Engineering Interfaces¶

Device Manager GUI¶

The Device Manager provides an engineering interface that enables an easy control and monitor of the devices managed by the server. Each device type has a dedicated widget and the list of widgets is built reading the configuration at startup. Devices can be controlled individually using the Setup button within each device widget or collectively using the Setup button at the bottom of the GUI.

Note

The menu FCS enables to control the main states of the server. The server can be also restarted from this menu.

FCF menu.¶

Note

The menu Devices enables to control directly one or more device controllers running in the PLC. Devices can be either ignored or simulated as well from this menu.

Devices menu.¶

At the bottom, a command window is included reporting the commands sent and the replies received by the GUI.

Command window widget.¶

The GUI does not prevent the execution of parallel Setup commands. This is achieved by creating a new thread per each command.

$ fcfGui
Options:
  -h [ --help ]          Print help messages
  -n [ --proc-name ] arg Process name
  -l [ --log-level ] arg Log level: ERROR, WARNING, STATE, EVENT, ACTION, INFO, DEBUG, TRACE
  -c [ --config ] arg    Configuration filename
  -d [ --db-host ] arg   In-memory DB host (ipaddr:port)

Warning

The configuration file must be the same one used by the Device Manager that you want to connect to.

An example how to start the fcfgui from the command line is shown below.

$ fcfGui -c fcf/devmgr/server/cfg_cii.yml

Device Manager Engineering Graphical Interface.¶

Widgets¶

Device widgets share some common features.

Common Widget Elements.¶

Selection Check-box¶

This checkbox shall be used to select/unselect a device. The global Setup button at the bottom is applied only to the selected devices. In the same way, actions in the Devices menu are also affecting the selected devices.

Device Name¶

Here is displayed the name of the device taken from the FCF configuration.

Simulation Flag¶

This flag indicates when the device is set into simulated. This means that Device Manager will use the simulation address to connect to the device controller.

Local Flag¶

This flag indicates when the device is set into local mode. Setup actions are rejected by the controllers when they are in local mode.

Device States¶

These two fields present the state and substate of the controller in the PLC. This information is read by the Device Manager. When Device Manager is not in Ready or Operational state, these values are undefined.

Setup Button¶

Each device with the exception of sensors can be setup individually from each widget.

Error Message¶

Errors in the controller will be presented in this field.

Controller error message.¶

Activity Feedback¶

This is a coloured and spinning feedback allowing the user to have a quick overview of any ongoing activity in the controller associated to the device, for instance if a derotator is tracking, the activity feedback will show it in magenta. This is faster to understand than reading each individual substate. This might be useful during initialisation phase.

Device activity feedback.¶

Motor Engineering GUI¶

The Motor device provides an additional engineering interface offering more details for the control and monitoring of motorized devices (pymotgui). With this GUI it is possible to see the motor position or the activation of signals during initialisation. The motor can be controlled in Position or in Velocity mode.

The pymotgui can be launched directly from the command line or from each Motor widget by pressing the motbut button.

$ motgui
usage: pymotgui [-h] -d DEVICE -a ADDRESS -p PREFIX [-n NS]
            [-l {INFO,DEBUG,ERROR}]

optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-d DEVICE, --device DEVICE
                    Set motor device.
-a ADDRESS, --address ADDRESS
                    Set PLC address, e.g. opc.tcp://134.171.59.98:4840
-p PREFIX, --prefix PREFIX
                    Set motor prefix, e.g. MAIN.Motor1
-n NS, --ns NS        Set OPCUA namespace, e.g. 4
- l {INFO,DEBUG,ERROR}, --loglevel {INFO,DEBUG,ERROR}
                    set the logging level: INFO|DEBUG|ERROR

An example how to start the pymotgui from the command line is shown below.

$ pymotgui -d motor1 -a opc.tcp://127.0.0.1:7578 -p MAIN.Motor1

Motor Graphical Interface.¶

Initialisation Markers¶

The Motor GUI uses markers to identify the time when motors reach a switch during the initialisation sequence. Two markers indicate the start and the end of the sequence, the others will depend of the switches reached during the sequence, see an example in the image below. In this example it was marked lower and higher hardware limits.

Example of Initialisation Markers.¶

Exporting Plotting Data¶

The plotting data can be exported in a CSV format. This can be achieved by doing the following steps:

Press mouse right-button and select “Export…”
Select “CSV from plot data” and press “Export”, see image below.
Define the name of the file, e.g. myplotdata.csv and press “Save”.

Exporting Plotting Data.¶