Sixclear, an Austin, TX based technology company, kicks off Lunch & Learn LabVIEW Training Webcasts

The community of LabVIEW’s most advanced users has grown and diversified over recent years, from LabVIEW Architects summits to forum meetings to a robust online community. Add to it now Sixclear’s Lunch & Learn series.

“LabVIEW’s user base and applications have steadily grown, and so its champions and architects are diving into uncharted territory at every turn,” explains Jassem Shahrani, Sixclear Co-founder. “We saw the need to showcase the new tools, techniques, and practices that build our LabVIEW community in an open forum with no certification prerequisite, or even a need to pre-register.”

Lunch & Learn webcasts are presented online at least monthly for an hour over lunch, central time. The topics presented thus far range from packed libraries, to new toolkits and frameworks in LabVIEW. Live attendees can ask questions to presenters, and the videos are then posted on Sixclear’s YouTube channel.

“This information is freely accessed and distributed, no need to sign in to attend the webcast or view the final YouTube video,” Shahrani says. He adds to stay up to date, attendees can voluntarily sign up to receive updates on future Lunch & Learn sessions.

Sixclear, an Austin, TX based technology company, offers free LabVIEW remote consulting as a follow-on to their LabVIEW training course.

“After a week of LabVIEW training, you finally feel capable of programming that cyborg you’ve dreamed will be your buddy since childhood,” explains Brian Spears, head of LabVIEW instruction at Sixclear. “The reality though, is that next week you’re playing catch-up with everything you put off during that week of training.”

Spears explains that’s why Sixclear has always included its online course to classroom attendees to review and expand upon concepts learned in the classroom.

“That’s still working well, but we want to take the next step to ensure the success of customers’ training investment by including remote consulting after the course,” Spears says.

Effective through June 2015, every student in Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training onsite or regional receives an hour of remote LabVIEW consulting with a Sixclear instructor to use after the course as they develop their own LabVIEW applications. Students of the online training will receive a half hour of consulting any time within their access period.

“We teach LabVIEW for a living, the students that get the most out the course are those that jump into a waiting LabVIEW project the week after the course. To show we mean business, we give a bonus half hour to anybody that schedules their consulting session the week after.”

Spears encourages future attendees to visit sixclear.com/labview-training for information on onsite courses and sixclear.com/regionals for the regional course schedule.

Sixclear, a National Instruments Alliance Partner specializing in LabVIEW Training and Development, gives 6 tips for NIWeek 2014 success.

Now in its 20th year, the annual NIWeek conference in Austin, TX draws an average of 3000 engineers and scientists from around the globe to learn and collaborate on automation, test, measurement, and control applications. This year’s conference falls August 4-7.

Jassem Shahrani, Sixclear Co-founder, offers an additional 6 tips in addition to those published a few years ago. National Instruments itself trusts his advice, as he is the featured speaker in the NIWeek promotional video.

Tip #1:Keep your eyes peeled for Twitter tips!

Unofficial meetups, impromptu gatherings, once-in-a-lifetime occurrences are all yours to digest by simply keeping up with @NIWeek or #niweek on Twitter.

Tip #2: Plan, then back-up plan

LabVIEW Champion, Michael Aivaliotis, collaborated with a few others LabVIEW gurus on his VI Shots Live meetup to create an unmissable list of recommended NIWeek presentations. However, the fire marshall may not condone your plan to just walk into these at the moment they begin. They’ll be popular, so either be early, or have a good backup plan! What’s the best way to plan backups? Take a look at the next tip…

Tip #3: Use the mobile app!

Like showing up to an empty room? Or realizing with bewilderment that a speaker is talking about a subject totally foreign? Plans change, sometimes last minute, grab the mobile app, stay up to date, and easily see your personal schedule after you log in.

Tip #4: The LAVA BBQ

It’s the best time all week to thank the LabVIEW champs that have saved your neck on the forums. An unofficial event that’s gotten so big, NI now features it in the official program. Pay before Aug 4th to save 5 big USD. Plus, with more door prizes than attendees, you’re bound to come out ahead, and be well fed. Then, win Sixclear’s Fitbit One door prize to work off all that Texas BBQ.

