Lots of Boolean indicators

My front panel has three tabs that are populated with lots of boolean indicators. What's the best way to minimize the mess on the block diagram. I'm also using references for a number of boolean controls as well.

The best way is use one array of boolean for each tabs as johnsold suggested. That will make the front panel clean and in the block diagram you can mangae them easily.
Kudos are always welcome if you got solution to some extent.
I need my difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy my success.
--Ranjeet

Similar Messages

Why am I unable to select the boolean indicators on my front panel?

Hello all,
This has to be an easy one for you guys, but here goes...
I created a front panel with approximately 20 boolean indicators on it (LEDs). I realized that I only had 10 functional, so I made the others 'greyed out and disabled'. Well, now the ones I disabled are functional again, so I want to enable them. Problem is, when I go to the diagram and select 'show indicator' it is still grayed out. I cannot click on the indicator on the front panel to 'enable' the indicators. I cannot select them at all.
I've tried creating property nodes and enabling them that way. They are no longer grayed out when I do this, but I still cannot click on them to move them about the front panel.
All
I want to do is select them so I can rearrange the way they look on the panel, but I cannot click on them.
And, yes, I've had my tool palete on both 'Automatic Tool Selection' and 'Position/Size/Select'. It is also interesting that I can select and move the indicators which I never disabled in the first place.
Any help would be great!
Thanks in advance,
Dave Neumann
[email protected]

"Neumannium" wrote in message
news:[email protected]..
> Paul,
>
> Part of the problem is that I cannot click on them at all. If I try
> to right click, the Controls palette pops up (like it would if there's
> nothing on the front panel).
>
> If I drag a box around them, they are not selected. It's as if they
> don't exist, but they do! They still function -- I can still run the
> test and the booleans react as they should, but they are not where I
> want them to be (the user cannot see them all without scrolling).
What happens if you go to the diagram and double click on the control? It
should take you to the front panel and highlight/select the control.

Blown Up/Shrunk Boolean Indicators on the partially viewable front panel

My VI works fine on my laptop but after the executable is built and deployed onto the target device(WindowsXP), I could only view part of the front panel and one Boolean indicator and Progress Bar show up in either very big or very tiny sizes.
The application is a monitoring device that runs ten while loops in parallel and communicate via notifiers.
The hardware is USB-6008 and currently uses 3 Analog Inputs and 5 Digital Outputs(3 of which connect to silicon relays and 2 unwired).
Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Window size was 570 by 411. Run-Time position was Unchanged.
Scale Object with Pane was
checked. Is this right?
Thanks.
Attachments:
Screenshot.doc ‏1541 KB

How do I initialize boolean indicators each time I run a program

I am measuring voltages on protoypes and would like to be able to place a prototype in a fixture and hit "run" and see all my boolean leds go blank then either teh pass or fail light up accordingly as each test runs. This works fine the first time I open and run teh program, however if I hit run again the leds keep there old value until the test runs again instead of going blank first. They all have "off" as their default value, however hitting run does not make them go to thier default value. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks

I don't understand how to do this, can you give me an example please? I'm attaching my VI, could you just sow me 1 example .
Thanks
Ringo
Attachments:
Falcon_Automation_testing2.vi ‏677 KB

Do Controls/Indicators in all display tabs get updated even if not visible?

I have a pretty simple Labview VI that I need to run at a 10 ms loop. Currently, I can only get it to run at 17 ms. It has a RS422 that has to send and receive a message every 10 ms. I have a lot of troubleshooting indicators on a Debug Tab. I am wondering if these indicators are being updated even though they are not on the currently displayed tab. If so, will changing the "visible" property node of all these indicators speed up execution?
Thanks,
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello tootalled,
Do you happen to have synchronous display enabled? In most applications, having asynchronous display enabled significantly speed up execution without affecting what the user sees. For example, you can update a Boolean value hundreds of times in a second, which is more updates than the human eye can discern. Asynchronous displays permit the execution system to spend more time executing VIs, with updates automatically reduced to a slower rate by the user interface thread.
If you want asynchronous displays, right-click the control or indicator and select Advanced»Synchronous Display from the shortcut menu to uncheck the menu item.
Please see this document regarding VI execution speed: http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361H-01/lvconcepts/vi_execution_speed/
Like crossrulz said, I also recommend using the Producer/consumer architecture. This way, you can process your data in one loop, pass the data via a queue, and update your indicators in a separate loop that does not affect the speed of your processing vi.
K. Anderson
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Measuring time between activation of two boolean

