Tag Archives: nationalinstruments

 LabVIEW API for Nest

A while ago, after we installed our Nest thermostats in our respective homes, Jaramillo and I got together and created a LabVIEW API for controlling the Nest – meaning it makes it super easy to control the Nest from your LabVIEW (NI‘s graphical programming language) program.

My guess is that the number of 1) LabVIEW programmers with a 2) Nest thermostat who want to 3) write their own programs to control it is quite small. But it was a nice little learning project.

It has since been posted in LabVIEW MakerHub and improved upon. They even made a video:

I expect zero The MKX® readers to use it, but at least it’s now been recorded here for posterity.

Real-life Pipe Dream

Many of you saw this cool computer animation that went viral a few years ago (you know it’s because it’s hosted on Google Video):

This week at IDF they demo’ed a real-life version. The video is not professionally shot, sadly:

They mention they use a bunch of Intel gear. What they don’t mention, is that the company that put this together, SISU Devices, also used a bunch of National Instruments hardware and software, probably a more key component to the system. Cool stuff.

Plane crash nearby

This is a photo I just took of what is apparently the smoke from a plane crash on MoPac and 183. I took it from the eight floor of my building at work:

Plane crash in Hwy. 183 & MoPac

There’s not a lot of news out there but KVUE has a report (with video): Apparently a 1-engine Cessna crashed onto the Echelon building.

According to my calculations, in the embedded map you can see how far from me it happened:


View Larger Map

[UPDATE]: Two people still unnacounted for. Let’s hope they’re ok!
[UPDATE 1:13 PM]: There was a big column of smoke I could see from my building this morning (before the crash). It was a house on fire. It’s possible that this is the house of the pilot that smashed a plane this morning, Joseph Andrew Stack. His suicide letter is online on his website.

The Bat-Cave part deux

Fellow developer and former mentee Pratik Bhadra has posted a photo of this bat, perched from the ceiling in the sixth floor of the Truchard Design Center, who knows for how many hours, about three meters away from my head, watching me, studying my every move, preparing to pounce me. It’s happened before. The bat doesn’t stand a chance against my quick reflexes, superior strength and uncanny spider-sense.
Or maybe the poor thing was scared shitless. Who knows.