DISTek Supports AMC Engineering Conference

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The 30th Annual AMC Engineering Conference, which is celebrating 30 Years of Innovation, is fast approaching. The event will be hosted in Waterloo, Iowa at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center May 5th through 7th. Many will think back and remember this conference as the Ag Machinery Conference but for the second year now, the committee and vendors are staying committed to expanding the scope to include the entire off-highway industry. A tremendous amount of overlap exists between the technologies used in each of these industries, as well as the many suppliers that support them. If we truly want to advance technology, we need to learn from each other. The AMC Engineering Conference provides that opportunity.

ISOBUS Task Controller: Part 3

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VIRTEC display.

I discussed in Part 2 of the Task Controller (TC) series a type of TC that uses geo-referencing for data-logging. This form of TC has an AEF Functionality called TC-GEO, but there is another type of TC-GEO that is very enticing to farmers. Using prescription mapping and TC-GEO, a farmer can do variable-rate application to control the amount of fertilizer, herbicide, or other inputs by position in the field. Some of the obvious benefits of this approach include reduced input costs, but there are also environmental benefits.

Spring has Sprung

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photo: freeimages.com

Do not look now (or at least come back to finish reading this if you do), but something important started again this week for the new year. It is not something that was unexpected because it starts every year at about the same time. But it is always a little exciting to see it when it happens. I am not talking about my strawberry plants showing some green, my flowers blooming, or my trees budding – though those are all happening. No, instead I am talking about the USDA Crop Progress report starting again for the new crop season. The last one of 2014 was published on November 24th, 2014, so it has been a few cold months to get to this point.

DAQmx in Measurement Studio: Part 2

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Last month we discussed a little bit about what National Instruments DAQmx and Measurement Studio are and how they can be used to create .NET applications which leverage National Instruments data acquisition hardware. This month we are going to jump in to a high-level practical explanation on how to get started doing data acquisition in .NET.

ISOBUS Task Controller: Part 2

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VIRTEC display.

In the last Task Controller (TC) post, I gave a broad outline of how a TC session works in the general case. In this post, I will start describing some of the different types of TCs and Tasks. These can range from very simple to very complex.

The simplest form a TC can take actually has an associated AEF Functionality associated with it: TC-BAS, which stands for Task Controller – Basic. With this type of TC, only totals are logged for a particular task.

DAQmx and Measurement Studio: Part 1

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National Instruments provides a wide array of data acquisition hardware for use in many platforms, operating systems, and busses. The most common way provided to interface with the hardware is through the NI-DAQmx drivers. These DAQmx drivers can be used to interface with hundreds of different DAQ devices across several different application development platforms. In this three part blog series, we are going to explore specifically how to use National Instruments data acquisition hardware in .NET applications. Part one will introduce a little bit of background into DAQmx and Measurement Studio. Part two will explain how to get started in adding National Instruments hardware to your .NET project. Finally, part three will provide some examples for hybrid systems combining LabVIEW and .NET as a way to fully utilize National Instruments hardware while retaining the advantages of .NET.

Starting an Engineering Career

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Ag Engineering Students

After graduating in December of 2013 from Iowa State with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I set out on the quest for my first job. The search began shortly after graduation in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. I soon found that Silicon Valley has a very competitive job market with little room for the new guy. After 6 months of searching, I brought my search back to the Midwest and contacted Jeff Sandvold who I had talked with at the Iowa State career fairs. After a phone conversation and a very long skype interview with everyone at the Cedar Falls office, I found myself making the 2000 mile journey across the country to start my first job here at DISTek.

ISOBUS Task Controller: Part 1

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VIRTEC display.

A few months ago in this blog I gave a very broad overview of Task Controller (TC).  The Virtual Terminal is probably the best-known ISOBUS feature given its visual prominence, but TC is a popular topic to discuss in the ISOBUS world because it offers many intriguing possibilities … and seeks to fulfill many of the promises of precision agriculture across manufacturers.  I thought it would be useful to spell out some of the details of TC as it can be a quite confusing subject.  In this post, I will walk through the components and the steps of a typical TC session.

Seeing The Bits In The Bytes

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In a world of complex systems, it may be easy to forget some of the basic concepts that build these systems. Software applications can consist of hundreds of individual files as part of one very large project. Those files all work together to achieve amazing functionality within an embedded system. There are instances where a project may include files written by teams located in different countries. We like to think that when this software is put into production all the bugs have been discovered and the software will work perfectly. Unfortunately, there always seems to be unintended use or a sequence of events that result in undesired functionality. Other times, there is just a plain old bug that managed to find its way into production software.

Reflections on LabVIEW from a New Software Developer

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LabVIEWLogo

Until about a month ago, all of my experience writing code had been with text-based languages like C and Java. I had mostly written code to command microcontrollers or for signal processing. C allowed me a very procedural view of how the microcontroller would execute the code. One line of code could tell the microcontroller to turn on an LED and the next could tell it to turn the LED off, and the microcontroller would always execute the first line first and the second line second. Then I started at DISTek and learned how to code in LabVIEW. LabVIEW is quite the departure from text-based languages. I would like to describe how LabVIEW compares to text-based languages and some of my experiences learning LabVIEW as a new software developer.

STEM Education through Lego

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The Cedar Falls FLL Regional

The Cedar Falls Regional Qualifier for FIRST LEGO League (FLL) and the Cedar Falls Regional Expo for Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr. FLL) took place recently at Peet Junior High.  DISTek and its people are very active in supporting FIRST related teams.  There were at least three DISTekians who served as coaches or mentors for FLL teams and one DISTekian who was the coach for a Jr. FLL team.  DISTek was also a sponsor of multiple teams.

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