LabVIEW Applications and Solutions

Rating:
Summary: Book Introduces Concepts/Capabilities in Labview - Not More
Review: I basically went through the tutor in Labview, and started programming. Now that I'm more 'advanced' I looked to this book for help. I bought this book with the hopes that it will give me some pointers on improving my programming. IT DID NOT.

Basically, this book gives a good overview of how Labview works, what's in Labview, and what you can do with Labview. How you can do it it isn't explained. Lots of re-hash of material from other books not Labview related (pages on Fourier transform, optimization ideas *not much*, process control, etc).

If you're looking for a book that'll help you do programming, this isn't it. If you're looking for a book with ideas on what you can do with Labview (but with no help), this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: A tour of Labview applications
Review: This book is obviously written for a developer who wants to choose a suitable programming language, heard about labview, but is not sure if it can do what he wants. The idea of the book is to give you an overview of the many real-world problems which can be solved with lab view. It covers many potential areas of applications, from image processing and digital filters to interfacing with measurement equipment - but everything is described in very generic terms. Indeed, if image processing is discussed on 10 pages, how much can you learn from such a short discussion? You will get an idea what hardware you may need and what toolkits can be used for each particular purpose, and you may learn a few technical terms along the way - but you will not move an inch towards becoming a better LabView programmer. In fact, there is practically nothing in this book about programming. A few labview programs/ diagrams that are reproduced in the text are for illustration purposes only: they are never discussed in detail and often contain undescribed VIs -or, as another example, include structures like frames which contain, say, 4 frames, but only one of them is shown in the figure. The enclosed CD contains only a trial version of labview and electronic version of labview manuals - nothing else. Some chapters are written a little better than the others - for examples, those on fuzzy logic and Fourier Transform are the better ones - but they are still insufficient for practical work. My impression from this book reminds me a feeling which one gets from a tour of a high-end research facility offered to general public. You see the equipment, see the curves on a computer screen, get an idea what is being done here, may even memorize some slang words used by the scientists, but it neither makes you qualified to work in that lab nor teaches how to do a similar things at your own place of work. So is this book. Don't waste your money on it if you want to learn how to program LabView.