Tip #5: Streaming is the key(note)

Last year, NI started streaming the morning keynotes online. If you followed the previous tips and network late into the night, then set your laptop alarm to wake you to the sounds of the morning keynote from the comfort of your bed. Of course, even those who can’t attend the conference can take part.

Tip #6: Symposia! Fora! Summits! Are you a (big) physics nerd? Do you have your eyes on the next big technical horizon? Maybe you didn’t know about the Big Physics Symposium, the Cyber-Physical Systems summit, or several others that happen during NIWeek. You may have to take an elevator and walk to the other side of the convention center, but these events are well worth your attention.

Shahrani welcomes visitors with more questions to swing by booth 436 for more NIWeek tips and information on Sixclear LabVIEW Training and development.

Sixclear, an Austin, TX National Instruments Alliance Partner, offers its e-learning LabVIEW course free to nonprofit organizations.

Following fast on the heels of gifting its Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals online training to FIRST Robotics participants, Sixclear now has expanded free access to qualifying nonprofit organizations.

“Once the flood of giving starts, it’s hard to staunch the feelgood flow,” explains Brian Spears, director of LabVIEW education. “Our friends at nonprofits are often working from the heart, without the benefit of a large budget, so the efficiency gains from LabVIEW are even more valuable.”

Spears explains that a lightweight validation process is in place to ensure nonprofit status of potential LabVIEW students.

“Visit sixclear.com/nonprofit to be guided through the validation process. If it takes longer than instantaneous to be validated, you’ll have access to our test drive course in the meantime,” says Spears.

The audience for the Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals course is any user with little to no knowledge of LabVIEW. The course covers all topics on the National Instruments Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) exam, as well as data acquisition and instrument control.

“It’s essentially what most in the industry would consider to be a foundational LabVIEW course,” finishes Spears.

Sixclear, an Austin-based technology company, increases free access to LabVIEW learning resources for FRC participants and mentors.

For 22 years, the FIRST Robotics Competition has been an effective tool in getting middle and high school students worldwide interested in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) studies. Students, aided by mentors in their schools or communities, form teams to design and build robots to compete in international events. The necessary resources those teams require have always been provided by interested technology companies like Sixclear.

Sixclear’s Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training prepares users with little or no LabVIEW experience to design and program complete applications, including those running on a FIRST robot.

“There are plenty of options to program the FIRST robots. LabVIEW is a leading choice for that software, and we’re proud to offer LabVIEW training free of charge to these budding engineers and scientists,” explains Jassem Shahrani, Sixclear President.

Sixclear first began offering its LabVIEW course to FIRST competitors in December of 2012, and distributed free training to hundreds of students and mentors throughout that season. 
“We received a bunch of really pleasant notes from participants in the program, explaining how they went from no knowledge of programming, to building the code that eventually ran on their competing robot. That made us smile,” adds Shahrani.

The current season sees a rollout of a new website for easier access to Sixclear’s LabVIEW training:sixclear.com/frc.

“Students and mentors can visit us there and get immediate access to the training,” continues Shahrani, explaining that with a new online vetting process, participants no longer need to wait to be given manual access. 
“Sign up and you can be learning LabVIEW for free within minutes,” concludes Shahrani.

Sixclear, an Austin-based National Instruments Alliance Partner, updates their Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Online Training to LabVIEW 2013.
The new release of National Instruments LabVIEW rolls out every year at NIWeek. Eager users comb over the new features to incorporate them into their code to improve efficiency, reliability, and performance. In the case of Sixclear, these new features are also evaluated for inclusion in their Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training.

“This time around there are some very cool improvements to LabVIEW events that have been added to our course,” reports Brian Spears, head of LabVIEW course development at Sixclear. Added features include the Event Inspector Window, flushing the event queue, and user event priority.

Some other big additions to the course include new bookmarking capabilities while developing, attaching block diagram comments, and automatically including NI drivers in installers.

