LabVIEW carrer with LabVIEW FPGA

[govindsankar]

Hi,

I am a LabVIEW developer with 5 years of experience and I know advanced programming structures like QMH, OOP etc. But the 5 years of my experience is basically sitting in a lab programming a bunch of instruments, automating them and communicating with them over different protocols like ethernet, rs232, modbus etc and thats it. But I want to work in a environment where I develop something. What should I do for that? Should I learn something like LabVIEW FPGA or something like that. Some people give me the advice that I should change from LabVIEW and I dont want to do that. Currently I am hoping that I study LabVIEW FPGA and be able to develop robots or something like that. Can anyone guide me on what should I do to change my career without changing LabVIEW. Thank you. 

[billko]

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@govindsankar wrote:

Hi,

I am a LabVIEW developer with 5 years of experience and I know advanced programming structures like QMH, OOP etc. But the 5 years of my experience is basically sitting in a lab programming a bunch of instruments, automating them and communicating with them over different protocols like ethernet, rs232, modbus etc and thats it. But I want to work in a environment where I develop something. What should I do for that? Should I learn something like LabVIEW FPGA or something like that. Some people give me the advice that I should change from LabVIEW and I dont want to do that. Currently I am hoping that I study LabVIEW FPGA and be able to develop robots or something like that. Can anyone guide me on what should I do to change my career without changing LabVIEW. Thank you. 

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"But the 5 years of my experience..." This is what the majority of us do for most or even all of our careers.  Don't put yourself down for that.  LabVIEW FPGA is certainly something to think about, but if you have a solid LabVIEW background, that's 3/4 of the battle.

The whole idea behind LabVIEW was to make what the vast majority of us are doing easier.  And so it has a relatively narrow application.  (This was probably NI's fault as they never advertised it as anything else but an easy way to program your their instruments.)

[santo_13]

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@govindsankar wrote:

Hi,

I am a LabVIEW developer with 5 years of experience and I know advanced programming structures like QMH, OOP etc. But the 5 years of my experience is basically sitting in a lab programming a bunch of instruments, automating them and communicating with them over different protocols like ethernet, rs232, modbus etc and thats it. But I want to work in a environment where I develop something. What should I do for that? Should I learn something like LabVIEW FPGA or something like that. Some people give me the advice that I should change from LabVIEW and I dont want to do that. Currently I am hoping that I study LabVIEW FPGA and be able to develop robots or something like that. Can anyone guide me on what should I do to change my career without changing LabVIEW. Thank you. 

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Based on your 5 years experience, do you have a preference on where you want to focus more? like are you inclined to hardware, where you design and develop electronic circuits? or inclined to software development and develop pure software like web development? or a mix of hardware controlled by software - even in this at a high level or low level?

[govindsankar]

I am interested in mix but I am not ready for hardware development . So for now I am just ready for software development. I am interested in developing software applications for embedded devices or mainly robotics or something like that. That’s why I said I would like to study LabVIEW FPGA. I want to know is that a good solution. 

[govindsankar]

You said that is what most of us do our whole life. But how do I go up in my career if decide to stay here itself. Do I do bigger projects. What is next for me. Or is there something else that I can learn to go up in my current career. Thank you 

[Intaris]

I think, while LabVIEW FPGA is amazing and my favourite part of LabVIEW,  there's maybe a less strong link between FPGA and robotics that you seem to think.

Robotics, at least according to what I've seen, is more Real-Time control and not FPGA. Of course these things are always in flux and it could be that my data is horrendously outdated.

[govindsankar]

Ok I was just thinking of developing small robots with FPGA. But do you work in LabVIEW FPGA. Is that your career. Thank you 

[Intaris]

Yes, I'm an FPGA developer, but no experience of Robotics actually.

While there's nothing to stop you doing robotics with FPGAs, the response times of most control loops associated with robotics (due to mechanics, physics and all) means that the performance of most Real-Time controllers will probably be enough.

[govindsankar]

do you program FPGAs with LabVIEW or some other FPGA software. 

[Intaris]

With LabVIEW