BasicPI

Working on BSA I have been through a lot of work to style common controls in WPF and QML to make SDK’s I can use as I generate code. Most of this work was doing the designer part in BSA, but in some cases I also had to create the controls themselves from scratch. Starting on gauges it become more obvious why we have to hand-tailor these controls. Commercial libraries exist, but for WPF it also exist a nice collection of librarary components out with CPOL or MIT licensing. so it’s no reason to pay 1000.- USD for a subscription fee on a library. That said I can’r do the same on QML. But, I have written numerous gauges before and both QML and WPF is easy to work with in this aspect.

This is one example that I found of CodeProject (A WPF Rotary Control – CodeProject) – excellent example for getting ideas and alearning how other have solved issues. I could actually have used some of these, but I am more interesting creating my own gauges from scratch nicking ideas from others. The issue with WPF (and QML) is that you need to be a little bit carefully about how you design things. As I learned with the property editor the GPU will do the work, but loading it to a GPU might surprice you. Another issue is that I am not interested in creating final gauges . I will do that as well – but I am more interested in disecting them and create their components one by one in simple forms so they easily be assembled as a more advanced gauge.

If you look into code you will see that this is more or less how everyone build their gauges layer by layer, so it is not rocket science.

So many parts of BSA have now come together that it’s time to start working on the SDK’s needed to generate code – which will be a bit more visual and fun to blog about. And this work will be done in both WPF and Qt/QML.

• Advanced Real-Time plot
• Circular Gauges
• Linear Gauges
• Fast, Real-Time Table

Those are the four on top of my list.

This ModbusTable is only 100 entries and behaving very nice due to a trick where I only load row details if the row is expanded.That trick will allow  me  to  create  tables up to ca 300 entries and still have decent behavior, but it is no solution for very large tables. So I  will  need  to  find/create  a proper  solution.

The old trick is that you only load the portion you see and re-load as you scroll. This is how virtual tables work. In that case you can have a table with millions of rows and still have a very fast screen without the hazard of running out of resources. As mentioned a few times I seldom think to much about performance these days, but in this case I must because with large arrays loaded into PropertyTree loading becomes a bottleneck. The UI feels slow and little responcive even with 0,5 sec delay on a click.

Moving on a little I also need to solve this as user components. WPF have a good grid “DataGrid”, but I want a TreeGrid and a high performance RT Grid as well. The later is a simpler grid focusing on displaying text only rows at very high speed. And I also want the propertyeditor as a component at some point.

I am very pleased with how I integrated Modbus as far as the result goes, but it has been a bit of hand-tailoring inside BSA – I am not so happy with the later because that is not a generic solution. So I need to find a way to create user controls the same way. The question is if I need to add a protocol designer? I need to think about that one.

This shows BSA with a 64 register ModbusTable. You will recall that I had some performance problems earlier with loading large tables into my property editor. This one takes ca 5 seconds to load, so it is getting very annoying to work with. The reason for this is because I load ca 1216 user controls in total here since each row have hidden details. But, I have a trick to use. I only need to load the headlines on select and I can load the details as I expand a each row – that will dramatically reduce the number of objects loaded and with it the performance that the user experience. The user will see no difference except for the performance.

This one is a bit annoying, but don’t forget that everything else is not. WPF is a bit more work than simple Forms, but the result is rewarding and it is very, very seldom I run into issues like this one. But, I have tables on my list for the GUI I generate, so I need to solve this anyway

I loaded 300 registers for test – it worked, but was so slow that it was hardly functional. The table is still fast to use and scroll etc, but selecting the Table takes forever. As mentioned before I tested this exact issue in QML as well with the a similar result.

A proper solution will be to write my own custom DataTreeGrid where I can expand rows into a propert sub-list – I have a lot of tables needed so it might be worth it. If I focus on drawing the table and add UI as I expand I might be able to benefit from the existing UI controls – that would be far less work. Regardless – this will be sorted – and it will be sorted in Qt/QML as well.

Update – tested the add on expand 5 min after I wrote this article – problem solved!

This diagram is a bit messy, but it is fully legal. You see local variables in top, left corner. You see PLD State symbols in green and Magneta, You also see addign and events used to execute if tests.

PLD State symbols originate from SDL (Specification and Description Language) that is popular in telecom and some other industries. This is in effect a “goto” – if you transfer control to CloseAndOpen you jump to the one that has an output event. In the case of CloseAndOpen you close the ComLink that will trigger OnClose that cause a delay of 500ms before it Re-Open Com.

