Graph plotting plugin needed (VB) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: IanJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 03:15:26 pm
content: Hi all,In my app I am using VB MS.Chart to draw the graph below (loads data from .csv).....however, if you know anything about MS.Chart you'll know that plotting scales on more than two sides is not possible, so I had to hardcode my own multiple scales on the top and right side......which is a pain when selecting different max/min etc. It really is a bit of a hack!So, I want to drop MS.Chart and use something else. My code works but I want to step it up a gear.Must be faster than MS.Chart and much more flexible.Must be free.Must be controlled via VB.Must be allowed to release in my free GPIB app.I am using Visual Studio.I've googled it quite a bit and found some really nice products but they come at a price. I'd like something that is easily installable (a .DLL perhaps) and with sample VB code I can start from.Looking for ideas?Ian.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2021, 04:56:14 pm
content: Quote from: IanJ on January 17, 2021, 03:15:26 pm2 cents... I've been there quite a long way back .. early 90's ...and the best thing I did then... was to dump any dependency on MS products.In particular that VB thingos...The list of reasons is insanely long... the 2 most strong ones may be..:- totally unportable - even among their own versions and OS releases.- crashes at unacceptable rate being paid *MAY* cause hardware faults.and they do not accept liabilites... of nothing. period.In respect to VB the best thing to do is the replacement of DELPHI.Aka FreePascal w/LAZARUS IDEIf you can do VB you will do Lazarus just better..https://www.freepascal.org/https://www.lazarus-ide.org/portable and far... far... far more stable and better.Comes with widgets as well..You will never regret to dump VB in the waste fills..Paul

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2021, 11:32:03 am
content: .. if you need a push ... several folks already made the switch..Tools to automate a reasonable well written code already exist,folks from EX-Borland are die hard...MUST READ... at least this first... *NIX times exposed VB crappy shitwarehttps://edn.embarcadero.com/article/images/26225/vbtodelphi.pdfhttps://edn.embarcadero.com/article/10249https://edn.embarcadero.com/article/images/26225/vbtodelphi.pdfhttps://www.codeproject.com/Questions/1220023/How-to-convert-this-code-from-VB-to-delphihttps://delphi.fandom.com/wiki/Converting_from_VB_to_Delphihttp://www.vbto.net/Overview.htmlPaul

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2021, 12:55:04 pm
content: Sorry for not answering your question, but if I were in this situation, I would just roll my own. A graph is literally just drawing lines and a couple of axes on a screen. For examplethis(written in C++ and OpenGL, so totally useless to you sorry) which blasts through 10,000 pts graphs with perfect smoothness. I only point this because: even though I did it in the most obtuse way possible (again, C++ and OpenGL), it's not that much code.Also, if you want good performance on datasets with millions of points (pure speculation that that's what you're doing here, but I'll forge on regardless...), that requires actual software engineering thought and design, especially if you want live updating (more speculation). I highly doubt there's a library out there that you can dump a load of data into and have simplicity, performance, and "flexibility" (whatever that means?) all at the same time. But it's been over a decade since I last touched VB, so my thoughts might be out of date.

author: AtlanticSurfer
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2021, 08:37:31 pm
content: First ever post so - Hello World!Hi Ian have you considered going to Grafana? Last year I had a few ESP8622's streaming environmental data into google sheets and could view it in Grafana - it worked good for me, I liked it.I was using the cloud but there's a version of Docker for windows that can be setup with Grafana. I had it installed but decided not to invest too much time configuring it because my PC is overloaded with software and could do with a fresh install of windows .Maybe you could use VS to transfer data into a DB hosted in Docker and use Grafana as a frontend. You could maybe use NodeRed (in Docker) to gather environmental data or any other sensor/time based data also.