September 4, 2011

NI LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms

I purchased LabVIEW- Education Edition half a year ago, but was unable to get it working property due to a few glitches, which I determined were partly my fault, partly my computer's fault, and partly the program's fault. Last week, to my surprised, I received an improved copy titled LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms. Inclosed was a note from LEGO Education calling me a "valued customer" and saying I get this new program free for having purchased the education edition a while back. I was thrilled, and immediately installed it. The installation was smooth and easy compared to the struggle I had with the education edition, and before I knew it I was updating the firmware on my NXT brick, watching extremely helpful videos for beginners, and completing my first challenge (all provided free with the program). So far it has been extremely fun. Would you like a review? Ok...

Would you recommend LabVIEW to a friend?
Very likely

Difficulty?
Any high school student (ages 14-18), should be able to successfully use it after some practice. Watching the informative videos and/or having a teacher with LabVIEW experience would be very helpful. It is a great step-up for teens who want to do something more complex with their NXT.

Do you think it is a good program for teachers to use with their students?
Yes, but the teacher should already have experience with the LabVIEW programming language. If you are a teacher and you are trying to decide whether or not to buy it, I suggest watching this video, this video, and checking this out.

How often do you think you will use LabVIEW in the future?
At least once a week. All of my NXT projects will use LabVIEW except those I am entering in NXTLOG contests (NXTLOG contests require you use NXT-G, the basic programming language that comes with the Mindstorms NXT).

What is you favorite feature so far?
I find it very helpful that they included trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, tangent, arctangent, Atan2), although I am yet to use them.

What feature have you used the most?
Well, so far it is the help button. :D I am only two days into the program though.

Is it worth the price?
That depends... I hear that professional programming languages are in the thousands, and this one is cheap compared. There are tons of features, and the possibilities are seemingly unlimited. For me it was worth it.

Any other questions? Ask me by clicking the comment button below this post. I will attempt to answer them, although I have only started to use the program so I'm not an expert. :-) And again, here is a link to the product.

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