How can I organize many inputs on a front panel?

[el_ManBearPig]

I have a hanging weight test run using a Labview vi that starts a timer when a switch is turned on by hanging a weight. The switch is connected to a digital in on a DAQ. On the front panel it displays the elapsed times for each switch along with indicators where you can enter the sample information, failure mode ect. When the weight drops the switch turns from on to off the elapsed time and other information from the front panel are written to a text file. The current VI is set up for 30 switches, I need to increase this to 100+. Scaling the data acquisition and timing is not a problem. The problem is how to organize and display so many elements to the user.

All 100+ switches may not be used all the time. Sometimes you may only need 20 and would not want the clutter of 80+ unused spots on the screen. It’s also possible that that multiple people may be using 20 spots each so it would also be nice to be able to organize one persons from another’s.

does anyone have a creative solution to any of this?

[Blokk]

I would use an array of clusters. Also add a vertical scrollbar to the array.

[altenbach]

In particular, a 2D array with two columns, especially if the number of elements is always even.. You can change the container size based on the size of the array. You can also reshape to a 1D array in the code if this is more convenient on the diagram.

[el_ManBearPig]

Is there a way where the user can select which switches to have displayed and designate them as a group. That group could then be displayed separately on the screen and write to a separate file?

This way a second user could do the same and wouldn't mix up anything

[altenbach]

You can have a control for "array size", which then would show the correct number of array elements. You could even save it in an ini file for each user, for example and load it on program start.

[zou]

You can use the background color of controls for status and pass/fail.

This way, you only need 2 controls for each station.

[altenbach]

---

@zou wrote:

You can use the background color of controls for status and pass/fail.

This way, you only need 2 controls for each station.

---

Not of the are in arrays, though. (Decorations are shared by all corresponding elements)

(Of course they could be made transparent with a colorbox behind them.)

[el_ManBearPig]

so i tried playing around with the array idea only thing is now i cant change the sample names

[zou]

@altenbach:

Array is not a good indicator, ok for programmer, not for ordinary user.

A table or a multicolumn listbox is better.

What we really need is a grid.  Even CVI has one.

Like your presentation at NI Week 2018.

[altenbach]

---

@zou wrote:

@altenbach:

Array is not a good indicator, ok for programmer, not for ordinary user.

---

Yes, as an indicator, I use tables or such (And LabVIEW NXG has something even better! 😄 ) I extensively use listboxes when the items are populated by the code (example).

The title is about "controls", not "indicators". Looking at the original image, we have a mixture of controls and indicator for each item, and some text needs to be entered by the operator (Not possible with listbox without an external dialog or control). For the boolean we could play with the item symbol of the listbox.

Yes, a listbox would be great, but the UI would need to be re-engineered. For example we could have a FP cluster (or dialog vi) that is populated with the current test when we double-click on the desired entry in the listbox, then we can edit the relevant values and accept them back into the listbox.

The implementation would depend on the exact workflow, which we don't really know. I am sure there are better ways.

We also have this idea of course. 😄