First Face to Face MLUG in 3 years!
06 February 2023 by Chris Woodhams
The Argenta MLUG team are very excited to confirm that we will be back meeting face to face in just a few weeks time on Wednesday 1st March. It's been a very long time since that happened and we hope that you will be able to join us!
A big thank you to Rolls-Royce Controls for enabling us to meet at their site near Birmingham. Please note that for face to face attendance you will need to register in order to receive a form to complete in line with their security protocols. No form, no entry unfortunately!
We have four presenters lined up so far, plus a coding challenging so it's going to be packed!
First up, Stefan Lemmens will be joining us remotely. Stefan has been attending our online MLUG sessions for a while now so we are delighted that he will be moving from observer to presenter for this event.
Stefan is a senior LabVIEW developer at Jaga Climate Designers in Belgium. He started using LabVIEW with version 5.0 in 1999. More than 20 years of experience led to several presentations in multiple user groups and becoming a LabVIEW Champion in 2021. He's also a member from the start of both the "SAS LabVIEW Mastermind group" and the "Actor Framework Guild". In 2021 Stefan started a private leaderboard on the Advent of Code for fellow LabVIEW developers. When he's not wiring LabVIEW he likes to play boardgames or go out for a run and log it on the Strava user group "LabVIEW users do sports". So LabVIEW is never far away...
His presentation is titled "Managing package requirements per project in LabVIEW", here's a little bit about what to expect.
Every project is different and therefore has different dependencies. We love to package and reuse our code as much as possible but not all projects need the same reuse code nor the same version of those packages. So wouldn't it be better to deploy packages per project instead of per LabVIEW version. This presentation will briefly describe how others have tried to solve this problem and how we did it by managing packages in LabVIEW with Conan, an open source package manager for C/C++. This functionality is also on the roadmap for VIPM. If it's available in time we can compare both ways of working. After a short demo we can discuss whether or not a frog can beat a dragon...
Our second presenter is Chris Knight, a first time attendee at MLUG (hopefully not the last!), he will also be bringing along some hardware for the group to have a little 'play' with.
Since joining Beckhoff in 2014, Chris has supported applications from across numerous industries specialising in system design and program architecture. He is the IO product specialist for Beckhoff UK, responsible for fieldbus implementation and distributed IO architecture. He now looks after the MATLAB and LabVIEW implementation for TwinCAT as well as supporting customers looking to implement DevOps in their industrial processes.
His presentation will focus on "Bringing Labview and MATLAB together in a PLC environment", here's what to expect.
This presentation will introduce Beckhoff’s TwinCAT OS, a PC based automation platform. TwinCAT allows you to make use of standard PLC languages on the same platform that can implement MATLAB, C++ and LabVIEW. It provides a suite of tools for OPC UA, MQTT communications, measurement and data acquisition tools and a real time Machine Learning inference engine.
Tom McQuillan is also returning to MLUG, with his presentation "A LabVIEW Update". Here's a little more about what to expect:
LabVIEW 2023Q1, which relies on VIPM and the newly formed JKI and NI partnership, has just been released, I will talk through what this means for you (LabVIEW developers - new and experienced). The presentation will also hint at the latest JKI Dragon workflows, which give you dependency security (including opening projects in the correct version of LabVIEW!). But fear not, this presentation isn't just a marketing spiel. I will show you some LabVIEW tips and tricks I learnt along the way.
Tom is a chartered engineer and LabVIEW Champion. He’s a senior software engineer at JKI and has been developing applications for the biomedical industry. Tom has also been working on the long-awaited JKI Dragon product range. Tom runs his own LabVIEW YouTube channel –Tom’s LabVIEW Adventure. His journey with LabVIEW started whilst working for a test and measurement company. This role included developing test systems using LabVIEW and NI hardware for the defence, aerospace and automotive industries.
During his studies at university, Tom worked for a software contractor, where he helped develop software frameworks and bespoke desktop and embedded software applications. After graduating with a Masters’ degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering with distinction, Tom's experience well equipped him for his role at NI, where he gained Certified LabVIEW Architect status, taught LabVIEW courses and supported customers in creating LabVIEW applications. This led to his current role at JKI.
Finally, last but not least, we will be welcoming Nick Powley from NI. He will be presenting: "Using CODESYS IDE to interface with NI FPGA via IEC 61131-3". Here a little more:
Often, there is cross-over between when using an NI cRIO vs PLC and remote IO makes sense for measurement control applications. One of the choices involved is from a software perspective of using LabVIEW Real-Time vs more traditional PLC programming. IEC-61131-3 is an international standard for programming PLCs, and defines language aspects such as ladder logic and function block diagrams. This session will demonstrate and discuss using the CODESYS IDE to interact with NI FPGA running on an NI Linux Real-Time CompactRIO, allowing engineers to use the IEC 61131-3 standard with customisable and modular NI hardware to allow for the integration of specialised I/O while allowing for re-use of existing code and reducing non-recurring engineering.
Nick has been working at NI for almost 4 years. Previously, he was in a broad-base support role, taking technical escalations globally; now, he works as a Field Application Engineer for a small, refined set of UK Aerospace and Defence accounts. Nick holds a CLA and has mentored other CLD and CLA candidates.
Wow, what a line up! We are really looking forward to three new presenters, and a returning one(!), with some interesting topics that will no doubt get people thinking about what they can do to weave what they have learnt into their projects.
If this sounds right up your street, then sign up and Jenny will send you the registration document to complete. Don't dispair if you can't be with us in person, we will also be streaming the event live via Teams and it will be recorded to go up on our YouTube channel. No registration needed just access via this link.
NI Recertification points are available for this event whether you join us in person or online, win win for everyone!
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