LabVIEW events - Automation Developers Update 2006

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Automation Developers' Update 2006

Learning about the latest developments regarding industrial measurement and control systems; impression of the technology update organized by National Instruments Nederland BV (NI), at the PSV stadium in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, on June 20th 2006.

During 2 sessions two representatives of NI presented new concepts for automation projects to an audience of about 40 men.

During the Automation Developers' Update the term deterministic was used at least 10 times. This emphasizes NI's view on this phenomenon. A standard PC with a non-realtime OS (like MS-Windows) does not support this feature. Great applications can be built using LabVIEW. But on a PC they may lack the required precise timing. This of course is a plea for the realtime options that NI has to offer. But actually they do have a point.

The point is that you take care of data-acquisition with high enough resolution. A 16 bit A/D-convertor would show difference of 1/65535 of the full range. The time 'jitter' (as explained by William Baars, National Instruments Netherlands) comes with the OS. A small deviation of only 1 ms in a 1 s loop would give an error of 1/1000. This isn't really a problem if the measured signal is almost constant whereas it can become disastrous if the measured signal changes over time. If the latter is the case and you need determistic behaviour, then using a realtime OS is unavoidable.

Bart Boshuizen, 2006/06/20