As you may know, I work at National Instruments, the awesome, Austin-based company that makes the graphical programming language LabVIEW. I saw this today and started daydreaming about the future of graphical programming on a smart phone.
While there isn’t technically a “Gphone” yet, the SDK for the Google Android is now live. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Director of Engineering Steve Horowitz introduce the platform and some sample applications. As the pair explain, Android supports touchscreen, offers a Webkit-based browser, and includes support for accelerated 3D graphics. You can also see the integration of other Google services, such as Google Maps.
In conjunction with the launch, Google has also announced $10 million in prize money through the Android Developer Challenge for the best applications. The company will be awarding fifty $25,000 prizes and an additional ten $275,000 and $100,000 awards. Fast forward to the last few moments of the video to hear Brin’s explanation of the contest. Maybe we should find a cool way to do LabVIEW on the new platform?!?
Additionally, it’s interesting that Google is making the SDK totally open to the public and encouraging (er, incentivizing) people to develop third-party apps for their phone vs. Apple, which has had a lot of problem keeping their development community happy with the iPhone. Click here for background information on the SDK for the iPhone.
I could care less about LabVIEW on GPhone, What about the Iphone & Ipod Touch. Wake Up NI.
As an iPhone addict, I agree. Have you seen this video of LabVIEW Web Services using an iPhone (http://www.ni.com/niweek/2008/keynote/labview_86_web_services.htm)? It was demoed at NIWeek in August.
Also, here is a great blog post from Hall Martin titled “Google Phone – A Better Fit for Virtual Instrumentation than the iPhone?” (http://emertech.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-phone-better-fit-for-virtual.html) you might want to also read.
Well, I just received my new Motorola Droid phone with
Android 2.0. This is a cool phone and easy to use.
We build chemical control systems for major electronic manufacturers.
National Instruments Labview is used for for the HMI interface to log data for our systems. Wonderware Intouch
is also used.
The Andoroid system along with a developers kit from NI
would be a great match.
An embedded system with WI-fi, larger touch screen and
memory, plus some generic IO like regular CAN, RS232/RS485, USB SPI, I2C and Ethernet, plus SD card
sockets would be a real inexpenisive HMI.
Just think of all the Java code out there that can be used
for HMI function and using a kit from Labview would be
a great way to make low cost systems, with no expenisve
license fees. (ie intouch).
Does any one know of an embedded platform that supports
all of the above ready to purchase now.??
Hey, Patric. We don’t have any existing code or an existing product, but I talked to some folks on the embedded team and they would like to work with you to try some things out. Please email Shelley.Gretlein@ni.com to discuss.