LabVIEW

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

How do I create a prototype front panel for an LCD product?

I have been asked to create a prototype front panel in Labview 8 for a proposed new product, but since I am new to Labview, some aspects are giving me trouble -- in particular how to create a realistic display.
 
It will have a 8 line by 40 characters wide display, and five buttons (up, down, left, right, select). It is a monochrome display and the current menu selection will be indicated by reversing the text (black background instead of white). The menu items can appear anywhere on the screen. There will also be data present on the screen, formatted to fit the available space (no scrolling in the initial version). In some cases individual characters of the data will need to be reversible (selected for changing a value). For prototyping the data will be read from a file so we can try out different sizes of data sets.
 
What is the best way to create the display area and control the appearance of the text?
 
 
 
0 Kudos
Message 1 of 8
(3,104 Views)
You can check out these controls and there is also a website called www.mooregoodideas.com for more controls.



Joe.
"NOTHING IS EVER EASY"
0 Kudos
Message 2 of 8
(3,102 Views)
I have taken a look at the zipped demo, as well as some others from the link in the copyright notice, but since the subvis are password protected, It doesn't help much -- it just shows that it can be done, not how to do it. Because of the need for highlighting the text, I would probably need access to the lower level routines to swap the pixel values.
0 Kudos
Message 3 of 8
(3,080 Views)
In this particular instance the control consists of a series of boolean controls grouped together to to make a digit. Each digit is then grouped to form a full display.

It's simply a question of setting the correct bits to turn on the associated segment as required.

Unbundle the display control to discover how its built, then re-asseble a cluster in the reverse sense to muck about with the bits.

I have posted a picture to show how to unbundle the control, the bundling operation is obviously in the reverse sense.
0 Kudos
Message 4 of 8
(3,074 Views)

Not sure if I have understood your problem. Have a look at the attached vi, which shows how to use a picture control to play with string attributes.

Hope this helps.

Chilly Charly    (aka CC)

         E-List Master - Kudos glutton - Press the yellow button on the left...
        
Message 5 of 8
(3,067 Views)

Thanks, that works quite nicely. It looks like it will also allow me to overlay graphs on the text, which was a  proposed extension once the basic menu system is working. It isn't quite as realistic as the displays of the first suggestion, but it should suffice for what we need.

RW

0 Kudos
Message 6 of 8
(3,040 Views)
You can improve the display using a LED font, such as the one attached here.
Chilly Charly    (aka CC)

         E-List Master - Kudos glutton - Press the yellow button on the left...
        
Download All
0 Kudos
Message 7 of 8
(3,026 Views)

Actually, the display will initially be a 240 x 64 pixel graphics + text monochrome LCD. I searched around and have found some free dot matrix type fonts with square pixels, but I won't evaluate them until I have the rest of the system working. I will also try out some different display sizes (quarter VGA, for example) once we are happy with how the user interface simulation is working.

RW

0 Kudos
Message 8 of 8
(3,018 Views)