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Perry_S

Timed LabVIEW Message box without buttons

Status: Declined

I'm declining this due to limited support from the community. There is an easy enough workaround of calling a VI.

 

Thanks,

Trent

Recently I have had a number of customers ask me if there was a way to create a timed Message box that did not have buttons on it. Of course I told them that there wasn't any. Their requests did get me thinking and I can see that there are times when a timed message popup could be useful. Essentially it would just display a message and go away after a select period of time. I would love to see one. 

 

Regards,

 

Perry S.

 
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
6 Comments
~jiggawax~
Trusted Enthusiast

This is already doable with the default TestStand message box.  You sure you're in the right forum here?

jigg
CTA, CLA
testeract.com
~Will work for kudos and/or BBQ~
RayFarmer
Trusted Enthusiast

The TestStand MessagePopup step type has to have at least one button although it does have a timeout setting that can be activated.

Regards
Ray Farmer
Raydur
Member

I've recently run into a need to have something like this as well. We needed a message to appear to indicate to the user they needed to place their hands into the safety mechanisms that were being monitored by another thread. Once they place their hands into the safe zones, the test would continue. We accomplished this by simply having a short timeout and the message in a loop (checking the status of the mechanisms between loops), but that also makes the message continually appear, disappear (i.e. continually flicker). It also had a "cancel" button, but that was tough for the operator to "click" because it was constantly disappearing/reappearing with each itteration of the loop. The timeout feature worked, but required an additional button that didn't really serve any purpose and complicated the appearance of the dialog box.

 

Ideally, the timeout should be able to be enabled without a button needing to be present, and even better a button (or "timeout") should be able to be activated by the status of a variable (boolean).

WireWeaver
Active Participant
Status changed to: Declined

I'm declining this due to limited support from the community. There is an easy enough workaround of calling a VI.

 

Thanks,

Trent

https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentweaver
Phippster
Member

A timed message popup would be really useful for us right now. Failing that, information regarding an easy workaround would benefit the community. 

Raydur
Member

I just ran into this need (again), and in searching to see if anything was readily available I ran into this post (again).

 

Disappointed to see that the request was declined, and even more disappointed to see that the suggested workaround from NI (I think - Trent doesn't have a title but I would assume it is someone from NI that is making the decision to decline) is to create a separate VI file (that now needs to be code tracked and maintained) rather than using the built-in functionality of TestStand. Beyond that, there would now be a discontinuity between the rest of the test (with regard to message dialog appearance and functionality) for this dialog.

 

LabVIEW obviously has it's purposes and things it is better suited for, however workarounds for built-in TestStand functionality (especially one this simple) should not be one of them. I think this should be reconsidered.