Despite the event’s late start after work, the interest in the event was high: Around 15 members of the LabVIEW User Group Stuttgart accepted the invitation to exchange information, tips, and experience on programming techniques and professional application development with LabVIEW, the system development software for example for test applications. There were some familiar faces, but also a few new participants joined in. An employee from National Instruments was also present. In the future, NI would like to participate more strongly in these meetings and bring along topics and presentations that will help LabVIEW professional users in their daily work and demonstrate the planned continuous developments of LabVIEW.

The evening was led by Peter Deckelmann, technical sales representative at Berghof Testing. He himself was the first LabVIEW programmer in our company to work with the software 25 years ago and has been a member of LVUG for many years. He first introduced the company Berghof with its various business units. He then discussed various testing systems from the business unit Testing, such as our Door Panel Tester, the Force Application Machine (FAM) for calibrating seat occupancy mats in the vehicle seat and the measuring tower for power tools, such as power saws.

During the subsequent tour of our workshop, the visitors had the opportunity to examine our FAM in detail before the group moved on to the main topic of the rest of the evening: our dynamic endurance test bench for brushless DC motors (or BLDC motors). These include PXI components from National Instruments. No wonder LabVIEW users showed great interest in this test bench.

In the lecture about the plant – after a short coffee break in Berghof red dusk – Peter Deckelmann once again talked about its advantages: Each drive, for example, is freely programmable and the data acquisition takes place with a high number of channels. This was followed by a brief digression of our Powertrain Injector Application (PIA) test module based on NI’s cRIO system. PIA checks whether the injectors in the combustion engine are controlled so that they run optimally and consume as few resources as possible.

Finally, examples of debugging in subpanels with VI were discussed, which was already a topic in previous LVUG meetings.

From our point of view, the 12th meeting of the LabVIEW User Group was a complete success. There were lively discussions and, even after the end of the event, the participants met in small groups to get to know each other better and to exchange information about their specialist areas. Despite all the seriousness, there were also topics on this evening that the participants could laugh about together – for example about the “Flower Power” colors of the brightly colored buttons in the software of the 90s.

On the whole, the event is a great opportunity to exchange experiences, clarify open questions and provide mutual support. Each participant contributes his or her specific expertise and each time has the opportunity to get to know a new company that also uses LabVIEW.

The 13th meeting of the LabVIEW User Group Stuttgart is expected to take place in April/May at Stoll AG in Reutlingen.

The meetings of the LabVIEW User Group Stuttgart have been taking place regularly for six years now. A different company always hosts. The program is closely aligned to the participants’ requirements and is interesting for beginners as well as for advanced programmers. The company ProNES from Landau organizes the meetings.

Would you like to become part of the group and perhaps even make an active contribution to the event yourself? Participation is free of charge for you. Information is available in the community of the LabVIEW User Group Stuttgart or directly from the organizer ProNES.