Students can now design sophisticated systems using NI myRIO

At their annual technology program “NI Week” in Austin, National Instruments announced a new compact processing system. NI myRIO is a powerful embedded hardware device to help students design real, complex engineering systems more quickly and affordably.

Based on the technology in the popular NI CompactRIO platform, NI myRIO is smaller and more student-friendly than its industrial counterpart. It includes the latest Zynq all programmable system on a chip (SoC) technology from Xilinx, which combines a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and an FPGA with 28,000 programmable logic cells. Using the power of the NI LabVIEW graphical programming environment, students can program the FPGA and evolve their systems in real time, giving them the flexibility to prototype and quickly iterate on their designs.

NI myRIO comes with free downloadable courseware, is compatible with all NI miniSystems and connects with many third-party sensors and actuators. The device is programmable in multiple environments, including LabVIEW and C/C++, empowering educators to incorporate it into their existing controls, robotics, mechatronics and embedded systems courses.

Various versions of the myRIO platform will be available before the end of 2013. The price for the student version will be $499 and includes a complete version of LabView software.