LabVIEW simple pendulum simulation

[GregHind]

Hi,

as part of my course I've been tasked with building a simple pendulum with only 3 hours of training on LabVIEW. I looked at the example and it doesn't look very simple! I'm not being defeatist, but I haven't even got a grasp of the fundementals of the program and have never done coding. Any suggestions on a crash course in pendulum design?

Many thanks

[GerdW]

Hi Greg,

I've been tasked with building a simple pendulum with only 3 hours of training on LabVIEW. …

I … have never done coding.

Any suggestions on a crash course in pendulum design?

Do some more training lessons. You find a lot of them in the "Training" section in the header of this LabVIEW board!

(Why do you take a course on "programming" when you never have done programming before?)

For "pendulum design" I guess you know the kinematic laws - you should have learned about them in school. And I guess you can go to a library to read books about it - similar to the paper you attached with your message…

[GregHind]

Hi GerdW,

I'm working through the tutorials as we speak. This isn't a programming course, it's a module on my foundation degree in engineering. The maths isn't a problem for me, I just don't know how to use LabVIEW at all and there's a lot to learn by the look of it. I was just hoping for a few pointers,

Cheers

[RobGeografo]

Hi Greg,

Another useful thing to do together with the tutorials you are already following is using the context help in LabVIEW. By clicking the detailed help you will get all the information required for each functions or VI.

Best,

Rob

[GregHind]

Hi Rob,

yes, the contextual help has been very handy indeed. I dont suppose you could have a look at my VI could you? I've come up 2 'solutions', niether of them really doing what I want; the top one, I tried to build the equation for simple harmonic motion and plug it into a graph which hasn't produced SMH; the second I tried to create 2 sin waves and use them as the x and y componext on a xy plot graph and as individual sin waves,

many thanks

[altenbach]

Your xy graph express VI will only get data once both lower loops have stopped. Think dataflow!

(I recommend to solve the problem using complex numbers. Much easier to deal with "r,theta" than "x,y" for this kind of simulation.)

[GregHind]

Hi altenback,

I like that idea, thanks! As for the dataflow, I'm still not sure how to make it sequence through the points, can you point me in the right direction?

Many thanks

[GerdW]

Hi Greg,

when you want to process several elements of an array you need to use a (FOR) loop instead of a "sequence"!

Merry Christmas!

[smitty75]

did you complete the simulation in the end and could you show me an example to look through

cheers

[gregTheEgg]

I did but I can't find the file! Sorry smitty