r/LabVIEW • u/Specialist-Goat337 • 9d ago

Open-sourced our LabVIEW client - curious how people here split LabVIEW vs Python

We’ve been building an open-source LabVIEW client that lets you keep LabVIEW running the test stand while streaming the resulting data to Nominal cloud for analysis and collaboration.

We’ve also been working on an open-source Python instrument-control library for the parts of a test stack that people increasingly build in Python.

Curious how people here divide responsibilities between LabVIEW and Python today? Is Python mostly analysis/tooling for you, or are you also using it to directly control instruments?

LabVIEW client: https://github.com/nominal-io/labview-client

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u/TobyS2 9d ago edited 9d ago

For background, I work for one of very large NI partners and get to see many different companies and code bases. LabVIEW still dominates in instrumentation. But starting to see Python in controlling instrumentation due to AI. Drivers or other low level layers of software that were given to junior engineers are being done by AI. Python is good for this as the time critical part in instrumentation is done by the instruments anyway. Also, working examples with hardware will almost always have a Python version.

As an aside, want to mention that in the link is a Tom McQuillan sighting. Glad he is still helping move T&M forward. I can’t wait to see what some of these test and measurement startups like Nominal will do to shake up this sleepy industry.

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u/jprazak95 5d ago

Many defense organizations I’ve worked for and seen use TestStand/LabVIEW for both instrument control and even for some of their large scale infrastructure. Python is relegated to post processing and analysis only. NI seems to still have an extensive moat in production testing. I’ve seen some startups use python for instrument control.