Note: gclib provides the communications foundation for the Galil Widgets project.Galill Widgets are a collection of .Net WinForms User Controls that provide quick development of custom graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that communicate with Galil Motion Controllers and PLCs.

Galil Widgets has been designed to support three general user needs

The software novice, or the hurried prototyper

Within minutes, a full UI can be laid out. All controls can be configured with menus and mouse clicks for an absolute minimum requirement for writing code. The quick start guide, and Microsoft Visual Studio Express is all that is needed to make a free application GUI with minimal effort.

The .Net developer, adding to pre-existing code.

In addition to the point-and-click configuration of the tools, each tool has a set of public function calls and properties which allows the C# or VB.Net user the ability to integrate the Galil Widgets into a .Net application with ease.

The power user

The entire Galil Widgets source code is available in the installation package. This allows users to tweak, extend, and add Widgets to the library with ease. The "GalilWidget" interface defines a number of function calls that new Widgets should implement to function correctly.

The following widgets are currently available

GWComs: Communications to Galil hardware including event-driven handling of asynchronous traffic.
GWTerm: A terminal for direct user interaction with the hardware.
GWPoll: A polling tool to display important data on screen.
GWSettings A tool for displaying, editing, backing up, and restoring controller parameters and mission-critical variables. Program backup and loading, and firmware upgrades are also supported.
GWDatRec: A data record visualization tool. Used to display controller status through user-configurable labels, "soft LEDs", and analog sliders.

For more information, get the free Galil Widgets package

See the Galil Widgets release notes for changes.

Screen shots of an example motion controller configuration (left), and a similar RIO configuration (right)

Example %Galil Widgets Screen Capture for Motion Controllers

Example %Galil Widgets Screen Capture for PLCs