


A basic license for a seat of LabVIEW starts at about $400 annually and goes up from there. The appeal of MyOpenLab is easy to understand. The resemblance between LabVIEW and MyOpenLab has led to questions on online forums about how the two programs really differ. LabVIEW can’t run on Arduino though it can run on a PC and tell an Arduino to perform certain operations.) (There is also a LabVIEW compiler available to run programs on the Raspberry Pi. In particular, MyOpenLab seems to be widely used to develop control programs that can run on Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards. The wires appear as continuous or dotted to denote different properties. And as in LabVIEW, the user runs wires between elements using the mouse. The resemblance of the graphic elements to those in the LabVIEW program are evident. (Another open-source program called Pylab-works has a similar look-and-feel but apparently has been abandoned.)Ī simple MyOpenLab circuit written to execute on an Arduino.

It’s following has grown thanks partly to a college professor in Spain who has posted tutorial videos and a number of short online courses that employ the program. It is now maintained by a programmer in Columbia. MyOpenLab seems to have been a home project for a programmer in Germany who first released it in 2006. Nevertheless, one open source program called MyOpenLab has some of the look and feel of LabVIEW. That may be because National Instruments has patented many of the concepts underlying LabVIEW. However, no open-source equivalents to LabVIEW have been developed. The concept of being able to construct relatively complicated test procedures without writing a traditional text-based program is alluring. They can include, for example, closed-loop feedback and function nodes for controlling devices such as cameras and voltmeters. The procedures written in LabVIEW can be quite sophisticated. LabVIEW is well-known for its graphical user interface which lets users program instrument functions by routing wires between blocks rather than by writing computer code. Since 1986, engineers working in test instrumentation have been able to use a program called LabVIEW developed by National Instruments Inc. Free programs that seem to behave like LabVIEW engineering software have become available.
