Gauge — Control Systems/Dashboard

Gauge (Dashboard)

Control Systems / Dashboard

Shows the value of a signal it is told the name of on a dial: a needle against a scale from Minimum to Maximum, the colour bands drawn on the scale, and the number itself written inside the dial. The dial is round, a half, a quarter or a straight bar (Shape). It has no ports at all.

Ports

• None. Not one input, not one output. That is what makes it a dashboard block.

Naming the signal to watch

ICore links carry names, and that name is the selection: rename a link (its name is editable like a block's) and put that name here. A name containing / is matched against the link's full path instead. Matching runs over this block's own subsystem and everything below it, never above – that is exactly the set of signals a generated core contains.

Which of the three one-number dashboard blocks to use

• Display – the number itself, formatted. No range, no colour.
• Lamp – a colour per EXACT value: a mode, a flag, a fault code.
• Gauge (this block) – a number inside a range, on a dial with a colour per RANGE. Simulink's ScaleColors pairs a colour with a {Min, Max} band rather than with a value, and that is the whole difference from the Lamp.

Parameters

• Signal – the link name to read, for example speed or Plant/rpm. Empty reads nothing. This names a link in the diagram, not a variable, so it is never looked up in the variables space. A name that matches no link is reported by name when the run starts.
• Minimum / Maximum – the two ends of the scale, labelled on it with the even ticks between. Minimum must be below Maximum.
• Band Limits – one row per colour band, [min max] per row: [0 60; 60 100]. Empty means no bands, which is Simulink's own default.
• Band Colors – one RGB row per band, components 0–255: [0 200 0; 200 0 0]. It must have exactly as many rows as Band Limits, and exactly three columns.
• Default Color – no longer drawn: a value in no band shows on the bare scale, as Simulink's gauge does. Kept so that a file setting it still loads.
• Format – short (4 decimals), long (15), short_e / long_e (scientific), bank (2 decimals). The same five as Display.
• Refresh Period (s) – how often the dial is repainted, in wall-clock seconds, so a fast run does not turn the needle into a blur. Zero or less repaints on every sample; the final sample of a run is always shown.
• Sampling Time (s) – how often the value is read. Zero or less inherits the solver's rate.
• Shape – Circular (default), Half, Quarter or Linear: Simulink's Gauge, Half Gauge, Quarter Gauge and Linear Gauge. The round scale sweeps 300° with its gap at the bottom, the half one 180° over the top, the quarter one 90° and the bar runs left to right; each has eleven ticks, as Simulink draws them.

How a band is chosen

A band matches when min ≤ value ≤ max, and the FIRST matching row wins – so two bands sharing an endpoint, as [0 60; 60 100] do, give 60 to the earlier one. A value in no band is in no band, and so is a value outside Minimum..Maximum unless a band covers it: the bands are matched on the value as it arrives, never on a clamped one. The NEEDLE, though, pins at the end of the scale, as Simulink's does, and the number written in the dial is the value unclamped. The band index is what the exported code reports.

Notes

• The value is one sample behind. Solver order follows input dependencies, and a block with no inputs has none – so this block runs at the head of every step and reads what its source published on the previous one.
• Only the FIRST element of a matrix signal is read – one gauge shows one number.
• This one block covers all four Simulink gauges. Gauge, Half Gauge, Quarter Gauge and Linear Gauge were measured field by field on R2026a: the same nine parameters and not one differing default between any pair. They differ only in the shape drawn on the canvas, which is this block's Shape.

Code export

All ten targets: Python, MATLAB, Java, Rust, C, C++, VHDL, Verilog, SystemVerilog and PLC Structured Text. A deployable target has no dial, so each one emits the VALUE and the BAND INDEX it falls in – the 0-based row of Band Limits that matched, or -1 for none. The band index is the block's whole computation and the half a deployable target can act on: drive an alarm or a warning light from it. PLC Structured Text emits comments only, naming the signal array entry to tap, since ST has no console. The one-sample shift applies to the exported code too, so the export agrees with the app.

Code-export verification

This block is excluded from the code-export verification matrix, by name, in ICoreParityRigLibrary::unriggableTypes(). The verifier records a terminal block's input signals and compares them; a block with no inputs records nothing, so a rig around it would fail all ten languages at residual 0 with "Each matrix must have at least two columns" – a red row that says nothing about the block.

Simulink bridge

None, and that is a measurement rather than a gap. Simulink's Gauge (BlockType=CircularGaugeBlock) has ZERO ports of any kind and is VIRTUAL – measured on R2026a, where a model holding one and nothing else refuses to run with "contains no blocks or all blocks are virtual". It reaches its signal through Binding, a canvas selection stored outside the block's parameters, and ICore has no counterpart for that. This block is the ICore reading of it – the signal is named rather than clicked – so it is a DIFFERENT block from the Simulink one rather than a mapping of it, and it is reported on exchange rather than asserted.