Displaying another application within a running VI front panel

[Daikataro]

Greetings everyone, I'm working on a potential application for which I would like to have a display of a vision system, concretely I have an OMRON FQ2 Camera and its PC application, Touch Finder for PC. I would like to have vision of the last failed part on screen or, failing that, vision of the running application in the user panel. 

This would be easy enough with a picture box but, problem is, FQ2 only exports images in a weird format (think icz or something like that) that is totally unreadable by anything not an FQ2 camera. So instead I would like to know if there's a way that another executable (Touch Finder for PC in this case) can be shown as part of a LV front panel. Is it possible to start with? And if it is, what should I be looking at? I do not require the user to even be able to interact with the exe in any way, just to see where a part failed.

[Dave_Brandt]

Why not use two monitors?  Most video cards support 2 or more. 

[natasftw]

I suspect they're looking for something more professional than having two windows open.  This could be done on a single monitor as well.  There's no need to bring a second monitor into this.

I'm not sure how to bring the non LV based executable into the VI unless there's activex calls maybe?

[Dave_Brandt]

Depending on the users of your program and how simple and reliable you want your application, It adds alot of extra code to use the same monitor and to display another application. Your program then becomes dependent on other items like screen sizes and resolutions and not to mention active-x or other external code. To bad your camera can not just output simple web images as a jpeg or other image file. For the cost of a monitor and cable you have what you want. Today less than $200

[natasftw]

I can very easily run Outlook, Chrome, and LabVIEW all on a single monitor.  I can write my own LabVIEW applications to run on this same monitor.  They require ZERO extra code to do this.

What are you even talking about?  If they're two applications, there's no code to be written.  If you know of a way to display the second application within the LV application, you should share that as none of what you've said addresses it.

As far as making things dependent, that's true regardless.  If you make it dependent on using two monitors, you've made it dependent on those same things only know it's dependent on both screens meeting those requirements.

Again, what does a second monitor provide that in any way approaches a resolution to what the original poster asked for? 

[Dave_Brandt]

If you want embed an external application and have labview control the size and position and if it is the top most program than there is code. If you just are using an active-x container there is only the container and properties nodes required to control those containers.  I write a lot of applications for production operators that have very little knowledge about pc's and can not find a minimized program or even resize the different programs.  To control these programs from labview you can call windows dlls to minimize,maximize, size and position. That is the extra code. If your operators know how to run a pc you can have them do what they want. I use the Kiss principle (Keep it simple stupid)

[Dave_Brandt]

You can also capture your second display by using windows print screen function and then you have an image for your vi to use. See example

[Daikataro]

So yeah, had briefly considered the 2nd monitor solution, but given the space constraints and the amount of stations, this is not a viable option, it would be much simpler to have the external app displayed as an object in front panel; like I said, it doesn't even have to be interactive, just informative. ActiveX containers sound promising, are they the way to achieve what I'm after?

[Dave_Brandt]

Yes, If the application external app is an active-x server.

[JÞB]

It appears to be a .NET application.  And it does appear possible to imbed the .NET control. Documentation is sadly lacking.  Have you asked the application engineers over at Omron?