[exmadscientist]

The hardware isn't even that good. What you're really paying for is the idiot proofing (i.e., input protection) and the warranties. Which -- even speaking as someone who has designed competing hardware -- is often a good tradeoff.

[elteto]

Interesting. Are you talking about the cRIO line or the PXI one?

My experience with the PXI line was that it was absolutely top notch. I’ve seen some really cool things done with that. Most electrical folks I’ve worked with loved the hardware but absolutely despised the price gouging. They were constantly looking for alternatives yet NI hw remained for most things.

The cRIO line.... it’s getting better and it has improved a ton, but in the early beginnings it was extremely buggy, both hw and software.

[exmadscientist]

I'm mostly referring to the analog sections of a few PXI cards I've looked at. This was in the context of "turn this benchtop prototype built with PXI into a form-factor product". I was surprised at how simple most of it is. There are a couple TI/BB highly-integrated PGA/ADCs that NI gets a lot of mileage out of.

But even if it's not as complex or interesting as, say, a Keithley electrometer, NI's execution really is top notch. Technical brilliance alone does not a product make.

[elteto]

I see. My experience was with medium test stands (couple of thousands of channels) in a more industrial setting, we didn’t really need high-accuracy or specialized ducers (there were maybe one or two of those and we usually wrote custom software for talking to then). Reliable, accurate enough and with strong platform support was killer for us. I don’t think anyone beats NI at that level of integration.