DSP, linux and LabView

[Nareto]

Hello, I study mathematics and yesterday I started a physics' course on DSP. In the lab we're going to use LabView... and I heard rumors of the teacher using Arduinos, which would be great!l

Anyway, I wonder, what does LabView do? Does it have dedicated hardware or it's just a programming environment for interfacing through serial ports to things like DACs?

And then, as a linux user, I'd like to know what software there is of this kind for linux. Of course I'm not expecting a full-blown interface like the $4,500 LabView, but even small programs, if open-source, I'd enjoy learning about

I know LabView should also be avaiable for linux, but
1 - at that price I can forget it
2 - I read it's difficult to install it on any but the supported distros


thanks for any thoughts
renato

[Korman]

All will be answered here.

Korman

[Senso]

He doesnt want labView for linux, but a free alternative to it..
As far as I know, there is nothing like that, free or payment dependant.
The nearest  may be matlab/octave/R but labview as they say is a graphical programming tool.

[Korman]

Well, the National Instruments page pretty well answers the question what LabView does. Also, most institutions using LabView have Academic site licenses, where a Student Edition costs $20 or so. This is also quite well described on the National Instruments page. So all in all, having a look what National Instruments has to say about Labview isn't so unreasonable, is it?

Korman

[Nareto]

Well, the National Instruments page pretty well answers the question what LabView does. Also, most institutions using LabView have Academic site licenses, where a Student Edition costs $20 or so. This is also quite well described on the National Instruments page. So all in all, having a look what National Instruments has to say about Labview isn't so unreasonable, is it?

Of course it's not   I just hoped for someone who has used the program tell me his thoughts, his experience, whatever. Of course I googled it but I wanted someone of the "Arduino people", whom I have a common knowledge  base with.

Also, it's not only about the cost, it's about using propietary software. I really hate to have to and avoid it every time I can.

From what I've understood so far the only "good" thing about LabView is it's graphical, it has a great interface and lots of toolkits that make life easier - especially for someone who's not interested in coding, but in interfacing easily with hardware. But, apart from this user-friendliness, all could be done in puredata or supercollider (which have allready some built-in code for comunicating with external devices) or straight C.

Am I more or less correct?

[Grumpy_Mike]

Well I think you are doing down LabView. If you want a low cost LabView then get the Lego mindstorms NXT that is a modified version of it.

There are all sorts of drivers other than serial built into the language and lots of other drivers available.

all could be done in puredata or supercollider

You can do most things in most languages, the trick is finding a language that suites you. So don't do down user friendliness.