Web LabVIEW UI Builder - NIWeek 2009 Keynote

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See how National Instruments is utilizing the power of web services to allow LabVIEW to allow customers to customize their user interface and monitor and update the data through the web.

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Closed Caption:

ok so any discussion of distributed
applications inevitably leads to the web
and talking about the internet and as
most of you know over the years we've
continually added new capabilities to
labview so that you could take advantage
of the internet in your applications now
you also know that the internet is
always changing and always evolving and
so there's always this chase of the lab
urd team always trying to keep up with
the latest technologies to make sure
that we're giving you the ability to use
it in your applications so now we'd like
to show you the latest development that
we've been doing with web technology in
the lab you team and here to do this
idea mukerji and Malcolm Smith
yeah
oh do tell us what the lab BTW has been
doing with new web technologies sure
Mike so love you 86 introduced the
ability to publish restful web services
providing a way to pass data to and from
a VI over the web using just a URL our
customers use flash or java script to
create applications that run in a
browser and communicate with the
hardware using these web services
ok so so are our lab your customers
today if they want to write a web
application to have to use something
like flash or java script they can't
write this application with labview well
they couldn't until now but that's what
we've been working on a way to create
thin clients that run on the web and
interface with web services created
using LabVIEW 2009
wow that sounds great so can you give us
an example would somebody want to clap
and you see the demo yet so wanted to
give us an example of the type of
application that we want our customers
to be able to create with labview sure
Mike send screen engineering is becoming
increasingly important and popular we
settled on wind energy for our demo
today so let's begin by describing the
hardware setup we have here on stage so
we have part of the wind turbines
connected to an ni compact Rio device
the serio is reading vibration and
velocity data from the turban and
writing this to a web service that was
created using LabVIEW 2009 and that's
been pre deployed to the serio since
you're a little bit short on went on
stage we also have the serio turning the
turban finally we have a touch panel
application here that will control the
speed of the turban to remotely monitor
an application like this one
wind energy farm out somewhere in west
texas perhaps our current solution would
be remote panels
however this involves installing the
runtime engine which is somewhat bulky
and not truly a thin client solution
however with the new web capabilities
that we've been working on our customers
can create the panel they want and then
access it from any browser with 0
download or install so let's go ahead
and bring up the thin client we created
for today's demo so all i need to do is
open a new browser window and then
navigate to the application that is
being served up by the serio itself then
in a matter of seconds it is up and
running without any installation
necessary so taking a closer look at our
panel
here you can see we have the vibration
data as well as turban velocity and this
is read using web services the wind
wheels spinning in the background or
images that we've applied a rotation
animation to and we also configure the
rotation speed to match that of the
turban velocity my could you speed up
the turban using the touch panel police
so you want to supply some wind a little
bit ok alright so in a couple of seconds
you'll notice that the windmill start to
spin faster the speed gauge begins to
enter the red zone and there are spikes
on the graph caused by the increased
urban speed we also have a custom status
indicator here that is turned on to
indicate the blade and balance my could
you go ahead go ahead and slide back
down now
sure that's a pretty nice looking at web
application you're saying you've
developed this with new technologies and
tools that we're developing in labview
that's right Mike and just to prove it
we're going to start from scratch here
and create a subset of this application
we just saw it right here on stage so we
just need to install the editor
o Allah did you say you're going to
install the editor during the keynote
well let's see hopefully this won't take
too long
Malcolm can you bring up the editor wow
you just installed software on your
computer
that's right so the editors installed in
the browser and is ready to go with 0
download like you just saw there's a
ribbon that offers a convenient way to
access the most common tasks in the
editor so let's go ahead and create a
new VI here's a palliative front panel
controls and for this demo the first
control we're going to need is a gauge
to display the velocity of the wind
turban now we do need to change the
scale of this gauge which is easily done
by selecting the control and changing
its properties right there in the ribbon
the next control we're going to need is
a power switch so we can turn off the
turban when our demos done so now that
our front panel is all set up the way we
were on sorry before you before you go
on the that panel is not nearly as
pretty as to what Malcolm was just
showing you have some other controls
that we can replace these with so we can
make it look nice prove to people that
was actually laughing panel
well actually Mike we're taking
advantage of web programming technology
to introduce theming for pan
else so you don't have to replace all
the controls in your panel you can just
switch the theme using the drop-down in
the ribbon this makes all your controls
get reskinned automatically and you can
switch between them can you get the look
you want for your control
very nice that looks that looks much
better so can i how do we communicate to
our system
ok so to communicate with the hardware
the first thing we need to do is add a
new web service reference and over here
we just enter the address of the serial
device on stage because that's where
this service is being hosted right now
this gives but us back a list of all the
web services available on serio and we
picked the one we want for this demo as
soon as Malcolm hits update you'll see
that the project tree gets automatically
updated with the reference to our web
service so now let's go back to RBI and
go over to the block diagram this web
service function can conveniently be
dropped as a sub di on to our diagram
and now the next thing we're going to
need from our palate is a while loop to
enclose all these nodes and now all
that's left is the wiring
ok so let me let me ask the question
well he's wiring yourself so obviously
you're running this in a web browser but
aside from that this is a block diagram
or front panel like people have been
used to doing with labview four years is
it basically have you running in a
browser
well Mike it doesn't have the full
functionality of labview but is instead
focused on creating these thin client
applications that run in a browser like
the one we saw earlier and can be used
to remotely monitor control applications
so it looks like Malcolm's all done with
the wiring here so let's give it around
and the gate starts to update some I
could you speed it up again earth
well there we go live think we have
Africa yep and settle finally we should
probably use the kill switch to turn it
off so you can hear the rest the keynote
ok ok so not only then are we enabling
our customers to write thin clients
using LabVIEW we're actually doing it
with a editor that runs in the browser
and is 0 download editors all right
that's exactly right
well that's really going to increase the
web capabilities of labview for our
customers thanks guys