Note: I would code this top-down (fixed events can be top-down or left-right) to make a cleaner diagram – but this is your choise. I also used a bit of colors to clarify the diagram in this case. But, this is the choise of the developer – the tool will not stop you from making messy diagrams if you want to.

This example show the actual, finished Select component. I have set OnOK = Mandatory to show how it will look like. This means that you need to connect OnOK. But, I also added Parameters on top and description below – user can control both. I am quite happy with the result because this makes code very readable. Some users will always be to lazy to put in description, but that is theire choise – I am providing flexibility and option.

Again I forgot to set ComLink1 parameters 🙂 – but don’t worry, the BSA compiler will catch it. I preffer to have littleor no restrictions as you edit a diagram and rather catch it with the compiler.

Note: OnOK will not be mandatory in the final Select. Select read into an internal storage and if you don’t need the events the data will still be there available for the application.

Reading/Writing Modbus in BSA is very easy.

1. You define a ComLink a set it to Auto – just specify parameters (that I forgot above). the parameters will in this case be fixed as you need to connect Open to set them.
2. Define modbus Tables. Each modbus Table define an area of registers that are connected so that they can be read or written by asingle Select or Update. In this example I have 5 registers starting at 30000 and 4 starting at 31000.
3. Execute a Select. In the Select you chose ComLing and ModbusTable, so you need two selects. The select is in this case executed on a timer once per sec.

That’s it. I set this up in less than a minute so did not change register names etc, but you will have the most complex Modbus maps set up in < 30 minutes. The registers will now be cashed in your application in RAM tables that you can access and use from other logic of HMI.

This is an abstracted Modbus interface, so I will add another with full access to all messages. But, the Modbus interface above is very fast and easy to work with. This is an excellent example where I know BSA will work out well by accelerating the way you work with an x factor.

This is the actual ComLink symbol with CP’s added. This component have an Auto-option allowing it to automatically open as the application start and stay open. This is often the preferred way of handling communication links in automation systems. To use this component for Modbus you need to add one or more ModbusTable and a Select or Update. The Select/Update take both ComLink and Data Table/Modbus Table as input, so no diagram wiring is needed. The optional CP (Connection Point) is for you to manually control the component or respond on events in the ComLink.

The term Link here might be a bit confusing because we use the terminology to describe the line connecting symbols, but in this case we also use the ISO link as “ComLink) to describe a communication transport between two endpoints.

The symbols here are shown with horisontal CP location – input at left and output at right. That can be switched to top-down as you please. the same with colors – the blue color is the default. The content of the symbols is default communication parameters, but can be changed to contain description. I am very happy with the resault in this case. The gray label on top show the unique name, box content connection details – the result is a very readable component & diagram.

This is a more advanced example where I connect to four ComLink’s manually and use a sub-diagram to maintain a combined state. This also show a detail with crossing links that I need to add on the todo list. If lines are crossing they might be difficult to read, so I am thinking of doing something on either vertical or horisontal lines automatically – but that’s for later.

For consistency I consider adding CP’s everywhere – not sure – in this case you have ComLink with fixed CP’s, while the other components with free connections – which means they need to specify event/method manually – the later add a bit of work, so it might be faster to design/code if I only use fixed CP’s because you then select event/method as you connect.

Another concern here is that Close and Open do an automatic Fork. Open have one output signal so that is automatically connected, but how do I process Open to four different components? A Fork will allow you to control the details, while here I end up executing the four Open operations in random order (the same order you designed links in). I think this is ok, but I need to think about the details and how this will be a bit. The difference with a Fork is that I can execute parallelism as well – force the system to execute the operations in parallell which in this case could be an advantage over a random, sequensial approach.

It’s a few details in the coming here because I need to consider how this works out for the developer – how fast is it to work with.

ComLink is as the name indicate a component that contain a communication link (IPC, Serial, Ethernet) and contain two Methods : Open and Close. In this case both are optional because the component also have an auto “AlwaysConnected” mode. The output is either OnOpen, OnClose or OnError. OnOpen is shown red because it is Mandatory and not connected. OnClose is shown Green, Open because it is Optional and not connected. OnError is shown Green because it is connected.

Some components will have a fixed list of input/output signals as in this case. The positon of the communication points are computed automatically and the object is sized if needed.