NI announces free editions of LabView software

LabView Community comes with all the features of the LabView Professional Edition.

“There are no watermarks or feature restrictions,” says Daniel Riedelbauch, Go-to-Market Manager EMEIA for NI. “And the Linx Toolkit is included with this edition.”

This enables users to connect with open-source hardware including Raspberry Pi 3 + 4, BeagleBone Black and Arduino.

Adds Riedelbauch, “We will create a special forum board for Linx as part of this release, it will enable hobbyists to connect and interact with their peers around the world, acting as an information exchange and as a sounding board.”

LabView NXG Community platform is also free for non-commercial use and again offers all the features of LabView NXG Professional edition.

“It will also include free of use SystemLink cloud evaluation for notebooks and smartphones,” says Riedelbauch. “It enables users to share data without the need for hardware to maintain a server infrastructure.”

LabView NXG Community also includes the LabVIEW NXG Web Module to help users with little to no web development skills create web applications. By utilizing the software’s graphical programming language, they can create applications in LabVIEW that run entirely in a web browser without the need for additional software. A SystemLink Cloud evaluation is also provided for hosting and sharing web applications.

Free access to the NI software platforms is also available to primary and secondary schools, replacing the LabVIEW Student Edition and Academic Site License.

NI is also creating and opening up a select number of LabVIEW and LabVIEW NXG Getting Started and basics of programming videos that will be open to everyone.

NI has brought forward the release of these platforms.

“The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the stimulus behind this release. It was planned to be announced in conjunction with the release of LabView 2020 next month. Now with people having plenty of free time and confined to their homes, we decided to launch it earlier, and provide an early Christmas gift,” explains Riedelbauch.

At present LabView Community and LabView NXG Community are available in Microsoft versions. NI is working on MacOS and Linux OS versions.

Makers can also access the platforms for initial design work on a project, and shift to the commercial platforms as the project progresses

To sign up users will need to go to the NI website and create an NI.com profile.