National Instruments Embraces Maker Future

None of NI’s staff uttered the phrase “cyber-physical systems” at this year’s NI Week. NI has pivoted completely to the IoT, it is a fundamental shift for NI. NI’s pivot began a few years ago and is now maturing with products targeted for education and grassroots hardware developers…known as the Maker Movement. There were several NI Week announcements about smaller Compact DAQ systems and DI Adem software, plus a host of Compact RIO, Flex RIO and Single-Board RIO controllers with matching LabVIEW RIO software, but something even smaller caught my attention. I found the Analog Discovery 2 NI Edition (AD2) set up on a small table in a section of the exhibit hall dedicated to education.