NI Week 2014 Day 3

Get ready for NI Week 2014 in Austin Tx

More new hardware was introduced including a small Real-Time/FPGA target called the NI System on Module. () The NI System on Module (SOM) combines the Xilinx Zynq FPGA, common components like memory, and a complete middleware solution, delivering a complete embedded platform that minimizes design time and risk for any embedded control or monitoring application. The NI SOM also ships with NI Linux Real-Time, which combines the performance of a real-time operating system with the openness of Linux. Along with a vast community, Linux allows the freedom to choose how you program the processor, using either LabVIEW system design software or C/C++ with Eclipse.

NIWeek 2014 Day 2

Get ready for NI Week 2014 in Austin Tx

The technical sessions seemed to highlight the NI Systems Engineering Group this year. The NI systems Engineering group is responsible for creating frameworks, reference designs and add-on LabVIEW toolkits. These packages are originally created for use within NI but are made available to outside developers as well.

ISOBUS Plugfest 2014 – What we saw

ISOBUS Schematic

The 2014 Spring Plugfest in Lincoln just wrapped up last week. I did not see the final numbers, but would guess there were 180-210 total attendees and participants. The Plugfest had 16 VT stations and 13 TC stations, plus each participant went to the AEF Database station and the AEF Conformance Test station. A total of 34 different implement ECUs were being tested: 24 were testing a TC client while the others were only testing the VT client. DISTek had 2 of these ECUs for testing our VIRTEC VT-Client and TC-Client sample applications. The Plugfest also had 4 FMIS systems available and a few TECUs. In addition to these ISOBUS components formally listed at Plugfest, we also saw at least 3 File Servers active on CAN buses and a variety of Aux Inputs located at many stations.

Attending EE Live! In San Jose, California

The EE Live! Conference is on

Upon arrival in San Jose I headed down to baggage claim to retrieve my suitcase that I was forced to check due to just being on a completely full plane. I then headed outside and was struck with what felt like a heat wave after being in the Midwest for one of our coldest winters. Granted it was only around 60°F, but when I left North Dakota it was around 35°F.

Attending EE Live! in San Jose allowed me to attend numerous sessions and learn about many different technologies and ideas…

Day one of the 2014 EELive! Conference

The EE Live! Conference is on

EELive!, formerly known as DESIGN West, is an annual week-long engineering industry event which includes the embedded systems conference, training sessions, boot camps, postmortems, and a large expo featuring exhibits from vendors across the industry.

CONEXPO – CONAGG 2014

What is it like to come to the CONEXPO show for the first time? Well, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the show and the distractions of Las Vegas. It is manageable by taking some time to put together a plan and to build a set of priorities for what you want to see.

The Caterpillar Display at CONEXPO.  Photo: Gary Honey