Lamp — Control Systems/Dashboard

Lamp (Dashboard)

Control Systems / Dashboard

An indicator that takes its body colour from the value of a signal it is told the name of – without being wired to it. It has no ports at all, and nothing on its face: a lamp is its colour.

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, which is how two links called state in different subsystems are told apart. 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.

How the colour is chosen

State Values lists the values that have a colour and State Colors gives one RGB row for each of them, in the same order. The watched value is compared against the list and the FIRST entry it matches wins; a value matching nothing shows Default Color. With the defaults, a signal of 0 is grey and a signal of 1 is green.

⚠ The match is EXACT, and that is Simulink's rule rather than a simplification of it – its StateColors pairs a colour with a value, not with a band. So this block is for a signal that takes a few settled values: a mode, a flag, a fault code. Pointed at a continuous signal it will sit at Default Color, which is exactly what Simulink's Lamp does. Put a Compare To Constant or a Quantizer in front of it if what you want is a threshold.

Only the FIRST element of a matrix signal is read – one lamp shows one state.

Parameters

• Signal – the link name to watch, for example mode or Plant/fault. Empty watches nothing and the lamp stays at its default colour. 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.
• State Values – the values that have a colour, for example [0 1].
• State Colors – one RGB row per state value, components 0–255, for example [192 192 192; 0 200 0]. It must have exactly as many rows as State Values has entries, and exactly three columns; anything else is reported and stops the run.
• Default Color – the RGB shown when the value matches no state.
• Sampling Time (s) – how often the value is read. Zero or less inherits the solver's rate.

Notes

• The colour 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. That is inherent to watching a signal instead of receiving it.
• The lamp keeps the run's final colour after the run ends, rather than reverting – the last state is usually the one worth reading.
• Simulink's Automotive Indicator Lamps, Basic Shape Icons and Wireless Icons are not separate blocks: all 64 of them report BlockType=LampBlock and are this block with a different picture.

Code export

All ten targets: Python, MATLAB, Java, Rust, C, C++, VHDL, Verilog, SystemVerilog and PLC Structured Text. A deployable target has no lamp to light, so what each one emits is the STATE INDEX the lamp would be showing – the 0-based position in State Values that matched, or -1 for the default colour. That is the block's whole computation, and it is the half a deployable target can act on: drive an output, an LED or an alarm from it. PLC Structured Text emits comments only, naming the signal array entry to tap, since ST has no console. The one-sample shift above applies to the exported code too, and for the same reason – 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. The exclusion is reported by exportVerify with that reason rather than dropping it silently.

Simulink bridge

None, and that is a measurement rather than a gap. Simulink's Lamp (BlockType=LampBlock) 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.