National Instruments Extends Environmental Monitoring Capabilities in LabVIEW With a New Instrument Driver

National Instruments Extends Environmental Monitoring Capabilities in LabVIEW With a New Instrument Driver

NI LabVIEW Now Can Communicate to Environmental Monitoring Sensors Through the SDI-12 Protocol

NEWS RELEASE – Sept. 16, 2008 – National Instruments today announced the release of a new instrument driver that gives users of the NI LabVIEW graphical system design platform the ability to interface with environmental monitoring sensors that communicate via SDI-12, a serial-based communication protocol optimized for battery-powered intelligent sensors. With NI LabVIEW SDI-12 Application Programming Interface (API) software, researchers, engineers and scientists can easily acquire measurements such as turbidity, dissolved oxygen, tank level, soil pH, conductivity and other critical environmental sensor measurements.

The SDI-12 protocol makes it possible to communicate with a wide variety of sensors and recorders that are most commonly used in environmental data acquisition applications such as climate change tracking, water quality and testing, ecological research, soil monitoring, agriculture and weather analysis. Using the LabVIEW SDI-12 API, researchers, engineers and scientists can connect traditional environmental data with the wide variety of I/O that works with LabVIEW, making it a comprehensive and flexible environmental data-logging solution.

“National Instruments makes green engineering possible by providing measurement and automation hardware and software to measure and understand real-world data and then to correct or fix the problem,” said John Hanks, vice president of data acquisition and control at National Instruments. “Now, with the National Instruments LabVIEW SDI-12 API environmental sensor software, engineers can shorten their development time when designing data-logging and data acquisition applications that use common sensors from leading environmental companies.”

The LabVIEW SDI-12 API, combined with an RS232 to SDI-12 converter and any computer or NI programmable automation controller that includes a serial port, can be used to make environmental measurements in a laboratory setting or deploy stand-alone systems into remote locations. The LabVIEW SDI-12 API can be downloaded for free from the NI Instrument Driver Network at www.ni.com/idnet. Readers also can view the “Building an Environmental Monitoring System for SDI-12 Devices” white paper at www.ni.com/devzone for more information.

Additionally, readers can visit www.ni.com/greenengineering for information on how NI products are being used in various environmental monitoring applications.