Customizing indicators for LED matrix display: how do I Reduce element spacing and achieve a round colour "box"

[ATE Man]

In my application I wish to create a control  that mimics a full colour LED matrix sign (for purposes of editing the the physical LED display itself.. via LabVIEW).

Despite much experimentation with attempting to customize controls in LabVIEW I cannot seem to achieve the following results I need....

(1) LED's are round AND multicoloured but the existing Boolean LED only (which only has two states and so does not allow for multiple (24 Bit) colours) ) and Colour box indicators (which is square not round) are also unsuitable. I need a colour box that looks like a LED!

(2) The space between ecah LED indicator when the are within an array is problematic as when the LED's are made very small (to fit overall array matrix on the screen) the space between them remains constant. How can I reduce the space or pitch between each LED and can it be done independantly for X and Y?...so that, for instance the LED's could appear to be almost touching.

At present they have a small round boundary which I cannot fathom how to remove or reduce..

Thanks in anticipation for your help...

ATE Man

[PhillipBrooks]

You might want to look at the LCD / VFD Indicators located here:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/sgctek/

[Ben]

The color box can be customized to look round.

Even if you customized the color box, you will still run into issues using an array since you can't over-lap elements so...

The Picture Control will do what you are asking.

We have been collecting Picture Control examples in this thread.

In message # 4 of that thread , I included a link to "Random Walk" Example (posted 4-3-2005). Don't let the code scare you!

In that example I use a boolean control as my template and manipulate it's colors before grabbing its image. A collection of these image are inserted into the picture and moved around simulating a random walk.

That should give you what you need to achieve your goal.

Ben

[PhillipBrooks]

Ugh. Didn't finish my edit to post in time. The example site shows some controls to mimic a matrix display on the FP of your program.

You could try using classic controls (2D array and color box) to create a control as I've attached...

[altenbach]

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ATE Man wrote:

I need a colour box that looks like a LED!

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You can customize a colorbox indicator to look exactly like an LED.

See the two links in the following post for some ideas:

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=284943#M284943

To reduce the spacing, you could customize it and remove the surrounding frame. This will make the size exactly the size of the glowing part of the LED or color box..

[altenbach]

Here's an image of a quick draft of the idea presented above:

It is an array of colorbox indicators with no frame and made to look like LEDs via the control editor.

Message Edited by altenbach on 01-10-2008 10:17 AM