Students Can Design Sophisticated Systems in One Semester With NI myRIO
August 10, 2013. National Instruments at NIWeek announced an expanded commitment to engineering education with the release of NI myRIO, its latest educational product offering.
Based on the same technology as the NI CompactRIO platform, NI myRIO is smaller and more student-friendly than its industrial counterpart. NI myRIO includes the latest Zynq all-programmable system on a chip (SoC) technology from Xilinx, which combines a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and an FPGA with 28,000 programmable logic cells. Using the NI LabVIEW graphical programming environment, students can program the FPGA and evolve their systems in real time, giving them the flexibility to prototype and quickly iterate on their designs.
Nick Morozovsky, graduate student researcher from the University of California at San Diego, said, “The compact size of the NI myRIO, combined with the power and flexibility of the onboard FPGA, makes it the ideal controller for embedded robotics applications.”
The NI myRIO also includes 10 analog inputs, six analog outputs, audio I/O channels and up to 40 lines of digital I/O. It includes onboard WiFi, a three-axis accelerometer, and several programmable LEDs in a durable, enclosed form factor.
“If I had made a list of everything I wanted in a portable I/O device, it would have looked almost exactly like the spec sheet of NI myRIO,” University of Florida engineering instructor Dan Dickrell III said. “This little unit is an amazing piece of engineering.”
The addition of NI myRIO to the LabVIEW reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture further enhances NI’s ability to provide tools at all skill levels, from students learning core engineering concepts, all the way to engineers designing the most powerful systems in the world. Ensuring classroom and laboratory adaptability, NI myRIO comes with free downloadable courseware, is compatible with all NI miniSystems, and connects with many third-party sensors and actuators. In addition to the hardware ecosystem available for NI myRIO, the device is programmable in multiple environments, including LabVIEW and C/C++, empowering educators to incorporate it into their existing controls, robotics, mechatronics, and embedded systems courses.
“We’re passionate about students having access to the same technology that they will use after graduation,” Dave Wilson, NI academic marketing director, said. “We want to ensure that both students and their future employers will be innovation ready from the moment they begin collaborating.”
NI myRIO will begin shipping in early September.