Just pondering this possibility. I have not opened up the supersecret stuff in awhile since LV7.0 and am wondering if this
is possible to do. I also would like to know the last version of LabVIEW that properly exposes all the scripting classes. I tried it in my oldest version which is 7.1 and it already seemed to be buttoned up by NI.

Of course I am assuming the use of a activex GIF control (anigif, for example) to programmatically read each GIF frame.

Maybe you can use tbd's animated gif creator as a start to reverse engineer gif's?

Ton

7.1 was the last version where you could easily access the private stuff. In 8.0 it requires a license (although I understand some people have been able to work around that).

In any case, at least 7.1 does not expose a way of doing anything with the picture ring's images, so I don't think that would be possible.

NI does not provide a means of reading GIFs (only writing them), but many graphics packages probably allow batch saving all the images as seperate files. You should then be able to automatically spawn some VIs and set those images as their icons (using the Set VI Icon method). Icons you can easily (manually) copy into picture rings (although they're limited to a small image).

Another option you can try is Rolf's VIs included in this tool which allow copying an image into the clipboard. This should allow you to automate some of the process.

A third option would be to ditch the picture ring and use the picture control for the animation (although that would be slower).

Of course, if you just want the animation itself, you can simply drop the GIF on the front panel.

It doesn't seem that the import picture methods have been exposed for scripting (at least in 8.2.1). In general only stuff that NI itself has found a need to script is scriptable - which is fair enough given that end users aren't supposed to mess with stuff that is unsupported, unstable, only for internal use by NI, not necessarily forwrds compatible and might eat your grandmother