Hello
I want to measure the time elapsed between activation of two boolean variables/indicators. In my code I have DAQ acquiring 2 digital signals which trigger corresponding 2 boolean indicators. Now I am trying to measure time between the event when my first boolean indicator gets the signal and the event when my second boolean gets the signal. I am attaching my code. I checked DAQ and my indicators everything works fine, but just when I try running the code with the 'elapsed time' part, its not running. Any help will be appreciated.
Thank You.
Attachments:
Test Code.vi ‏45 KB

So, feel free to give more detail. I'll just give you a couple thoughts:
1) The primary issue with your code is that it probably doesn't do what you think it does. How this VI will run is that it will get one data from the DAQmx routine, then pretty much stay in the inner while loop since the event structure has an indefinite timeout. Worse, I don't think changing the value of the boolean controls would trigger the value changed event anyways. In the end, you don't even need the Event Structure to do what you want to do, nor do you need the inner while loop. Just check the values for each iteration of the outer while loop instead and do what you need to do with those.
2) You are acquiring only one data point at a time. Which is OK if your events are particularly slow with respect to the effective sampling rate of the of loop (which might be able to pick up signals that change on the order of milliseconds or perhaps a bit less). If your signals are faster, you need to think about reading lots of samples at a time (arrays of booleans) and properly triggering your acquisition close to the event it needs to pick.
3) If your signal is a pulse, make sure that the pulse width of the signal is much longer than than 1 / sampling rate. If it isn't, you could miss the pulse entirely doing this approach.
4) The faster signals (as long as your have a quick enough sampling rate), the best thing is always to use a counters approach. In many of the DAQ cards and peripherals that NI offers, there are counters that can be driven with the sample clock (one of the fastest clocks on the device) or even a faster time base, and then the 'events' can be used to trigger acquisitions of the counters. Meaning you get exactly what you want: data points that correspond to times when events occur.

How do I make a boolean tone?

On my VI, I currently have 2 boolean indicators (LEDs). In addition to these LEDs lighting up, I would like to have audible tones as well. For example, whenever LED 1 is on, I want to play a 440Hz tone. Whenever LED 2 is on, I want to play a 880Hz tone. In my application these two LEDs are mutually exclusive so I don't have to worry about both tones playing simultaneously.
Thanks for the help!

The reason I had suggested using a shift register (or similar mechanism) to keep track if the sound is already playing is so that you do not restart the sound playing when you get into the "true" part of the case to play the sound since you're continously updating the boolean indicator. If the sound generation is done via a subVI (as it most likely would be), calling the VI again will simply restart the sound and it will sound like a Milli Vanilli concert.
Attached is a simple demonstration program (LabVIEW 8.20).
I was unable to find the "Continous Sound Output" example in the Example Finder. There's a "Continuous Sound Input", though.
Attachments:
sound and boolean.vi ‏12 KB

Indicators show thru to front page of tab control.

I have a tab control with boolean indicators on the second and third pages. When the indicators are activated (mine blink when certain tests are selected), they show on the front panel. I have tried to "move to front" the tab control but that didn't work. The property node for the tab control doesn't seem to have anything to help either. Any ideas?

I found a straightforward solution here: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Determine-if-Tab-is-active/td-p/1841435
which does change as the tabs change.
The blinking question was asked, as noted, 12 years ago. I apologize for the confusion caused by changing the question.
I consider my question solved.
Thanks to those who responded.

Colour and transparent boolean

Hello everyone,
I want to set the boolean indicator to colour and transparant. This mean when error occurs, boolean indicator will be changed to red and transparent, so this boolean will not cover the below floor map. I set all boolean onto the actual floor map and i don't want to cover floor map. I can set only transpaent at no error state but i cann't set red colour and transparent at error state.. Is there any way to set. Thanks for all in advances..

Here's a very rough draft of the idea above (LabVIEW 8.5). Of course you should import custom graphics into the boolean indicators for the desired look.
Message Edited by altenbach on 02-13-2009 08:57 AM
LabVIEW Champion . Do more with less code and in less time .
Attachments:
FloorPlan.vi ‏10 KB
FloorPlan.png ‏27 KB

Change boolean indicator type across entire VI

I have a VI with hundreds of round boolean indicators. I would like to change them to rectangular. The only way I know to do this right now is to right click, then choose Replace and navigate to the rectangular type. If I select several indicators at a time, this right-click context menu is no longer avaialble.
Is there a way to do this across the entire VI, either by editing a params file somewhere or by being able to select many at the same time/

bmishoe wrote:
thank you, I'll see what I can do...
Here's a Quick Drop plugin that'll do what you describe. Change the style constant in the For loop to change what it replaces the selected objects with.
This VI is in LabVIEW 2012 and was not made pretty.
Jim
You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are. ~ Alice
Attachments:
QD_ReplaceIndicator.vi ‏34 KB

I am running a VI with 8 Booleans that serve as selections. Why does it run so slow?

