LabView

I'm going to camp out here and watch the other responses, if you don't mind, Kari. I worked in a lab that used LabView to automate data collection. The scripts were all written by an outside specialist hired for the task. When I looked at the diagrams that purportedly showed how each script did it's job, I got lost instantly.

It gave me the creeps knowing that if the script broke for any reason, we would be down for a week until the specialist could be brought in. Luckily, the scripts never broke IIRC.

I've use Tcl/tk and Fluke and Dataq executables successfully, too. When the data collection process broke, for whatever reason, I could troubleshoot and repair the problem. A visual language like LabView *should* be intuitive and easily grasped by someone comfortable on the command line. I didn't find it to be. That is one *vertical* learning curve!

--Winston