more computers on carts and Labview to develop other "virtual intstruments" to replace some outdated traditional hardware for other lab courses.

Clearly NI products and LabView are not the right tool for every job but for some jobs it is and can actually result in a large savings spent on lab equipment.

[3roomlab]

maybe the part which they implemented required very specific tolerances (smashing atoms!) ... and the NI engineer assign have no clue ... nanovolts?

what kind of measurement ranges did you involve? mtdoc?

[mtdoc]

what kind of measurement ranges did you involve? mtdoc?

Well, it was microvolts to millivolt range amplitude,with up to kHz frequencies -so nothing super high speed. We did need minimum 12 bit amplitude resolution as I recall.

We did Auditory Brainstem Response and other types of sensory evoked potentials such as visual and somatosensory.

We also did p300 evoked potentials

None of these required super hi speed DAQ but they did require custom software to coordinate the stimulus with the acquisition, average out noise over several thousand samples, etc.  This was being run with the PC hardware of the era (i.e. donkey slow compared to todays hardware).

[CatalinaWOW]

Seems like someone missed the boat in not being fully Labview conversant before going to a limited time expensive one shot test opportunity.  It is nice that the Arduino interface was able to save the day, and if he had to learn Arduino on the spot it is a nice plug for the Arduino interface, but not something I would want to bet my coveted time window on.

[electr_peter]

This story is an obvious case of the right tool for the job.
Sometimes you use a tool and find you have exhausted it in one or another way, specs simply are slightly lower than what you need. Other times tool are just too expensive/hard to use/time consuming/overcomplicated/too heavy/etc. but it could do the job.

Original story has more details. Equipment used in a experiment was an absolute mess - clever engineers just try to do what they can to accomplish the required goals. NI instrument in question was used for one of weird integration functions and failed in that situation. It was mentioned that experiment setup was tried first time and will be improved and more integrated in future.

NI instrument was an overkill in this story and it failed to do some designated function which was replaced with overpriced ($55) Arduino board. Scientist/engineer was flipping a bird at NI because of very demanding schedule on the site.

[Dave Turner]

Now that's a Macgyver

[Harrkev]

$55?! Someone got robbed, apparently.

If you RTFA, that included an Ethernet shield.  So, no, not really.