Comment Re:Kazkek (Score 0, Flamebait) 337
Listen, you Labview fan boy, I am not smoking crack. (Although I will admit it: Labview makes me wish I was a toothless meth addict, hitting rock bottom, giving blowjobs to married, middle-aged closeted gay men in a movie theater for drug money.)
I spent more than 10 minutes learning that crap. More than a few weeks in fact. I got to know some Labview tech support "engineers" by name. The problem, I later realized, was that I knew exactly what I wanted the hardware to do, except I had to jump through all kinds of Labview hoops to get there. In C or C++, I could have had the majority of the hard parts done in a few days, and then polish up the details. Not so in Labview.
Ever try to force yourself to do something the hard way, when you know there is a much easier way to do it? Ever try to pee sitting down when you're a few pints in, and you really have to go? That's what working with Labview is like -- it will block your peehole until you are calmly sitting on the toilet like a good boy. If you are a girl it will make you pee standing up through one of those cardboard funnels.
Let's look at what you'd have to spend to get a hardware and software package that lets you look at signals at 10MHz.
Here is the "Buy Labview" (a.k.a. get raped in the ass with a cactus branch) web page:
http://www.ni.com/labview/buy/
I could go with Labview Base or Labview Full, but since I want to deploy stuff to customers' machines without forcing them to buy Labview, I'm going to go with Labview Professional for US$4299, although I should probably go for NI Developer Suite for US$4699 because it's the "best value."
Next, I want to sample at 10MHz or greater. In 5 minutes of searching, these are the only products that I could find, that will let me do that. Note that these both have a maximum rate of 10MHz; there don't seem to be NI products that can go higher.
- PXI-6115 for US$4199, or if we go with the "NI recommended" version, US$5249
- PCI-6115 which is just the PCI bus version of the PXI-6115, for US$3799, or US$4849 for the "NI recommended" version
If you go with the PCI version, you will need a PC with some pretty good horsepower to handle the 10MHz data stream. This may add an extra $1000 or $2000 to your total price.
If you go with the PXI version, then bend over and grab your ankles again, for into your bleeding rectum NI shall happily insert a well-lubricated PXI chassis of your choice, for an additional few thousands of $$$.
Add in all taxes and other costs (shipping, and oh yeah, $600 cables, anybody??) and it's pretty damn near $10k if not well above. Just for the privilege of writing multi-colored spaghetti code in order to make your measurements.
In conclusion, it is better to just get a real 60MHz digital scope for a few grand. Labview treats intelligent humans like dogs.