ABSTRACT
This chapter utilises waveform generation and analysis of sound waves as an example problem. It provides student a first look at how to automate all aspects of an experiment, including experimental planning, experimental setup, data acquisition, and data analysis. Computer software is commonly used for automating experiments. The level of automation can range from minimal to fully autonomous. For highly specialized experiments, like the Large Hadron Collider, all the software and hardware needed to acquire data is custom developed as part of the experiment. Computer programming languages, such as C, Java, and Python, have long been used to automate repetitive calculations and simple software tasks. Over time, computer-controlled hardware emerged. The visual nature of LabVIEW makes it more intuitive than other programming languages. It is also well supported by hardware manufacturers. LabVIEW has excelled because it has succeeded in making this process intuitive to users.