Do the boolean indicators slow down LAbVIEW?

You don't give enough information.
Post an example, or at least explain what you mean by "serve as selections".
Boolean indicators are quite fast - they don't occupy ANY time unless they actually change state.
Steve Bird
Culverson Software - Elegant software that is a pleasure to use.
Culverson.com
Blog for (mostly LabVIEW) programmers: Tips And Tricks

How do I count events falling into three categories?

Hello everyone,
   My name is Sean Cummings. I am very new to Labview and this is my first post on the forum. I work for a testing facility dealing with automotive components. I run test cells and build parts. I recently commissioned a new test cell at our location which came from another one of our facilities. The test cell impacts axles. The Labview program we use to run the cell was created by one of our few programmers. He is extremely busy and works in another facility so I have taken it upon myself to learn more about Labview and try on my own to make improvements to the software. I plan to attend some of the Core Labview classes if I find that I enjoy working with the software (so far i do).
   Currently the program is mostly manually controlled. Data paths and controls such as speed are commanded by the operator. There is a 4 second automated cycle in which the Labview VI commands clutches to initate the impact and aquires data from 3 load cells and a speed sensor. Once this cycle is complete the operator must click a button to open a call by reference subvi. The subvi analyzes the impact data and displays a graph as well as several calculated data points. The operator is then required to open an excel spreadsheet and manually enter the data. I created the spreadsheet with conditional formatting to show the operator whether the impact event was within the acceptable range and to track impacts over target, in target range, and under target. Currently each part runs 400 impact cycles and the operator must transfer 6 data points for each impact. In the next couple weeks we will be testing parts going 1640 impact cycles. We need a better solution to make the process more efficient.
   My original thought was to have the subvi populate the excel spreadsheet automatically. After several days of trial and error I was able to speak to a programmer from another facility who explained to me that excel was not not a text based software and my methods would not work without the Labview excel toolkit.
   I then talked to the engineers within my company and they agreed with me that the excel spreadsheet was not necessary if Labview could track the impact events internally. I then set to work trying to create counters and indicators to track the impact events. For this to work I only need to look at one number. This number is the Total Output Torque from the impact event. I created 3 boolean indicators on the main VI. One for impacts over target, one in range, and one under target. I also created 3 corrosponding indicators to show counts for each. I also need an indicator showing total impact events, and an indicator showing valid impact events (the sum of in range and over target). I use a control for the target . The range is + or - 5% from target. I have done my best to research and try to do this myself, but I can't quite get it right. I am using while loops to count. I encounter problems with multiple counts for the same event. I would also like to trigger the counters at the same time and not have separate stop commands for each.
   For this to be effective I will probably have to make these functions a subvi. I would need them to initiate when the call by reference "analysis" subvi is called and stop when it stops so maybe they can just be part of that subvi. I need the indicators and control for target to be on the main UI. I also need a button to reset the counts when impact direction and target is changed.
   I apologize for any misuse of terminology. I also apoligize if my program is a mess. This is all very new to me and I'm trying to learn as much as possible. Thanks you all in advance for your help.
   -Sean-
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
Impact Counter_2.vi ‏16 KB

Wow! Thank you guys for the quick response and pointing me in the right direction!
Altenbach, your example does exactly what I need!
Moving forward I should be able to reference the actual total torque number from the call by reference subvi and have the event structure initiate based on the change of that number correct?
I tried something like this already and for some reason when I add a terminal to the terminal pane on the subvi it does not show up on the main vi. I can only imagine this is because the sub vi is "call by reference". The subvi already outputs an indicator to the front panel of the main vi called "total torque". This is inside a case structure so I don't know how to reference it for the subvi which you created.
Again, I just want to say I am very thankful I am for the help. I am not here looking for free programming help. I am here asking questions because I truly want to learn. I know I will have to spend a lot more time reading tutorials and practicing basics. This program was just given to me last minute and I'm doing my best. Usually I am very resourceful and can find solutions on my own. This one was just over my head. Thank you.
-Sean-
Attachments:
Impact Tester Main_03.vi ‏245 KB
ITS_Data Graphs.vi ‏567 KB

Changing alarm limits in a library from within a VI

I am running LabView 8.6f1 with the DSC module on XP. I have some (network-published) shared variables defined in a project library created through the project explorer, but I would like the user to be able to change the alarm limits from within a VI (and have those changes remembered). I have tried using the SharedVariableIO property node, but the new setting is lost as soon as the VI is exited and restarted. From other posts, this seems to be because the property node updates the variable engine but not the library file.
I have tried various permutations on undeploying, saving, and redeplying the library while changing the value but that doesn't seem to help. Can this be done? Thanks,
--David

Vijay,
That's what I tried initially, but it doesn't work. If the shared variable engine goes down, or the library is ever re-deployed, the changes will be undone.
Misha,
Thanks for the info about not being able to programatically edit the library; it's good to know I can stop trying for now. I guess I will suggest that feature for next release. The variable idea would work (but take a lot of variables), or I guess I could use a configuration file, but I don't like the idea of having a different "true" alarm value in the library.
On the topic of shared variable alarms, how can you easily read the alarm state for use elsewhere in a VI? For instance, I have separate LED indicators for a Hi, Lo, and Rate alarm; how can I read a specific variable's alarm state so I can wire it to such boolean indicators? The ActiveX controls don't seem to have this sort of functionality. I have tried the DSC ReadAlarms, but this returns all current alarms for each selected variable in an array of clusters. Is the way to do this to string search that array of clusters for the alarm URL of interest, and if it is found/not found equals active/not active? Thanks,
--David

How do I programmatically modify array element sizes?

Hi All,
I have a quick question about modifying the size of array elements. Hopefully someone can help, because I am at a dead end!
I am logging some intensities from a Fibre Array using a camera. For calibration of the system, I acquire an image from the camera, click points on the image to divide it into areas of interest. I overlay my image with a grid showing the regions of interst - for example a 4x6 array. I then have to select the fibres - or ROIs - I want to log from.
I have a cluster type-def ( a number and a boolean) to specify the fibre number and to turn logging from that fibre on/off. I overlay an (transparent) array of this typedef over my image to correspond with the regions of interest. So here's my problem - I want to modify the dimensions of the array so each control matches my ROI. I can resize the elements by rightclicking on the elements on the frontpanel, but can't find a way to do it programmatically. The Array Property Node>>Array Element>>Bounds won't 'change to write'...thats the first thing I tried.
Its really only important that the elements align with my ROIs - so programmatically adding in gaps/spacings would also work for me...but again I can't figure out how to do this! I've attached a screenshot of part of my image with array overlaid to show you all exactly what my problem is.
Thanks in advance for you help,
Dave
PS I am running Labview 8.6 without the vision add on.
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
Array_Overlay.png ‏419 KB

Here's my cheat (and cheap?) way If you want to get fancy and center the numeric and boolean indicators, you could add spacers on the north and west sides, too.
Attachments:
ClusterSpacer.vi ‏13 KB

How do I get a case structure's panel?

I am trying to place a boolean indicator within a case structure via LabVIEW scripting and am not having any luck.
I started with the following source code, which creates and populates a case structure from an array:
https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-22703
So my code, rather than put an enum inside each case, creates some compound arithmetic and a mask for each case. This is all working fine. I now want to place boolean indicators on the front panel that correspond to each case, and this is where my problem is. I can create the indicators, but when I look at the block diagram view, all of the indicators are located outside of the case structure, rather than the indicators being inside of each respective case.
I think the reason is that a boolean indicator is created by passing a reference to the front panel. But the problem with this is that the VI panel reference does not indicate that the boolean should be placed inside the case structure, just on the panel, so when you view in block diagram mode, it's just thrown the indicators all outside the case structure and wired them up via tunnels. I am getting the panel reference by accessing the OwningVI field of my CaseSel object. I feel like there must be some field I should be able to access that indicates to put the block-diagram boolean inside of the respective case structure, but I can't find it.
I've attached a file with 3 pics in it. One shows a pic of the code I'm using to create the indicators. One shows the type of output I'm looking for. One shows the type of output I'm getting.
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
lv_case_struct.jpg ‏221 KB

Before you connect the wire to the terminal, call the Move method on the indicator's terminal and use one of the case structure's Diagrams[] as the owner. This will move the terminal into the structure.
Try to take over the world!

Lots of Boolean indicators

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