AUSTIN, Texas, 17 Oct. 2006. National Instruments in Austin, Texas, announced LabVIEW drivers for wireless sensor networks, giving engineers and scientists working with these devices the ability to fully integrate their ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4 or proprietary wireless sensors into the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical development environment.
The free driver software works with sensors from three wireless-sensing leaders -- Accsense, Accutech and Crossbow Technology -- and includes communication functions and example programs compatible with sensors from each vendor.
Wireless sensor vendors typically offer fixed-functionality application software for wireless sensor network configuration, communication and monitoring. Now with LabVIEW, developers using wireless sensors have an open development environment to customize an application or integrate data from the wireless network with other data acquisition, analysis, or reporting functionality. LabVIEW also includes more than 600 graphical and text-based math and analysis functions that developers can use to process data acquired from wireless sensor networks.
With the drivers, developers can start reading from their sensors within a matter of minutes; they do not have to write custom interfaces themselves. Additionally, the software includes a template to build a LabVIEW interface for wireless sensors not natively supported by the driver software.
"These new LabVIEW drivers for wireless sensor networks extend the LabVIEW platform to the growing number of wireless interfaces such as ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4," says John Hanks, National Instruments director of measurement and control hardware. "Connectivity to these wireless sensors opens up a whole new level of functionality for environmental monitoring, research, industrial monitoring and test applications for engineers and scientists."
For more information contact National Instruments online at www.ni.com.
