VI Mantra 2008 paper contest for Science and Engineering Educations

VI Mantra 2008 paper contest for Science and Engineering Educations

Well, you have done a very good project using Virtual Instrumentation, But your project has to be recognized, then this is the right time to show your project in the VI Mantra 2008 paper contest. Submit your abstract before 20th of sept. then the final paper on Oct. 2008. If you win the contest, definitely reward will be assured.

How to participate?

1. Choose the contest category you fall under and click on it below to download the VI Mantra 2008 kit -Student or Research Scholar
2. Send us a 200 word abstract of your project(s) in the format as provided in the kit (max 5 per group)
3. National Instruments will call for papers for the selected abstracts
4. The best 50 abstracts will be published and the top three entries will be contest
Email queries, abstracts & papers to: vimantra2008@ni.com
source: VI Mantra

Good bye to deadly diseases by stem cell technology

Good bye to deadly diseases by stem cell technology

Medical field has been revolutionized by stem cell technology. Though most of us are unaware of stem cells and its research in curing diseases like heart disease, stroke, MS, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Health care is so important in day to day life. It is also mandatory to find, prevent and completely eradicate such deadly diseases.


First off all I would like to describe about stem cells. Stem cells are found in multi cellular organisms. These potentially life-saving stem cells are found in women’s menstrual blood.
C'elle Scientific study with its exclusive and revolutionary stem cell technology empowers women to safely and easily collect stem cells from menstrual blood. It has also recently published about this technology in the prestigious Journal of Cell Transplantation.

You can also learn more About the Science for complete understanding

Features of stem cell technology:
C'elle menstrual stem cells have demonstrated the ability to differentiate into other cell types such as heart muscle, cartilage, nerve and bone stem cells. This translates into the potential for future therapeutic developments to possibly treat major diseases like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, MS, Parkinson's and Alzheimer’s and possible applications like anti-aging and wound-healing.
Menstrual stem cells are a 100% match for the woman donor and may possibly match her first degree relatives.
C'elle’s has come with its special promo offer of the product, so that we can save $200. And it’s online Purchase only $499. Million’s people are benefiting and preventing from deadly diseases by using the C'elle’s product.
We can also get and clear out doubt on stem cell technology from C'elle, and also don’t forget to read C'elle Client Testimonial.

Energy meter billing by using Virtual Instrumentation and Labview

Energy meter billing by using Virtual Instrumentation and Labview

It is amazing to read such an article on Energy meter billing with labview and VI technology. There are lots research on monitoring and billing for Energy consumed by consumer. Normally an energy meter is provided for each consumer and billing will be done based on the number of units consumed on monthly basis. For each month an employee from electricity board (EB) will come to note the number of units and give the bill. It is a time consuming for EB side as well as consumer side. There are various methods like GSM based monitoring, sms based control, carrier power communications etc.

Now a days internet has revolutionized the world, almost most of the people are having this facility either in home or office. So If there is a technology to monitor the energy meter and billing online the drawback faced by consumer and producer can be reduced significantly.
This is overcome by using VI technology.

Each energy meter can be fit with a Compact Real time reconfigurable IO kit which can be programmed in such a way that it stores all the details of consumer as well as meter readings. This can be connected with the internet. So by online, the consumer can monitor as well as the energy producer can interact with the customer and billing can be done online.

Win a laptop with charter's High speed Internet connection

Win a laptop with Charter's High speed Internet connection

It is big giveaway that is HP Compaq Laptop giveaway by Charter Communications services, US. The technology has revolutionized in the internet connection from dial up to high speed broadband internet connection. This is the right time to change our slow dial up connection to charter’s high speed internet connection with a bonus of a laptop for winners. 30 days 30 laptops is the promo quote by charter communication services online, yes you can win a laptop on choosing one of their service plans from charter, these plans are
1. Charter High-Speed Internet at $19.99/mo for 6 months,
2. Charter Digital Home and High-Speed Internet at $69.98/mo for 6 months or Charter Digital Home, High-Speed Internet, and
3. Charter Telephone at $99.97/mo. for 12 months.
This is a attractive chance to bring a laptop to home with having high speed connection. One laptop out off 30 will be assured upon win.
With Charter Laptop-a-Day Giveaway promo, Charter is ready to give a laptop, are you ready to get? Still you have doubt?, here is the details of laptops
HP Compaq Presario C770US Notebook
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor
15.4″ WXGA Screen
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DVD Burner
Built in Wi-Fi and Ethernet
Plus a NEOtec Laptop Backpack!
In addition to winning a laptop, get a free Shell gas card in varying price ranges with respect to the size of the internet package that you choose. You also can see the Complete Sweepstakes Rules at their site

PXI MODULES IN VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION

PXI MODULES IN VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION

I have been writing about virtual instrumentation and related projects and articles for past few weeks. It has been a fast developing area in the technology era. PXI is the open, PC-based platform for test, measurement, and control. PXI provides the industry’s highest bandwidth and lowest latency with modular I/O for high-resolution DC to 6 GHz RF signals.

