
Free full versions of LabView for lockdown
The move is intended to help engineers, makers and students use both LabView and the LabView NXG software at home, both during the lockdown and in the future. These are full versions running on Windows 10 with code generation and links to Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone and Arduino boards via LabView and the ability to build user interfaces via LabView NXG.
The LabView Community Edition and LabView NXG Community Edition do not use watermarks but require an account at NI.com which allows the company to highlight any commercial use. Linux and Mac versions of the Community Editions are in development.
“We are thrilled to encourage the power and potential of our LabVIEW community members who are involved in home and hobby projects,” said Jeff Kodosky, co-founder of NI and inventor of LabView. “We created the LabView Community editions so engineers could use the software for free — to pursue their personal ventures, experiment with programming ideas and create and share IP with their peers.”
The Community editions also replace LabView for Secondary Schools and provides an engaging way for students to learn more about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. NI previously gave schools a site license, and has now been replaced by the individual NI accounts. NI has clarified that this means that the account has to be held by an adult. The licenses for colleges and universities are unchanged.
The Community Edition also includes the NXG Web Module to help users with little to no web development skills create web applications. By using the software’s graphical programming language, they can create applications that run entirely in a web browser without the need for additional software. A six month trail of the SystemLink Cloud software is also provided for hosting and sharing web applications.
“LabView Community Edition and LabView NXG Community Edition put the software’s intuitive graphical language in front of a growing number of makers and engineers,” said Chris Cilino, founder and president of GCentral.org and consultant at Composed Systems. “I am excited to see how these editions will empower developers to unleash their initiative and ingenuity and collaborate in new ways.”
Over the past few months, users of the beta version of the Community Editions have demonstrated new ways to apply the software, including with a crowd-source controlled robot, a tablet user interface for a robotic arm and a digital twin of an actual device used for simulated testing.
NI first released LabView over 30 years ago to provide engineers working on applications requiring test, measurement and control with hardware integration and data insights.
You can sign up and download at ni.com/labviewcommunity
