Webcast | What’s New in the Box | 9.1 New Features and Enhancements
Q&A
You talked about performance enhancements and FrameworX being fast… can you explain?
Marc Taccolini: There are three areas in the software where we have unmatched performance. 1) On the communication drivers and data acquisition, for a combination of reasons. We have the native protocols,,we do dynamic block optimization to read only what is necessary, and we allow parallel requests of data with multithread 2) On the Graphics – we can have thousands of elements on the screen with millisecond event updates 3) On the analytics and scripting, since we support languages like C#, that are much faster, and we allow to run parallel code that gives better performance. If you get all of these features together, we can have a much higher performance thanks to our architecture
Do you offer an Unlimited version?
Dave Hellyer: Yes, we do, we call it FrameworX Unlimited. It is unlimited in terms of amount of IO, number of runtime clients, number of engineers working on the application simultaneously.
What SQL Databases do you support?
Marc Taccolini: Anyone that’s compatible with a technology with ODBC, ODC or have a native connector like Firework. Basically, any database, since we support the standards technologies but can also connect to custom providers and libraries. That is true for both SQL and NoSQL databases!
Can I create my own device driver?
Marc Taccolini: Yes, we have a driver toolkit that allows anyone to add their own drivers.
Do you have a Systems Integrator Program?
Dave Hellyer: Yes, we do. It gives you training, licenses in-house to build and support your application, co-marketing applications and more. You can learn more on our website.
Is the integration with Canary Historian already implemented?
Marc Taccolini: Yes, it is! In the current version you can select only one server (without any mapping – with mapping, you can select several), but we’ll be updating that very soon!
Maximum number of connections to the MQTT broker?
Marc Taccolini: Right now it depends on memory and performance – we do not have any limitations like that.
How many tags for a local broker vs enterprise?
Marc Taccolini: The local broker can go also to many thousands of points, it doesn’t have a hardcoded limit. The first reason to go to the enterprise is not necessarily the size, but for the management and diagnostics tools, which are more complete and robust on the enterprise solution.
How can we input new picture to config website? What type can your support?
Marc Taccolini: In the Product Configuration and Resources we have the ability to import any image to the system (and you won’t need to keep the original file). We support many files (HTML, JPEG, PNG, etc), but even custom images can be added. A client of yours imports AutoCAD images, so if you need something custom, just get in touch!
What are you tying the status to? Communications bit?
Marc Taccolini: We have built in properties on the namespaces Device.Channel and Device Mode that expose the status of the communication for the application. The trace window and module information tools, the also have messages and performance monitoring of the communication.
The FactoryStudio Engineering UI is slow even one a system with high CPU and memory capacity, what is the best setup, is there any plan to improve?
Marc Taccolini: The trick is to have a good memory card or use a computer that has a good graphical card. We use a a technology called WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) that can do amazing graphics but needs the support for that. You can also do the application in a computer specifically for this, and then access the server computer remotely!
Can FrameworX be hosted on your own infrastructure or is it hosted?
Marc Taccolini: We do not provide hosting services at this point, but if since it is a .NET application, you can have it hosted if you want!
Can you embed maps and JavaScript scripting in them to connect to the database?
Marc Taccolini: When you embed HTML5, you can use any kind of Javascript components!
How about dynamic image? Can we input that?
Marc Taccolini: For dynamic images, you need a little bit of scripting, but it’s definitely possible. We recommend sending an e-mail to [email protected] so we can guide on building that script.
3D HMI are hot, is there any plan to add 3D HMI
Dave Hellyer: We already have 3D!
Is it support API to another system interface? ( power PI …)
Marc Taccolini: Yes, we have already integration with a few third party API and the user can add more at the project configuration.
Could you please touch on your licensing policy? And can we run the software for, say, two hours to test run it prior to licensing? Thank you.
Dave Hellyer: Yes, you can! We have several types of licensing (runtime and engineering, only runtime, etc). We also have a Demo on our website that gives you two hours of runtime and 30 days to edit projects. Download here.
Is there a plan to incorporate Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality capability into FrameworX FactoryStudio?
Marc Taccolini: That will happen one day, but for now we’re still playing with the technologies ourselves and trying to understand the best applications for it!
Can you use influx as a trend historian?
Marc Taccolini: There will require some extra configuration, but yes, it can be used.
Can we implement any kind of IA with Python to use it inside Tatsoft?
Marc Taccolini: Yes, since you can use Python, you can use all the features, there are no specific constraints on that; since we’re not actually running the Python ourselves, but using a driver to get the real-time information.
How about a maximum connection devices at the same time?
Marc Taccolini: It depends on the remote devices being able to accept, and computer CPU power. On the Tatsoft side it’s a list with no predefined limit.
On smaller scale system, what is the fastest execution/sampling time for device interface or script?
Marc Taccolini: Due to how .NET handle timers, the fastest scan rates range from 20ms to 50ms, assuming your device is able to reply at that rate