National Instruments has introduced LabVIEW drivers for wireless sensor networks, allowing engineers and scientists to fully integrate ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4 or proprietary wireless sensors into the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical development environment. The free driver software works with sensors from three wireless-sensing leaders (Accsense, Accutech and Crossbow Technology) and includes communication functions and example programs compatible with sensors from each vendor.
Wireless sensor vendors typically offer fixed-functionality application software for wireless sensor network configuration, communication and monitoring. Now with NI LabVIEW, developers using wireless sensors have an open and flexible development environment to easily customise an application or integrate data from the wireless network with other data acquisition, analysis or reporting functionality. LabVIEW also includes more than 600 graphical and text-based math and analysis functions that developers can use to process data acquired from wireless sensor networks.
The drivers save developers’ the time and resources of writing custom interfaces. Additionally, the software includes a fully documented template to quickly build a LabVIEW interface for wireless sensors not natively supported by the driver software.
Engineers and physicists now have an open and flexible alternative to software solutions for new wireless-enabled applications.
