OK I can see I am in the same boat I always have been old HP gear as
mentioned above. Still I will install and tinker for some fun. I mean the
factthat you can interface to arduinos for control of bits and such could
be useful.
Will have to see.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Dave Daniel kc0wjn@gmail.com wrote:

Hi

It’s almost enough to get one to sign up for a course at the local college every decade or so, just to be able
to legitimately get student copies of some of this stuff.

=======

That said, a lot of these companies do quite a bit to support education. I’ve seen them toss out a lot of licenses
for student training. That goes both at the university level and at the high school level. I would be very careful of
any actions that might impact those efforts.

Yes they expect that the kids will be ecstatic about their product and take it on to what ever job they get. At least
the ones I’ve worked with are no happier about how some of this stuff works than any of the rest of us ….(….. and
no, I’m not talking specifically about any of the programs that we’ve discussed so far ….). The kids do learn
a lot in the process and that is well worth it.

======

Given that a lot of this time stuff is fairly code intensive. It would be very nice if something like the NI suite worked
well enough for us to build up an inventory of libraries. There are a lot of people writing and re-writing the same stuff
over and over again. Having a common platform that we all could use would be neat. Now to get them to extend the
home bundle to OS-X and Linux ….

Bob

On 6/20/15 3:03 PM, Dave Daniel wrote:

Mathworks still does a variety of low cost licenses, including a $149
for Matlab "home" license + $45 for add on products. (not for academic,
commercial, govt, or organizational use)

They also have a $49/$99 student license "in conjunction with coursework
at a degree granting institution".  I suppose that you could sign up for
a class at the local community college.(that's gone up a lot with a
bunch of added fees around here)

The new matlab has drivers/simulink blocks to handle a lot of hobby type
hardware platforms (RPi, Arduino, LEGO Mindstorms NXT)

One can also use Octave, which is very, very similar to Matlab (I go
back and forth between the two all the time).  Octave doesn't
necessarily have all the nice toolboxes that Matlab has. And, the
plotting is done differently (which is a significant issue, since a lot
of what I use matlab and octave for is generating nice looking plots).

You don't have to wait for the software to arrive if you don't mind
downloading it.  The software you download is the same as the software
National Instruments (NI) ships to their customers.  Without a serial
number the software runs for 45 days.  When you activate the software,
using your serial number, the software contacts NI's server which then
activates whatever features you've purchased.

It is true that LabVIEW programs, in general, run on Mac, Windows, and
Linux without any changes.  Some features are Windows only because they
depend on Windows libraries, ActiveX for example.  Linux is not as well
supported as Windows and Mac.  It only runs on certain distributions
with an old 2.?? kernel.

Brent

On 6/20/2015 6:48 PM, Brooke Clarke wrote:

Thanks for that update. I hadn't looked on the Mathworks website in
quite some time.  I looked again after seeing your post, and I see that
a "home bundle" is once again available. This is what I have from 1999.

I have also used Octave, although not as much as I have used MatLab and
Simulink.

DaveD

On 6/20/2015 7:18 PM, Jim Lux wrote:

Just for fun, went to the site.  $149 for basic, but by the time I added all
the toolboxes I thought (!) I needed, I was over $750. sigh.
Don

David J Taylor

--
"Noli sinere nothos te opprimere"

Dr. Don Latham AJ7LL
Six Mile Systems LLC
17850 Six Mile Road
Huson, MT, 59846

mail:  POBox 404
Frenchtown MT 59834-0404

VOX 406-626-4304
CEL 406-241-5093
Skype: buffler2
www.lightningforensics.com
www.sixmilesystems.com

I downloaded both the software and drivers. About 2GB in total.
Install was typical two restarts required and the eval copy is 7 days not
45.
but you can get a eval license extension.
It seems for each package so you have to re-step through the process
multiple times.
The NI explorer will look for gpib devices not that I have any on this
particular machine.
It did find my rs232 to ethernet device and showed all 17 ports available.
So thats pretty interesting.

Now I actually need to dig a bit to understand,
How arduinos fit in
How older gpib devices might be accessed. I have sopme smart controllers
that emulate a GPIB sender and basically translate commands to and from the
old devices. Essentially ascii strings both ways.

It seems if you had the NI VXI bus box and I have seen them at fleas
ocasionally that would be a useful answer.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Dave Daniel kc0wjn@gmail.com wrote:

On 6/21/15 11:28 AM, Don Latham wrote:

Hence the popularity of the student license (or Octave)

Have the eval license up and operating with the NI simple LED test. It
works.
I can easily see how you could use this to create a nice GUI for some sort
of control project.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Jim Lux jimlux@earthlink.net wrote: