Animated Boolean Indicator

[DonTan]

I would like to create boolean indictor to show the status of a motor fan.

The indicator will show a static fan if the input is false.

It will show an animation of the fan turning i.e. moving when the input is True.

Would appreciate if anyone could offer some advice me on how to carry out the implementation.

Would it be easier to implement the control using the picture control toolkit or the picture ring control?

I was unable to locate any help on picture control toolkit from the Labview Help files. The only documentation which I have was an obsolete Labview Picture Control Toolkit Reference manual dated back April 1994. It was downloaded from the NI website.

Please share with me any websites or books which you may know th
at provides more help or info on how to use the current version of the Picture Control Toolkit.

My current Labview version is Labview 6.0.2

Please feel free to email me at pwdt2002@yahoo.com if you have any advice or vi to share. Thanks.

[Nadav_Chernin]

Try to use any ActiveX Anomation control.
Such control have property filename *.avi and methods "Open", "Play", "Stop", "Close".

[JB]

In fact, this can easily be done with a picture ring.
You only need to draw the pictures and insert them in the picture ring. Then just use the Quotient & Remainder function in a while loop to switch from one picture to the next.

See the attached LV6 example.

[Jeremy Braden]

If you want to be really fancy, then upgrade to LabVIEW 6.1 which supports gifs(or rather the generic gif standard). This includes animated images. What you would need to do is to drop a classic square button in LabVIEW 6.1. The classic buttons have none of the 3d stuff. You then right click on the buttons >> advanced >> customize. This launches the control editor. Edit the control and import the animated gif from file for one state of the boolean button and you can import a static image for the other state. Now you have a boolean that will toggel between a staic image and an animated one. It will be tough to figure it out at first but learning how to customize controls is very rewarding.

You can learn more about the editor by looking at the
shipping doc "LabVIEW Custom Controls. Indicators, and Type definitions" This is found by opening LabVIEW >> help >> search the LabVIEW bookshelf. This launches a pdf of the shipping docs. A link to "LabVIEW Custom Controls. Indicators, and Type definitions" will be found there.

I have attached an example I wrote for LabVIEW 6.1

Jeremy

[DonTan]

Hi JB,

Thanks for your reply. When I tried to run the program on my computer, I encountered the following errors.

Property node: Invalid property.
Quotient and remainder, contains unwired or bad terminal.

Would appreciate if you could advise on how the errors could be rectified. My email is pwdt2002@yahoo.com.

I am currently using labview 6.0.1.

Thanks.

[JB]

It seems that this property (returns the number of elements in the picture ring) is not available in LV6.0. I created the VI in LV6.1 and saved it to LV6.0.

So delete it and wire a numeric constant with the number of pictures instead. The only "problem" is that you will need to update this value if you change the number of pictures.

[DonTan]

Hi Jeremy,

Which program did you use to copy and paste the animated GIF on the boolean control. What is the format of the animated GIF?

When I tried to paste an animated GIF from Internet Explorer onto the control, the GIF file was not animated. Is there any specific steps that should be undertaken before pasting the animated GIF?

[Jeremy Braden]

There are no specific steps that I can think of. I just saved the free animated gif to my harddrive. I placed a classic square button on the panel then right clicked on the button >> advanced >> customize. This lauched the control editor. I clicked on edit >> import picture from file and pointed to the gif. I then clicked on the wrench to turn it to tweezers. I right clicked on the button >> import picture. The image was immediately replaced and was animated.

Jeremy