“As always, the new features have been taught in our instructor-led courses since August, but now the online videos have been updated with that content, so now our larger base of online users can take advantage,” adds Spears.

Sixclear also reports that LabVIEW users who have not signed up for their LabVIEW training can view some of the added LabVIEW 2013 videos on their LabVIEW programming video blog, VI High, viewable at blog.sixclear.com.

Sixclear, a National Instruments Alliance Partner based in Austin TX, celebrates 5 years of business with a LabVIEW training discount.

Statistics on small business survival aren’t particularly encouraging. According to the US Small Business Administration, only about half of those businesses see 5 years in operation.

“People ask us if it was really that bad starting our business in June of 2008, at the beginning of the worst financial crisis in 80 years,” recounts Brian Spears, Sixclear Co-founder. “We just have to throw back our heads and laugh and laugh because, yes, yes it was.”

Early investment in developing, recording, and delivering a fully online LabVIEW training course put a strain on the young company, which remained solvent by developing custom LabVIEW applications, a practice which continues today.

Jassem Shahrani, Sixclear Co-founder, continues, “But things got better, much better after we released our online LabVIEW training in January of 2010.”

Since then, Sixclear began delivering that week-long LabVIEW course in the classroom, both at companies’ facilities and open-enrollment locations.

Though still a privately held company, Sixclear leadership indicates that the company has grown by double or triple digits in each year of their existence. The company now offers other LabVIEW-based products and services besides training.

To commemorate their anniversary, the company will offer a buy-two-get-one-free deal until the end of June for their flagship offering, Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training online. Spears describes it as “the most generous discount we’ve ever offered." 

Instructions

To take advantage of our 5 year anniversary special, simply check out at sixclear.com/labview-training by clicking on any ‘Buy’ link, or visit sixclear.com/buy. If you purchase 3 licenses, all 3 will have immediate access and we’ll refund the cost of one. If you buy 2, send us an email with the request for the 3rd and we’ll manually enable that user.

Sixclear, an Austin-based National Instruments Alliance Partner, offers its online Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training free to all women where local custom restricts LabVIEW training attendance.

Sixclear hosts week-long regional LabVIEW courses in an increasing number of venues worldwide. New locations are requested and vetted through an online request form. Brian Spears, who manages Sixclear’s course delivery, explains: “If enough requests for a location come in, we do our best to get a course lined up.”

However, there are factors restricting some engineers abroad from learning LabVIEW in traditional training settings.

“We have people training with us from all over the world, representing many cultures and social norms,” Spears explains. “We were recently contacted by women in Saudi Arabia asking for a training course specifically for them since, by local law, they are not allowed to be trained alongside men. So we decided we could help those people by offering them our online course.”

Spears clarifies that Sixclear Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training takes users with little to no LabVIEW knowledge and teaches the curriculum outlined in the National Instruments Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) Exam, as well as data acquisition, instrument control and other topics of interest to beginning LabVIEW programmers.

“We know LabVIEW training and certification are a plus on any resume, and bringing affordable, quality LabVIEW training to students worldwide is Sixclear’s primary goal.”

Spears encourages all women living or working in an area where they are unable to attend technical training courses alongside men to sign up on Sixclear’s website in order to be contacted for the free training.

Sixclear, a National Instruments Alliance Partner and LabVIEW training company, shares a list of common mistakes by new LabVIEW developers and how to fix them. 

As both a LabVIEW training and consulting company, the developers at Sixclear see a lot of code made by new LabVIEW programmers. Some novice errors can have a huge negative impact. 

“We built our Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals course with lectures, exercises, and solution videos to address these and countless other concerns,” says Brian Spears, head of Sixclear LabVIEW course development. “We also update our VI High video blog with short snippets for the same sort of questions. So we’ll point to more information from these resources for each item in our list.” 

