Leaderboard

NI Week was a blast and while there I got to mention a few things I was trying that I'd like to share with the community. One of them is this thing I'm calling a Multi Panel Interface (MPI). The code is rough around the edges, very rough. This is probably the least polished code I've posted in a long time but this code has been sitting in a half working state for a while, and if I took the time to clean it up, it might never be ready. So please be gentle, there's room for improvement but I think the basics are there. Now with that out of the way here's what I got. I wanted to make an interface similar to Veristand. I don't want to re-create the wheel when it isn't necessary but anyone who has worked with Veristand knows that there are quite a few limitations, and as a result I started developing a UI that is dynamic. So that controls and indicators can be added and setup in way that could be saved and loaded for different operator types. This would be setting and getting event based information from Actors running asynchronously. Implementation It is a publisher subscriber architecture. Here there are actors for each set of hardware we care to read from. Later we could talk about controlling Actors but for now lets just talk reading. So for example there maybe an Actor for CAN, Power Supply, AIO, DIO, FPGA, Real-Time (talking to another PC), UPS, etc. Each Actor has a functional global that describes what data it has for other panels to display. For the time lets call any data an Actor is publishing a "channel". An Actor will publish the channel data to user events, and in a global it will have the list of user events and their names so they can be subscribed to. The actual messaging system between the Actors and the Panels can be anything and in my demo I actually just have random numbers because the demo isn't meant to showcase the messaging it is meant to showcase the UI. UI The purpose of the demo posted is to show that a tabbed interface can be made, and be made semi-dynamically. There are 3 things to be defined to understand what is going on. The Parent VI, the Panel VI, and the Child VI. In the demo the Parent is the top level "Main.vi". Clicking the "Add" button will add a Panel VI which is a shell of a VI that has controls to minimize, pop out, and control menus to the Child. The Panel has a subpanel that contains the Child VI. The Child VI in this demo is only a graph showing random data. The Child VI is tied to the Panel VI using a subpanel. The Panel VI is tied to the Parent VI using Windows user32.dll function calls. The user can interact with the Child anyway the child defines. There is no right click override (like in Veristand) where you can no longer right click on a graph and get a menu. The Parent VI also has little restrictions. It is a normal VI with a menu bar which can be used for things like managing Panels. In the demo there is also tabs in the Parent. They are fake tabs in that there are 20 but the ones not being used are hidden. There are neat UI elements that are hard to describe in text. Things like docking/undocking Panels, minimizing Panels while docked or not, resizing Panels while docked or not, moving panels quickly and easily, renaming panels, intuitively adding tabs while moving panels. These are the basics that I didn't know if I could do so I did first. The messaging I described before is not difficult it just takes some time to define how Actors talk and how Panels subscribe to the data. I know there are some UI bugs. The biggest one that you'll notice is trying to move a Panel when docked will have some z-order issues with other Panels that are docked, but there are others. Code The actual code in the demo uses several pieces of code I've found. The parent child idea I originally saw in the Dynapanels demo. Then there are several user32 functions from the Windows API. Panel controls were from UI Panels. OpenG Array, Error, and Application Control is needed, I'm not sure if there are others. http://screencast.com/t/P9SJ1anR Please feel free to comment and use as you see fit. Just know I won't be supporting this as a real project. Multi Panel Interface.zip

Greetings Friends of LAVA, colleagues, cohorts, and Wireworkers Extraordinaire -- it's LAVA BBQ time! Date: Tuesday, August 02, 2016 Time: 7:30-10:00pm (after the NIWeek Block Diagram Party) Location: Scholz Garten, 1607 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78701 (1 mile from Convention Center) Cost: $30 Early Bird (until July 15th) $35 Regular Admission (until July 31st) $40 At the door (Aug 1st - 2nd) Meal Options: Standard meal is your choice of brisket, ribs, or chicken, with sides of beans, cole slaw, and potato salad. A vegetarian option is available when purchasing tickets. Cash bar, beer and wine. Who: Everyone is welcome, including spouses traveling with you. Even if it's your first time, expect to recognize many faces/names from the forums and NI R&D. What to wear: It's an outdoor venue in Austin during August. So dress for the weather and comfort. Door Prizes: Towards the end of the event, we will have a raffle to give away prizes. All attendees are eligible and will receive a raffle ticket upon entry. or get tickets on The LAVA BBQ 2016 Event Page Do you want to sponsor a door prize? - Continue Reading: If you or your company want to sponsor a LAVA 2015 BBQ door prize, please post a reply below. You can also include a small blurb about your company and a link to your website in the post below. By donating a prize you and your company will receive a small announcement of your choosing, during the event. We will ask you to write the announcement on a post-it note and will attach it to the prize to be read before awarding it. We love the door prizes, but we love time for socializing too. Here are some guidelines to keep our event balanced and streamlined. We would prefer a single item donation. If donating more than one item, then multiple identical items is strongly preferred. So we don't spend our time on a flood of refrigerator magnets, please donate something valued at $25 or more. If donating non-tangible items or something that is not physically with you, then please bring a card with your contact info and instructions on how to collect the prize. This will be given to the winner. All prizes are acceptable except those listed below (examples from last year): Not recommended: Apparel (hats, t-shirts, underwear etc) Branded trade show booth type giveaways (mouse pads, pens, keychains etc) Software licenses (Toolkits, add-ons, LabVIEW) Jokes or something meant as a gag and not a real prize. Hope to see you there! Chime in once you buy tickets to let everyone know you're coming.

worked fine for me. I'm in.

See you there :-)

Once again, I'll be there with (some of) the rest of the LabVIEW Tools Network team. See everyone in a few weeks!

Very excited guys, can't wait. It will just me this year.

So have I! It's addicting!