National Instruments LabVIEW Toolkit

NI have announced the realease of the NI LabVIEW toolkit for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot. The toolkit will allow Mindstorms NXT owners to create and download VIs to control and operate the robot.

The great thing about the toolkit is that 3rd party companies can offer software and hardware to work with the new toolkit.

With the toolkit, users also can interact with the NXT robot while a program is running. By dropping a LabVIEW control, the toolkit can send data to the robot and influence the currently executing program. By dropping an indicator, the value at that point in the program is sent back to the PC and viewed in a regular LabVIEW front panel.

"The LabVIEW Toolkit for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT makes customizing add-ons for the NXT extremely easy and encourages users to expand the MINDSTORMS experience," said John Barnes, president of HiTechnic. "This type of customer-driven functionality will extend and enhance the experience of MINDSTORMS fans of all ages."

LabVIEW 7.1 and 8.20 customers can download the beta version of the toolkit from ni.com beginning this fall. For more information, visit www.ni.com/mindstorms.