Ideas in Wiring

NIWeek Recap

NIWeek is over. Ok, it ended a whole week ago but I haven't made it to the end of my "to do list" so it won't really be over for another week or two. Last year, my team's big project, LV Embedded, launched to great fanfare.  This year, another project that I was involved with, the Lego NXT, made it's NIWeek splash. I can't tell you how cool it is to see something you worked on sitting on the shelves of Best Buy or Frys. 

You can see a picture of some of the main developers of the software at Dick Swan's blog. He's also got pictures of some custom sensors he's created or run across for the NXT such as a video camera, a Sony Playstation controller, and probes from Vernier. You can see the Lego NXT demo in the keynote videos.

Brian Tyler did a video-blog on the whole NIWeek Experience. I think the most amusing video was an interview with Diya on what it's like to be up on stage in front of 3,000 people doing the keynote.  I love the way we throw engineers who actually worked on the products they are demoing up there.  It also helps if the demo doesn't quite go as planned...

You have to admit, a DAQ board isn't much of a visual treat. It just sits there like a rock. Not even blinking lights. I think that's caused us to be a bit more creative when it comes to demos. One of the demos this year involved getting a volunteer from the audience to try out a version of the game "Dance Dance Revolution" that had been completely reimplemented in NI hardware and reprogrammed in LabVIEW.  The designer of the demo is Roger Dickey, a guy who loves DDR and is in the LabVIEW FPGA team.  Here's the video of him competing with the, ahem, victim.

Finally, to all of the people I pestered at NIWeek, I wanted to say thanks. I know all of us at NI get a lot of satisfaction hearing how our products affect what you do every day.

Technorati Tags: LabVIEW, NIWeek, DanceDanceRevolution, Mindstorms, LEGO

posted by Joel @ 6:55 AM