OpenSCADA Development Blog

Many of you might know Lego Mindstorms. Those who don’t should have a look at it, you are really missing something The new NXT version of Lego Mindstorms has quite some interesting features: a 32bit CPU, bluetooth and USB connectivity, new sensors (like ultrasonic distance measuring), an open source firmware and lots more. Of course this screams for some OpenSCADA integration … so here it is: MindstormsProject

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The last days we had some time to update the process viewer plugin. Most notably there is now an option to handle multiple windows at the same time together with a view link button:

The main view is scrollable and the Draw2D layout stuff has been cleaned up a little bit. So now it is possible to set opacity, background color, command buttons, popup menus and lots more.

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The OpenSCADA RCP Client got a new plugin. Based on JFreeChart we added a online charting view for data objects. The plugin is already available in the integration builds and will be available with the upcoming release 0.8.0 of project Atlantis.

The screen shot shows a connection to an OPC Test server creating a sawtooth wave and random data. The blue range marker shows a lost connection to the OPC server which was restarted during that time.

The new projekt Naraka (alias OpenSCADA .NET) is the .NET equivalent of project Atlantis. As promised after the release 0.6.0 of project Atlantis we will see some fun with the .NET platform. The ICE framework made it quite easy to provide access from .NET to the already exisiting Java Components from project Atlantis. The result for today is a class library including OpenSCADA DA Client functionality on the one side and a little DA Client Sample which was created mostly with the Forms Editor of “Visual C# Express”.

To see the preview just follow the link with IE. Of course using Firefox, Safari, [your browser here] is not a big deal. But the tight integration of .NET into IE makes it a bit more comfortable. Since this is not a release but a preview it should be fine Anyway you can download a seperate source and/or binary package here.

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While working on the OpenSCADA OPC interface module project Utgard received several enhancements in the area of connection and error handling. Connection states, error conditions are reported using listeners, and the sync access reader supports a server reconnect now. Although some issues still remain open, it is worth a micro-release (Release 0.1.2).

Also the work on the OpenSCADA OPC interface module make good progress. Initial communication is established using the libraries provided by project Utgard. OpenSCADA now has access to the OPC data sources. Due to the fact that some issues are still unresolved and since the project is not integrated into the nightly build process up to now there is only the following screenshot previewing what will come in 0.6.0 of project Atlantis.

The screenshot shows the OpenSCADA RCP Application which is connected to the OpenSCADA OPC interface module. The interface module is connected to an OPC simulation server running on Windows. OpenSCADA Client and Server are both running on Linux (Ubuntu 6.10).

Recently work has begun creating a process view framework. The components needed are of course a data model, configuration, a viewer as well as a graphical editor. Read on to see what already is in the repository and what will be in the next release of project Atlantis. And of course see some screenshots too

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The DA perspective in OSTC has got a new list view. It is a real time view of serveral data items at the same time which can be composed by draging and dropping items from the hive tree to the list.

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The OSTC (OpenSCADA Test Client) is currently been enhanced to provide initial support for the AE (Alarms & Events). While still a lot needs to be done, initial screenshots are already available. Beside the additional AE features also some enhancements on the RCP application itself have been made. It now provides a “Welcome Screen” based on the new Eclipse 3.2 Universal Welcome system and has been cleaned up to host more upcoming interfaces of OpenSCADA.

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