PXI modules in VI has the following features:

• Switch modules featuring general-purpose relays, multiplexers, and matrices
• Data acquisition modules for multifunction analog, digital, and counter I/O
• Bus interface modules for Gigabit Ethernet, GPIB, serial, IEEE 1394, CAN, VXI, and other buses
• Motion, vision, and analog and digital I/O modules for industrial applications
• Synchronization modules for multichassis and advanced multidevice synchronization
• Modular instruments for analog and digital I/O ranging from high-resolution DC to 6 GHz RF

If we use these modules in the projects, the system will become very compact and rugged in construction.

Compact RIO a Revolution in Labview VI Environment

Compact RIO a Revolution in Labview VI Environment

Compact RIO stands for Compact Reconfigurable Input Output(CRIO). It is a real time controller. The FPGA is embedded with CRIO Technology.

CompactRIO programmable automation controller (PAC) is a low-cost reconfigurable control and acquisition system designed for applications that require high performance and reliability. The system combines an open embedded architecture with small size, extreme ruggedness, and hot-swappable industrial I/O modules. NI CompactRIO is powered by reconfigurable I/O (RIO) FPGA technology.

We can do some program in Labview to control hardwares, then it can be downloaded into a chip for a specific application. This concept is used in RIO in Virtual Instrumentation. For example, we want to design the control of arms in a Robot, the instructions for movement can be programmed in Labview, then the executable can be downloaded in a chip by configuring the RIO system, then the CRIO can be used as a single unit in the robot which is very robust and rugged in construction.

Then the robot unit can be independantly used for operation. This is really amazing to see the result.

Features of Labview and applications

Features of Lab view and applications

I have been discussing Lab view and Virtual Instrumentation(VI) for the past few blogs. I have given some basics on Labview and VI. There are lot of features with its modules and tool kits. For example, There is one hardware called as Speedy33 which is meant for DSP applications.

With this kit interfaced with labview with its proper drivers softwares, we can synthesis voice signals which can be used for voice authentication systems. There are numerous filter packages available in Labview. A proper filter can be designed to sythesis our voice for recocgnition. Speech processing and Pattern matching can be achieved by properly coding the labview environment. It gives widespread scope for starting a projects with Labview and Speedy 33 module.

One more application, i would like to share is to find the status of breaking glass through its sound vibrations and freuency sythesis.

Basics of Virtual Instrumentation

Basics of Virtual Instrumentation

LabVIEW programs are called virtual instruments, are VIs, because their appearance and operation imitate physical instruments, such as oscilloscopes and multimeters. Every VI uses functions that manipulate input from the user interface or other sources and displays that information or moves it to other files or other computers.


A VI contains the following three components,
• Front panel
• Block diagram
• Icon and connector pane

The Front panel serves as the user interface. The Icon and the connector pane identifies the interface to the VI so that one VI can be used in another VI. In general, a VI within another VI is called a sub VI. A sub VI corresponds to a subroutine in text based programming languages. The Block diagram contains the graphical code of VI used.
When a LabVIEW application is created, it is started at the top-level VI and inputs and outputs for the application are defined. Then a sub VI is constructed to perform the smaller tasks within the top-level VI. This modular approach is one of the strengths of LabVIEW. Hence it is possible to create complicated applications that are hierarchal in nature and reuse common elements within an application. The use of sub VI makes application easy to understand, debug and maintain.
The basic LabVIEW environment elements are the menus at the top of the front panel and block diagram windows, toolbar and free floating palettes like tools palette and controls palette.
The Tools Palette is available on the front panel and block diagram. A tool is a special operating mode of the mouse cursor. The cursor corresponds to the icon of the tool selected in the palette. The tools are used to operate and modify the front panel and block diagram objects. If automatic tool selection is enabled and the cursor is moved over the objects on the front panel or block diagram, LabVIEW automatically selects the corresponding tools from the tools palette. The tools palette can be also be used to modify the contents of the front panel or the block diagram. Each icon on the tools palette changes the behaviour of the cursor on LabVIEW so that operations like positioning, operating and editing tasks on VIs can be performed.

A Front Panel is built by placing controls and indicators from the controls palette. Each palette icon represents a sub palette, which contains control. A control is a front panel object that the user manipulates to interact with the VI. Simple examples of controls, buttons, slides, dials and text boxes. An indicator is also a front panel object that displays the data to the user.

Examples of indicators are graphs, thermometers, gauges. When control or indicator is placed in front panel, the corresponding terminal is automatically created in block diagram.

E skin for Robot Ready

E skin for Robot Ready

In the technology era, an another milestone has been achieved by the Japanese scientist. Yes, that is called as Carbon nano tube rubber conductor. This conductor is special in a sense that it is flexible and can be used as rubber and having very good conductivity. This rubber conductor can be used in robots as skin, so that the robot will behave like a human. This can stretch and contract, which can be replaced in place of metal conductor.
Another important property of this material is that its conductivity is 570 times more than that of a conventional conductor. If used as wiring, the material can make elastic integrated circuits (ICs), which can be stretched to up to 1.7 times their original size and mounted on curved surfaces with no mechanical damage or major change in conductivity.
The robot skin can be embedded with this conductor, so that it can sense temperature, pressure and heat, so that it can enhance its sensing capabilities.

source

Overview of Labview

Overview of Labview

For instrumentation related projects, Labview plays an important role as a simulation environment. I would like to give some basics of lab view for the beginners.

LabVIEW short for Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench is a platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments. LabVIEW is commonly used for data acquisition and instrument control. The programming language used in LabVIEW, called G, is a dataflow language.
LabVIEW ties the creation of user interfaces (called front panels) into the development cycle. LabVIEW programs/ subroutines are called Virtual Instruments (Vis). Each VI has three components: a block diagram, a front panel and a connector pane. The later may represent the VI as a subVI in block diagrams of calling Vis. Controls and indicators on the front panel allow an operator to input data into or extract data from a running virtual instrument. However, the front panel can also serve as a programmatic interface.
The graphical approach also allows non programmers to build programs by simply dragging and dropping virtual instrument representations of the lab equipment with which they are already familiar. The LabVIEW programming environment, with the included examples and the documentation, makes it simpler to create small applications, many libraries with a large number of functions for data acquisition, signal generation, mathematics, statistics, signal conditioning, analysis, etc., along with numerous graphical interface elements are provided in several LabVIEW package options.

Interfacing hardware and software with Labview in Drives

Interfacing hardware and software with Labview in Drives

The project composes mainly of two parts
(i) A simple interfacing hardware and
(ii) A dynamic multifunctional software i.e., Labview

In this era of computers, innovation in which automation and measurement using digital instrumentation is at its zenith, forming the backbone of almost all the industrial control applications, human labour is reduced enormously. As a part of this revolution, the cumbersome performance testing of industrial drives i.e., both AC and DC motors is attempted to be automated for the ease and speed of the testing process as a whole.
Apart from voltage and current measurement which is generally effected after the provision of complex safety circuits using step down PTs and CTs, an optical speed encoder and a load actuator (used in open loop) comprises the external hardware setup.
BNC cards and DAQ cards are the accessories provided by the NI LabVIEW providers. LabVIEW 8 .0 version is used. The graphical programming facilitates easy use interface on the front panel screen with virtual buttons, controls and direct graphical view of results. It can be implemented directly in the QC testing assembly line or at the customer front and thus being versatile in its applications.

FPGA Based Control of FIRE PROTECTION SYSTEM FOR TRAINS with Labview

FPGA Based Control of FIRE PROTECTION SYSTEM FOR TRAINS with Labview Abstract

In developing countries, trains are subjected to more hazards than in developed countries. The irresponsible behaviour of some passengers may seriously reduce the safety of railway systems. It is therefore extremely important to design unconventional protection systems. With virtual instrumentation, engineers use intuitive and powerful software with flexible and modular hardware to build customer defined solutions. In building virtual instrumentation solutions, engineers use software to define the functions of the systems. This software flexibility maximizes the hardware capabilities while making it easier to adapt and scale to future needs. LabVIEW is a widely adopted graphical development environment for customized test, measurement and control applications.

This project entitled “FAULT SECURE MULTIDETECTOR FIRE PROTECTION SYSTEM FOR TRAINS” provides an effective method to detect fire accidents in trains. Here using LabVIEW, the real time signals detecting fire, smoke are given to the CompactRIO and alarm is generated at hazardous conditions. The same signals are given to the FPGA kit APEX20K200EFC484 and the three outputs namely Fire, Smoke and Alarm are generated. The results obtained using CompactRIO and FPGA are compared based on execution time, programming flexibility, robustness and hardware features. From this comparison, its inferred that CompactRIO is more reliable than FPGA.

IRIS Recognition for Authentication systems

IRIS Recognition for Authentication systems

Iris recognition is considered to be the most reliable biometric authentication system. Very few iris recognition algorithms were commercialized. There are different methods proposed in the iris segmentation and feature extraction phase. Digitized gray scale images were used for determining the performance of the system. The circular iris and pupil of the eye image can be segmented using Morphological operators and Hough transform. The localized iris region can then be normalised into a rectangular block to account for imaging inconsistencies. Finally, the iris code can be generated using 2D Gabor Wavelets. A bank of Gabor filters has been used to capture both local and global iris characteristics to generate 2400 bits of iris code. By measuring the Hamming distance the matching of the iris code is done. For accuracy, the hamming distance can be chosen as 0.35.
The existing systems use the ideal eye images with less occluding parts for their testing. However the real time image of the eye can be captured with a lot of occluding parts, the effect of such occluding parts may result in the false non-matching. Some of the problems are outlined below,
• Eyelids and eyelashes bring about some edge noises and occlude the effective regions of the iris. This may lead to the inaccurate localization of the iris, which results in the false non-matching.
• The corneal and specular reflections will occur on the pupil and iris region. When the reflection occurs in the pupil from iris pupil border, the detection of the inner boundary of the iris fails.
• The orientation of the head with the camera may result in the orientation of the iris image to some extent.