How do I decrease the contrast of the monitor?

[grk]

Hi,

I am running an experiment that requires a dark environment for the proper functioning of the apparatus.To control dataflow, I leave my Labview VI front panel open while the apparatus is on. The brightness of the screen is affecting proper experimentation.
Is there any option in Labview by which, i can programically dim the screen, or reduce the contrast of the monitor just for the time when the experiment is on.

Any suggestion will be truely helpful

ThankYou
Gautham Radhakrishnan
Dept of Physics
University of Toronto

[Dominic Wu]

It's a rather unusual requests but there are at least two suggestions I would make in the context of LabVIEW. My caveat being that there are probably more pragmatic ways to simply alter the layout of the lab to isolate the light contamination.

1) Use darker and lower intensity color pallettes and use either "Property Nodes" and "Control References" to programmatically change colors of controls on the display (on a black background, obviously).

2) Use digital I/O to either power on/off the monitor display and/or dim the contrast switch.

[altenbach]

Working with Rhodopsin, we have a similar problem when doing experiments under dim red light. We just put a few sheets of red filter foil over the monitor.

You might just want to create a custom "night-vision" front panel, and set it to "size to screen". Make the background black, and the indicators shades of red.