Question Custom UI's (Gauges, Meters, Bars, Controls)?

[zia.newversion]

Hi there!
This is my first post in this forum. Does anyone have any idea if there are some free source graphical UI's available for VB .NET... I am looking particularly for Gauges and Meters since my work needs instrumentation UI's and my organization cannot afford buying a propriety suite for these UI's...
I have visited some websites. Although they are propriety but I shall post the pictures here to give you a hint of what exactly am I looking for.

 

[JohnH]

a few links I found from a quick look around (I've not tried any of them btw):
A fast and performing gauge - CodeProject (C#, can probably be compiled to dll), or 'same' VB SpeedyHMI | Download SpeedyHMI software for free at SourceForge.net (vb source and dll)
Nextwave Gauge for .Net (LGPL available, dll inside)
Aqua Gauge - CodeProject (dll in demo)
You can probably find several others, especially at Code Project.

 

[zia.newversion]

Thanks JohnH, that was really helpful... I downloaded the first one SpeedyHMI and Aqua Gauge... I could not download Nextwave due to some unknown reason. The SourceForge page just sticks right before the download.
However, with the rest two that I downloaded, I did not have any luck... I downloaded the SpeedyHMI VB project and added the dll to my project... I am very sorry that I have no idea how to use those controls merely by adding a reference to the dll... Could you please guide me to that... That'd indeed be very helpful... And the same for Aqua Gauge... I have the dll, I go Project -> Add Reference --> [Browse] and select the dll... But I am completely at loss as of what am I supposed to do next.
Well, I guess that's probably very dumb of me, but I shall be thankful if you could guide me...

 

[JohnH]

Right click in Toolbox where you want to add controls and select "choose items", browse to the dll, click ok. Add the control to form from Toolbox.

 

[zia.newversion]

Thanks again JohnH... I owe you!

I have tried both the HMI and Aqua... Aqua is lovely, but there are a few problems with it and since I am not that much of a professional programmer, I better not meddle with it yet.
About the HMI, it is strange, I added the DLL correctly, I drew the control on the form and it gave a message box with a load of errors... Then again I tried drawing the control and this time it drew fine without errors... however, when I started to debug, many "internal exceptions" were thrown, I have no idea about exceptions handling whatsoever... So that was a labor...

But lots fun as well. Thanks a lot. I do not mean to bother you again and again but if you can please let me know what updates you have on the issue. I shall be duly grateful. Thank you.

 

[JohnH]

The Nextwave one would be the most 'professional' of those options, as it is a commercial product, though as mentioned can be used freely. I did have problems downloading it (or anything else from SF ever for that matter).

 

[zia.newversion]

Hey buddy I fiddled with the Nextwave for a while... I have tried a lot to make it work... Visited websites, read the manual and even e-mailed the people at Nextwave...
The manual contains all instructions for C# and when I try to translate them to VB some strange errors occur, like some exception sort of things... I am not sure how to make it work... Maybe it is not for Visual Basic??? However, I haven't received reply for the e-mail I sent to the company... Have you by any chance tried adding those components in Visual Basic? If you have, can you let me know about it? Thanks a lot!

 

[JohnH]

Maybe it is not for Visual Basic???

It's a .Net library, it can be used in any .Net project no matter which language.

Have you by any chance tried adding those components in Visual Basic?

I just did:

• Aqua was working, but had some 'snags'.
• NextUI strangely didn't have UI design support, but the demos was looking good, the sample codes shows how to set these up easily (use an online code converter if you need to).
• HMI was ...weird, didn't seem workable, was linked with some external library not available. Best solution for this is to take the Code Project C# source and compile it to Class Library and add to Toolbox, seemed to work ok.