As a follow-up to his NIDays international exhibition/conference in Austin (his Texas stronghold), National Instruments now organizes NIDays in many European countries, focusing on its specialties of PC-based design, test and control.
The fifteenth French edition of NIDays, held at the CNIT in Paris La Défense on February 7, attracted over 1,100 visitors, the same number as the previous record-breaking event. As in previous years, the organizers endeavored to attract a number of VIPs. For this year's event, they included space pioneer Patrick Baudry, who came to share his experience as an astronaut and his vision of innovation, and Alex Davern (Executive Vice-President of National Instruments), who presented his vision of graphic systems design.
As in previous years, the annual event for engineers, scientists and teachers featured a permanent exhibition and parallel lectures and courses:
- an exhibition of complementary products and solutions from our partners NIwith a record 70 stands, including three hubs dedicated respectively to education, sensors and vision/robotics
- plenary conferences (early morning and afternoon) and thematic conferences (70 in all), dedicated to graphic programming, data acquisition, sensors, modular instrumentation, RF measurement, control/command, embedded system design, teaching, research, services... with numerous presentations of applications developed in a wide variety of fields. Presentations can be downloaded from www.nidays.fr.
- 14 hours of practical work, including LabVIEW graphical programming, software engineering tools, data acquisition hardware, control and embedded systems design and PXI instrumentation.
As every year, NIDays also organized a competition for the best applications built around the products of National Instruments. Among the highlights of the 2012 event was the first edition of two robotics cups:
- the first, aimed at technical high school students (with the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit), was won by the Institut Saint-Louis in Armentières.
- the second for higher education (with the Robotics Starter Kit from National Instruments), won by ISAT. Competitions took place throughout the day, with the finals closing the afternoon, broadcast live on the web.
Learn more: www.nidays.fr/