Variables Viewer Component

Motion controllers of the ACS Motion Controllers Ltd. have a rather complicated structure including a set of variables. Their values determine the current state of the system. A special component (Variables Viewer Component) was developed to manage the variables. Its functionality comprises monitoring of the variable values, reading and updating various parameters.

Customers:
ACS Motion Control (www.acsmotioncontrol.com)

Industry sector:
Microelectronics, instrument engineering, IT

PROBLEM:

ACS Motion Control Ltd. develops and manufactures advanced multi-axis motion controllers. The controllers are equipped with a set of tools enabling PC controller operation. The old version of the toolkit was written with LabView. The new version is .NET and C# based. While developing the new version a necessity to develop another component (Variables Viewer Component) became obvious. Besides all the current functionality, it has an extended number of new features for monitoring and altering variable values.

SOLUTION:

ACS Motion Control Ltd. set SimbirSoft Ltd. a task to develop the Variables Viewer Component which was part of the new toolkit. The basic functional (Framework itself) had been developed by some other contractor.

General component description:

A motion controller is a device with hardware, firmware (which allows the hardware operation) and a set of tools allowing the PC controller operation (including the controller monitoring system, simulators for program debugging and other tools).

A controller has a great number of variables for various purposes. These variable values determine the current state of the system. A special component (Variables Viewer Component) was developed to manage the variables. The component fulfills the following functions:

• displaying a classified log list of the variables;
• displaying the purpose description of any variable;
• reading and changing variable values;
• viewing separate array elements and separate bits of variables;
• customizing monitoring of value changes of the selected variables;
• a great variety of monitoring window visual style settings (themes, fonts, etc.);
• supporting various presentation formats (number, scientific, etc.);
• saving and restoring the current state;
• moving the variables to the monitoring windows and other components using the technology Drag&Drop;
• etc.

Platform:

Windows XP, Windows Vista

Main technologies and libraries used:

VS2005, .NET 2.0, C#, DevExpress, COM, ATL

Screenshots: