Clarity discussion forum

Four suggestions:

1. It would be really nice to be able to make the device monitor Always on Top

2. It would be nice to be able to change its size or shape, to fit with other windows which are open and not cover the chromatogram when the screen resolution is low.

3. It would be nice if it could be incorporated into the data acquisition window, possibly as a single line bar at the top or bottom.

4. Please can it display the pressure MUCH LARGER, so that myopic species like me can see it from across the lab. Like a big red LED type display instead of 12pt text.

It is frustrating when the device monitor disappears every time I check something, and I then have to go and find it again


Internal issue tracking ID: 62049

Dear Stuart,
from your listed points there are obviously those that can be implemented easier and those that would take much larger amount of time to do. Regarding particular issues:
1) Perfectly valid idea, and should not be that difficult to do. Started a new suggestion for that
2) This, on the other hand, may cause a major problems. The Device Monitor dialog is in fact a picture displayed. To be able to resize it, we would have to redo the graphics in all modules one by one to support the functionality (could not be done on a single place). We actually do not see this point possible unless we first do major overhaul of all Clarity looks, which is a work for several people for several months.
3) Once again, this might not be from the most simple options. Generally each control module handles it's own pane in the Device Monitor, while in the Data Acquisition window no information from any control modules are displayed. Getting the crucial info there might need rewriting of significant part of the SDK, which is not fast or simple way to do. The other problem would be defining what the crucial information is - I bet everyone has different views on that...
4) Please specify which module are you talking about. As said above, each of the device monitor panes is part of it's particular control module, so the change would have to be done in respective control modules.

Therefore, I am at the moment reducing the wishlist entry to the point 1, which I feel is the greatest pain and also the easiest to repair. Please feel free to comment/insist/explain on the other points.

Thank you for the reply Daniel. And I understand that the device monitor window is different for each control module, so maybe these ideas could be suggested to potential customer manufacturers who wish to write their own driver.

In particular I understand that it is therefore more than difficult to incorportate the device monitor information into the Data Acquisition Window, which is not customised in each driver. However might it be possible to ask people when writing a driver to make information such as the back pressure available so that it can be displayed in another window? It is such a vital piece of information if the HPLC is to be able to tell you where it hurts, and yet it can be so hard to find! Worst of all is the Agilent ICF module, where even if you know where it is, it is so hard to read even if you are standing right in front of the pc and wearing glasses. It really should be the most prominent information on the screen.

I guess it is for the rest of us to ask our favourite HPLC suppliers to note these suggestions in their quest for a user-friendly instrument control interface.

Finally, is it possible to have a 'snap-to' function, so that windows can fit together nicely and fill the screen, instead of sitting wherever they end up? Pretty please?

Dear Stuart,
the major constraint with the Data Acquisition window showing the information on modules is actually in the Data Acquisition window itself - it is not created to incorporate information from any control modules. It does not have a place to do so (please understand that the toolbars in the window are created dynamically and thus it would be difficult to work with them this way), and as said in previous post, it is pretty individual what different users want to see for parameters - for you it is pressure, someone else might just ignore pressure in his application and need to check flow... or temperature in the detector cell or just any thinkable parameter. It is not possible to list all of those parameters in the Data Acquisition window (Device Monitor is there for that reason) and impossible to suit all by picking just one parameter to display.

When you are speaking about Agilent ICF control module, that is pretty much different matter from the rest of the modules available in Clarity. Unlike other modules, ICF provides not only the communication, but also the User Interface. When we would be able to change size of some fields etc in most control modules, we cannot do that in ICF - everything there is programmed by Agilent. Some of the things might be done better (gradient, for example), but there is no way from our side to change it other than complain to Agilent (which we do) . I hope the Device Monitor able to be left on top of the screen will help in finding the information.

I will look into the snap-to possibilities, so far it seems the sizes of the windows/dialogs change when you change the Windows theme without Windows acknowledging the change, which means something perfectly ordered in Windows Classic Theme has overlapping borders in Windows 7 theme for example. The dialogs still suggest that they are of the same size... needs some more testing.

Hi Daniel

I agree with everything you say except about watching the pressure.

Any HPLC analyst who ignores the pressure will not know when something goes wrong. (A leak, a blockage, incorrect eluent, incorrect temperature, incorrect flow rate, air in the pump etc. are all diagnosed through the back pressure.) So it is not really that different people want different things. If someone doesn't want to watch the pressure, it just means that they have a lot of useful HPLC experience still ahead of them! The new Sykam system displays the pressure in a nice large clear display on the pump, which is excellent, but most systems don't have this these days, so it would be nice if the data system could offer it! However if it is too complicated to add it at this stage, maybe it could just stay on the wishlist?