×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Machine interface advice

Machine interface advice

Machine interface advice

(OP)
I have an interest in developing my own machine computer interface software with graphics.  Which software tools / programming languages best lend themselves to this?  I'm sure this is subjective, but, all responses would be appreciated!

RE: Machine interface advice

TCL/TK which stands for "Tool Command Language /Tool Kit"
is used by over half a million developers worldwide and has become a critical component in thousands of corporations. It has a simple and programmable syntax and can be either used as a standalone application or embedded in application programs. Best of all, Tcl is open source so it's completely free.

 Tk is a graphical user interface toolkit that makes it possible to create powerful GUIs incredibly quickly. It proved so popular that it now ships with all distributions of Tcl.

http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/

Now, I don't personnally use TCL, however, I do use Perl/TK.
I've used Perl for years, so it's one less language that I
have to learn, however, there are many folks who I respect
that use TCL for their efforts.

 Cheers,

   Rich S.

RE: Machine interface advice

Labview is another industry standard...

RE: Machine interface advice

True, but having written in both TCL\TK and Labview, the "graphics" in Labview is a bit more straightforward.  However, if you are have to perform task that are sensitive to timing, Labview doesn't do that too well.

RE: Machine interface advice

Chillermec

I vote for LabView for GUI development, but that is primarily what I do programming in.

Melone/nbucska, I know we touched on LabView being painfully slow before, but it really isn't. But I do agree, it is expensive.
nbucska- I tought you did't do Windows!

Refer to link comparing LabView execution speeds:
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/DC9B6DD177D91D6286256C9400733D7F?opendocument&node=DZ52061_US

RE: Machine interface advice

(OP)
Guys..... thanks for the input.  I am not a programmer, but, I have " picked a lot of things up " in life by diving in.  This will help me to start out at least with a tool geared to what I am looking for.  Thanks again!

RE: Machine interface advice

analogkid2digitalman, it depends on your definition of "painfully slow".  If you need signals to be asserted in the 100's of ms, then Labview is just fine.  However, if you need 100's of ns, then Labview will NEVER work.  There is simply too much overhead due to Windows, and you can not determine when "things" are going to happen.

RE: Machine interface advice

melone- I agree, but wouldn't the same restriction apply to any language running in Windows? An alternative is LabView Real Time for deterministic applications, it executes the downloaded code on it's own processor board in the PC or PXI and totally skips Windoze. Doubt that I would ever need it for my current applications.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources