This month, DMC attended one of our favorite events of the year, NIWeek. A team of seven DMC employees gathered in Austin to represent each of our five office locations. As always, NIWeek proved to be a fun week of sharing expertise and shaking hands with other National Instruments specialists.
When we weren't attending sessions or checking out the awesome demos on the convention floor, DMC was exhibiting in booth 533.
Visitors were amazed by our Tilt Table demo, which uses National Instruments cRIO, FPGA, and LabVIEW technologies.
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Our favorite presentations covered topics including machine learning, building better HMIs, continuous integration in LabVIEW, and remote control and monitoring with touch screen panels. One keynote presented several interesting case studies in different industries utilizing NI hardware and software. In another keynote, Mickey McManus of Autodesk gave a relatable and entertaining presentation on "Inspiring and Enabling Generations of Innovation."
Several hands-on sessions allowed you to hook up to and program NI hardware. We enjoyed the hands-on practice with some cool Real-Time, FPGA and SoftMotion applications.
Tuesday's keynote featured a demonstration of a seismic research project. The system ran at 40 TB/s using 400 FPGAs! It uses 800 microphones and 800 sound canceling speakers to test geological models with this massive custom FPGA-based computer.
NIWeek is always full of cool demos to explore and this year was no exception. We loved playing arcade games made using NI hardware like Pac-Man and DDR. Another demo was made of a 3D cube of lights that would illuminate in different patterns and allow you to play a game of 3D snake (but it was super hard).
The flying dart board demo handed you a dart gun and asked you to try to miss the target. A vision system would then locate the darts as they were fired and move the target so that you always hit it. It was a fun demo tying together vision and motion control all running on the RIO platform.
The coolest demo during one of the keynotes was the Scalevo Stairclimbing Wheelchair. The wheelchair that climbs stairs using two rubber tracks that fold out and two wheels. All of these actions are controlled by a single myRIO!
Everyone was excited when our headquarters city, Chicago, was named User Group of the Year!
Many attendees waited to watch bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. There are thousands that sleep under this bridge during the day and fly out at sunset!
When we weren't busy meeting new people, the DMC team enjoyed the opportunity to hang out together. Now that DMC has offices in five locations across the country, we love chances to spend time with our colleagues in person.
It's become a DMC tradition at NIWeek to plan a paddle boarding excursion on the Colorado River. It's a memorable way to break away from the conference for a bit and do some bonding on boards!
Thanks for another great NIWeek!
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