An introduction to LabVIEW exercise for an electronics class

National Instruments' LabVIEW has become a popular programming environment for data acquisition in academia and industry. Most LabVIEW reference materials require a significant investment of time. At the University of San Diego (USD), the authors wanted to provide an introduction to LabVIEW for all electrical engineering majors without adding additional classes or laboratories to the curriculum. During a summer research experience, two electrical engineering juniors at USD wrote a tutorial on LabVIEW and designed a one-hour exercise to introduce students to LabVIEW. The exercise allowed students to obtain the amplitude frequency response of a simple RC circuit using a function generator and an oscilloscope. Students had previously done this experiment manually in their sophomore circuits' class. Thus the concepts of the lab were familiar and they could focus on the advantages of having LabVIEW automate the data acquisition and analysis. Twenty-one students in a junior-level Electronics course performed the "Introduction to LabVIEW" exercise in Fall 2001.