12-01-2016 08:32 AM
Hello,
I'm trying to add a pop-up visual alarm for a process parameter. I am measuring pressure, and if the pressure exceeds 20PSI I want to have a pop-up box appear on the front panel that can tell the operator to open up a pressure control valve. Can someone point me in the right direction of how to do this?
Thank you!
12-01-2016 08:45 AM
Using the "One button Dialog" function inside a case structure.
The case structure verify if the pressure is high or low than 20psi
12-01-2016 09:28 AM - edited 12-01-2016 09:35 AM
Be careful when adding pop-up screens. You can freeze your entire program while the pop-up is active which can do bad things if you are also trying to control something in the same loop.
You could have a indicator that changes color when the error pressure is met and have instructions in a text box on how to correct the condition. Then when the condition goes back to a normal range clear the textbox and change the indicator back to normal.
12-01-2016 10:02 AM
Bryan,
Thank you for this bit of information, we are trying to control a few things so freezing the entire program would be quite bad.
To do that, do I use the "Framed Color Box" indicator? I'm not seeing anywhere that I can wire a boolean if the pressure exceeds the 20PSI.
12-01-2016 10:14 AM
You can still use pop-ups, just be careful of where they are placed in your code.
For alarm indicators I usually use the square led boolean that is in the modern pallete. You can then customize the colors and text for the true/false conditions. It depends on the look you are going for with your program and if you have space on your front panel for for the indicators. I have no idea how many alarm conditions you are going to have.
If you have many alarms you could just have one boolean that says error when true and then make different text for each condition in the text box. There are many ways.....
12-01-2016 10:56 AM - edited 12-01-2016 10:56 AM
Project requirements for handling error conditions can vary wildly. Sometimes you simply need to indicate the error condition, but other times the user must acknowledge the errror condition. For the later, you can launch a subVI Front Panel with Modal Winow Behavior. The user will then have to interact with that subVI Front Panel and acknowledge the error condition. If you want to get fancy, you can make the popup dialog prompt the user for information (such as why the error condition occured) and save this to a log file. Modal dialog windows can change the data flow of your application but cmmon architectures with parallel loops can prevent this problem.
This article provides some good tips for using modal dialog windows: