About alternatives to Matlab

[Phil Schmidt]

Brian Blais wrote:

> So my recommendation for a (nearly) complete Matlab replacement would be:
> 	python
> 	numpy
> 	scipy
> 	matplotlib
> 	pyrex
>


Brian,

Thanks for that list. I'm currently in the process of getting quotes
for a bunch of Matlab tools for hardware-in-the-loop simulation. Big
bucks.

I'd love to use Python, but I'm not comfortable with the hardware side
of that. I'm certain that most, if not all data acquisition hardware
comes with DLL drivers, which I could interface with using ctypes. I'm
concerned though about spending more time messing around with the
hardware interface than it's worth.

Do you have any experience with this side of the Matlab replacement
question? How about anyone else? Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Phil