Advice on GUI Building

[vessel-design]

As a beginner programmer to LabVIEW I have am currently having some trouble constructing the GUI for the application I am developing.  The application I am trying to implement is the following:

A GUI that starts collecting data from 4 sources, that begins collecting and displaying the real-time data on screen.

Once the user clicks a Start button, a file will automatically be opened (Currently working with ActiveX and Excel)

  Then the file would be written to every 5 seconds w/:

     --The 4 sources of data

     --A Counter of each iteration (or a time starting from 0s, when data first recorded)

Once the user clicks a Stop button, the file would be closed

And throughout this the data is being displayed real-time for the user to view.  This real-time data display would only be stopped on the main program stop or exit.

I have been experimenting with quite a few different things, but as I am still fairly new at this, I was hoping for some input or example that someone could point me to for guidance.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

The easies way for people to offer some help, is if there is something to look at, Could you either post your VI (s) or post some JPG's of your code.

Regards

Ray Farmer

[IanW]

Hi

I always use a csv file which will load up in Excell when you double click on it. As Ray says it's not clear what exactly you are looking for but take a look at the following code, it will read the data 10 times a second but only saves to file once every 5 seconds. It may not be what you are looking for but it might give you some ideas.

Ian

[labviewmission]

Hi,

It is difficult to write and read from a single file at same time.

There can be two methods.

1)Make a copy of the most recent file and write to another file. This is a real traditional method.

2)you can display your data on the front panel using a table or an array (which is almost equal to a spreadsheet)

regards

[vessel-design]

IanW,

Thank you very much for your example.  This is VERY close to what I needed to be able to do.  The only extra thing I need to be able to do using the same program, would be to be able to open up a file upon the Start Log button being pressed.  This would allow our user to be able to distinguish a new file every time they want to change certain parameters, and record different data without having to close the program and re-open it.  If you or anyone else may have a suggestion as to how to do this, it would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks again for all your help.

[IanW]

Hi there

I've added some extra code to start a new file while the program is running.

I also noticed that my original program saved more than one scan each 5 seconds. I've corrected that but the code now looks a bit clutered, I'm sure there is a simpler way of getting what you need. That's the fun with labview, trying new ideas and always searching for a simpler solution.

Ian