PDA Design Patterns

[jgcode]

Hi

Does anyone have any suggestions/recommendations for design patterns when using PDA type devices and LabVIEW?

Obviously screen real estate is tight, so to view data for our app I will need multiple screens (and therefore an Engine/API to manage them).

Compared to things I do in standard LabVIEW the PDA environment seems really limited - i.e. no VI Server for interacting with the screen etc...

Can any post their experiences/ideas?

And anything that would improve the usability of such a UI (i.e. from a user's perspective).

Cheers

-JG

[Yair]

My experience with the mobile module (the PDA module, actually) is both limited and old, but I can say that in the past it was quite buggy. You should plan some extra time for debugging.

As for the UI design, you can either go with multiple windows scheme (where only one window appears at every one time) or try to combine everything into a single window. I'm assuming you can't use subpanels, and tabs really don't work. What I did in the past was use a tab control, hide the tabs and used a ring to control which page of the tab was visible.

You may wish to have a look at NI's UI community. Simon H. (if I remember correctly) posted a cool UI demo where the screen (a tab) slides in and out based on your selection. I assume the design is based on an app from one of the smart phones so popular these days (and I assume you can have a look at some of those to get some design ideas).

[jgcode]

My experience with the mobile module (the PDA module, actually) is both limited and old, but I can say that in the past it was quite buggy. You should plan some extra time for debugging.

As for the UI design, you can either go with multiple windows scheme (where only one window appears at every one time) or try to combine everything into a single window. I'm assuming you can't use subpanels, and tabs really don't work. What I did in the past was use a tab control, hide the tabs and used a ring to control which page of the tab was visible.

You may wish to have a look at NI's UI community. Simon H. (if I remember correctly) posted a cool UI demo where the screen (a tab) slides in and out based on your selection. I assume the design is based on an app from one of the smart phones so popular these days (and I assume you can have a look at some of those to get some design ideas).

Thanks Yair, this is the only example I have "seen" with tabs - I will try to find Simon H's post.

Yes, there a no subpanels either.

The whole experience does not look like fun (compared to using standard LabVIEW)

[Yair]

See here - http://decibel.ni.com/content/groups/ui/blog/2010/04/29/creating-quality-uis-with-ni-labview--developer-days-2010-presentation

The touch panel example is the relevant one.

My understanding has always been that the module converts the code to C (like the embedded module) and then uses eVC to compile it. I expect that this is the source of most of the bugs, since it's a process which is considerably different than the desktop app-builder.

Anyway, you should be happy you have tabs. If memory serves, the first version of the PDA module didn't have them.

[jgcode]