Graphically selecting from large numbers

[Hobbs23]

The challenge is this. Graphically selecting one data point out of 200,000,000. The user interface needs a  way to easily display where you are going and increased resolution as you approach your goal.

Oh Labview can do the numbers part, but are the Panel tools handy enough to make it happen for the user? They can not be punching in 9 numbers every time they need to change it on the bench.

We have ideas, but looking at the front panel tools in our Labview 2009 seems almost medieval. Will the newest Labview be better at making this a reality or am I missing something altogether?

[BowenM]

I'm a little confused about what you are trying to do here.  You have an array of 200m data points and you want to find a specific one graphically?  Or is it that you want something like your stove timer...  if you push "up" it starts out slow and then rapidly increases a single numeric display until you approach your desired number.  Then you release, press again, etc etc.

Either way I can think of several options to do this fairly easily.

As for the GUI looks - yes it has updated a lot since 2009.  Silver and System controls look much better, and there are some very good looking palettes available on VIPM.  You also can check out the UI Interest Group forums to get an idea of what is available.

[Ben]

A picture that mocks up your desire may help us help you.

An archaic trivial usage of numerics may help.

If you show the numeric control on a slider (or any numeric) a user can use the arrow keys after they click in the number. So they can put the cursor at the X00,000,000 position and the up/down arrow will increment/decrement the "X" until they get close.

Once they are close using the Most signifigant digit, right arrow and adjust the next...

Lather rinse repeat.

But I am just speculating. Share an image and let us look.

Ben

[Hobbs23]

Yes BowenM the first is correct. I will flesh it out a bit.

A Sig Gen frequency selection resolution gives me the daunting task of choosing form 200M frequencies. You can enter them with a keypad but there has to be a better way.

There were some of the old big weighted knobs that depending on how fast you zinged it, it would jump faster in freq and you could drag your finger on the knob to slow it down as you approached your target.

Well sliders tend to work better with mouse movements in this case. I thought of the magnification rectangle on an old slide rule that you could graphically mimic as it sped across a Gigahertz scale and as you slowed the scale would automatically adjust down to the 100 hertz resolution.

I don't know It would seem that it sould already be a thing out there.

[Hobbs23]

Sorry for the bad run-on sentence structure. I shall do better in the future.

[Alexander_Sobolev]

Is problem with visual interface look only (Replace -> silver indicator, change colors), or responsivity and usability of control is also a problem?

To increase usability I would add mouse wheel, I heard latest LabVIEW has events for that. For fast and user friendly navigation LV graph pallette is not a great tool imho. If I am worried about that, at least I move mouse modes switching to custom radio button control. And modify mouse behaviour (if Ctrl is pressed, change to X zoom, otherwise - pan).

I do not know how much better is labview with displaying large size arrays on a waveform graph now. Do they simply rely on increased processor power?

Long time ago (around LV2009) we had to decimate array depending on zoom level and load only portion of data. Then panning worked much faster.

Also to reduce graph load we converted data to single before showing them on the graph.

[Hobbs23]

Thank you for responding Alexander_Sobo

I think the problem is with all three. The Enginneer expects others like him to use this interface. He wants it to be intuitive above all. Secondly, it must provide a result quickly. The block side of things should be fairly straight forward.

Everyone that uses this will know what frequency they want. The number of changes that they need to make in this mode will determine how fatiguing it will be for them. Easy and quick wins the day. Looking nice is a bonus.

This will also be working alongside an option for list control when they can just dump frequency changes into a table. Maybe I could put a keypad on one of the screens for them to input numbers without a keyboard right there?

So far I have been able to balance processing power with reducing the cycle times in my loops, but I don't have everything up and running yet to have a good idea.

These are all promising idea's. I will bring it up this afternoon.

Thanks for you time!