Universal Variables Selector Control

Universal Variables Selector Control is a universal control element which has an interface interacting with the system hardware, the controller produced by ACS Motion Control Ltd. This control is meant to display the log list of the controller variables and some detailed information about them. Universal Variables Selector has a flexible interface that allows customizing the desired data presentation.

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 it became obvious that some different components needed the similar functionality such as an access to the list of the controller variables. It was decided to develop a universal easily customizable control element to work with the controller variables.

SOLUTION:

ACS Motion Control Ltd. set SimbirSoft Ltd. a task to develop the Universal Variables Selector Control which was part of the new toolkit. The element development was carried out in close cooperation with the customer’s group of developers because the Universal Variables Selector was integrated into the components developed by the customer (FRF Analyzer, Adjuster, Scope and etc.)

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).

There is a great variety of different variables of various purposes in every controller. These variable values determine the current state of the system.

Universal Variables Selector Control is XtraUserControl based (DevExpress library) universal control element. Meanwhile Universal Variables Selector has everything needed for its interaction with the controller, display and print of the needed information. Universal Variables Selector can fulfill the following operations:

• displaying the log list of variables;
• displaying the values of array elements and separate bits;
• maintaining the filters for reading the variables from the controller;
• adding extra user variables;
• monitoring the variable values;
• changing the variable values, the array elements and separate bits;
• validation check of the values entered by the user;
• maintaining various formatting;
• various visual effects;
• etc.

Platform:

Windows XP, Windows Vista

Main technologies and libraries used:

VS2005, .NET 2.0, C#, DevExpress

Screenshots: