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PDFWhether it is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) or the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), National Instruments can help automate huge systems. But it is time to talk about the “little guy” for a change. This is about my personal journey, dabbling in my spare time, with NI LabVIEW software for home automation. Slightly geeky? Yes. Socks-and-sandals, Unix-bearded, MMORPG geeky? Well, yes. Fortunately, I am already married.
My first project in personal geekdom was to automate my aging home sprinkler system. Armed with a traditional, real-time NI FieldPoint system and a few relay channels (which I rescued and repaired from the recycling bin), I set out to create the most elaborate sprinkler system ever seen.
The author built a home sprinkler system with FieldPoint and programmed it with LabVIEW.
Step 1: Make the plumbing, sprinkler heads, and electronic valves leak-free and wire them to the garage.
Step 2: “Overengineer” a LabVIEW state machine with file I/O, multiple unused states (for future scalability), a type-def enumeration, conditional compile structures, a customizable test sequence, a remote front panel, and many other intelligent, credibility-building LabVIEW constructs.
As expected, my program compiled and downloaded nicely to the controller where I observed my oh-so-clever “heartbeat” LED whirring away. Being the master LabVIEW programmer that I am, all functionality worked the first time and, of course, without any local variables. (P.S. I am lying a bit here.)
With my working system, some DIN rail, a wireless access point, a “Powered by LabVIEW” poster, and an NI screwdriver, I mounted and wired everything on the garage wall. All zones seemed to work in test mode, but the real test was yet to come. I set the system to come alive at 6:00 a.m. the next day, and, like a child on Christmas Eve, I endured a restless night. At 5:50 a.m., I woke my wife to check the yard. As the water turret swept the front yard on cue, I was ecstatic and she was unimpressed.
Since the project, I have earned a lot of credibility with my coworkers, and I enjoy logging into my sprinkler system wirelessly from the couch to spray dogs that are about to you-know-what on my lawn.
Rick Kuhlman is a product manager for LabVIEW FPGA at National Instruments. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, as well as an MBA, from the University of Tennessee.
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This article first appeared in the Q1 2009 issue of Instrumentation Newsletter.
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