Problem 1: Race Conditions Caused by Local and Global Variables. Locals and Globals are blissfully simply to set up and use. But overuse leads to code that gives inconsistent data, hangs, or crashes. 
Solution: Use data flow and wires for sequential operations. For parallel operations, bring in data transfer mechanisms like queues, notifiers, and functional globals. 
More information: Unit 3 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One - Functional globals and parallel operations
Unit 1 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Two - Queues and notifiers
VI High 9 & 10 - Data flow
VI High 42 & 43 - Functional globals

Problem 2: No Error Handling. If an error occurs, the code comes to a screeching halt and gives a cryptic error, leaving the operator scratching a confused head. 
Solution: LabVIEW can fly a plane or lead a rover across Mars. But not if you’re using Automatic Error Handling. The error cluster is easy to use! We can gracefully exit, fix, or prevent erroring applications from being a problem. 
More information: Unit 2 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One - Error handling
VI High 46-48 - Error handling

Problem 3: Stacked Sequence Structures. They unnecessarily hide code, require sequence locals which break left to right data flow, and more frames generate more locals which creates more clutter. 
Solution: They’re in the palettes, yes. But only to maintain backwards compatibility with someone who already made the mistake of using them. Use data flow and error clusters instead. 
More information: Unit 1 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One - Data flow
VI High 48 - Data Flow with the error cluster

Problem 4: Overuse of Express VIs and Dynamic Data. The true data type and operation is hidden, so you may think you’re coding correctly when you’re actually getting erroneous data. 
Solution: There’s nothing wrong with using Express VIs to prototype code and tweak parameters in operations like digital filtering and performing power spectrums. But see what native LabVIEW VIs and functions the Express VI uses under the hood, and use those in your completed application instead. 
More information: Unit 1 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Two - Express VIs

Problem 5: Non-intuitive User Interface Eyesores. The User Interface is the face of your code, it should smile welcomingly to your user. Too many times we see it sprawling, overlapping, and garish without clear design. 
Solution: LabVIEW gifts us tab controls, decorations, and alignment/position tools to make a real looker of a UI. Use them. Your users will like you. 
More information: Unit 2 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One - User interfaces
VI High 1 and 2 - Front panel color and conditionally disabling front panel objects

Problem 6: Not Using Type Definitions. This can cause hours of frustrating rewrite when it’s time to expand or update your code. Using type defs from the start saves you a world of timewaste. 
Solution: Good code can change over time with minimal effort. Use type defs in most cases enums and clusters are used. 
More information: Unit 2 of Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Two - Type Definitions

Spears encourages new users to take advantage of the final days of Sixclear’s March promotion where access to Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One is free for a month.

Sixclear, a National Instruments Alliance Partner out of Austin, TX, grants free access to the first of two courses in their Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training series.

Effective immediately through the end of March, new and existing users of Sixclear’s online LabVIEW training can receive free access to Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One, the first of two courses in the Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Training series.

Sixclear’s president, Jassem Shahrani, explains that Sixclear recently opened up the full training series to nonprofits, most notably participants and mentors in the First Robotics Competition (FRC). Besides FRC signups, a large influx of new users from other institutions signed on.

“Revenue and buzz increased, as did our general feeling of satisfaction in helping people learn LabVIEW. So we thought we’d try giving away a large portion of the training for free for a limited time and see what happens,” Shahrani explains.

Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals One contains basic LabVIEW concepts geared to new users and comprises approximately 25 hours of training time.

“A full list of topics is found on our website, some of these include the LabVIEW environment, data types, basic structures, file IO and error handling, variables and parallelism, and basic architectures like state machines,” Shahrani says.

Shahrani goes on to mention that the content in Lucid LabVIEW Fundamentals Two can be seen grayed out in the online training environment, allowing users to decide if they would like to continue their training with the second course, including such topics as data acquisition, instrument communication, events, executables, property and invoke nodes, and type definitions.

“Both courses combined prepare users for the National Instruments Certified LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD) exam and constitute a solid base of understanding for developing in LabVIEW,” Shahrani finishes.

To gain access to the course, new users should sign up at sixclear.com/try. Users with an existing sixclear.com profile can sign into their online profiles and receive free access.