2019-12-23 Age: 30 days

We are proud to announce the third maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.11 providing 18 bug fixes for 4diac IDE.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.10.x and 1.11.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.11.3.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

This is the second of a series of posts on bigger 4diac IDE UI changes originated in the recent usability studies and discussions at the 4days of 4diac summit (first post).

While the type palette shown on the right side of our editors has the great the advantage that it is easily explore-able by new users. Also creating instances by drag and drop is a very common concept used in many tools. However when more and more types are added the palette navigation gets harder. Also the drag and drop creation leads to lots of mouse movements and gets tedious. Therefore we want to propose a new in-place type creation as shown in the following mock-up image:

The behavior is proposed as follows:

• An double click the text field with the button to the right is shown
• Also initially a drop down list with the last 3 - 5 used types is shown
• This drop down list shows the type name maybe with type icon and followed by a dash the path and file name in italic and some lighter color (e.g., slightly grayish)
• When the user types something in the text field the drop down list is updated with types matching the search text
• Selecting a type from the list with arrows + enter or with a double click will create an instance of that type
• Clicking on the button right to the text field brings up the insert FB pop-up menu so that the user can easily explore the type library

Furthermore we see the following extensions:

• <Ctrl + Left Click> bring up the insert type pop-up menu
• If the text entered into the text box does not much a type create an untyped subapp with the given name. Not sure if this is a good idea.
• When the user starts typing and the mouse has not been moved beyond a certain threshold from the last left click position also bring up the type creation editor.

A key question for us is if this concept can replace the type palette of the FB Network editor?

Please use Bug 558338 for feedback.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

This is a start of a series of posts on bigger 4diac IDE UI changes originated in the recent usability studies and discussions at the 4days of 4diac summit.

When we started 4diac IDE we decided to treat an Eclipse project equally to an IEC 61499 system. This had several advantages (e.g., simple project tree, alignment of type lib to projects). However in the usability evaluations done over the last year we got the feedback that this design has several shortcomings. Therefore we want to propose to change the naming and presentation of projects and system such that one Eclipse project (i.e., a 4diac project) can have several systems, as shown in the mock-up picture below. Furthermore, the type library files and folders would be moved to a dedicated type-library folder.

This proposal has several advantages:

• Unambiguous reuse of all project related Eclipse Platform features (e.g., import existing project into workspace)
• Several systems can share a common type library
• Basis for more advanced type-library concepts (e.g., linked read only elements)
• Better representation of none IEC 61499 files (e.g., documentation, virtual dns file, 4diac FORTE C++ source code)
• Simplification of some 4diac IDE code
• Can be the basis for some other usability improvements (see later posts)

So far we have identified the following required changes:

• System explorer needs to show files on root level, sort IEC 61499 system files to top followed by the type-library folder
• New 4diac Project Wizard creates: project, default system, default application, and the type-library in dedicated Type Library folder
• New System Wizard needs a selection list for 4diac Projects (similar how it is now done in the New Application Wizard)
• New Application Wizard the systems in the selection list need to be grouped into projects

We know that this is quite a big change therefore we are actively asking for your feedback. We’ve created the Bug 558338 in our Bugzilla for collecting and discussing feedback.

Looking forward for your comments and ideas!

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

The 4diac examples repository now contains an example on the first implementation of skills FBs, which is used in Robotics + Automation OPC UA Demonstrator.

A skill provides a generic description of an automation component functionalities. Such a description is an important prerequisite for the implementation of the changeability required in the context of Industry 4.0. The main purpose of defining a skill is to design the automation systems based on the required skills for each step of a production process, instead of identifying actual production resources. A working group within VDMA is currently working on standardizing a skill interface as OPC UA companion specification.

You are welcome to develop your own PLC skills and build your own experiments.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-12-08 Age: 45 days

From November 11.-14. 2019 more then 20 4diac users and developers from all over the world came together in Linz for the first 4days of 4diac summit. In these four days we had lots of discussions and exchange. To summarize we had the following sessions:

• Improving the 4diac FORTE build and deployment process
• Several application design sessions, many thanks to Vishnu Easwaran for bringing teaching hardware along
  
• How to use and configure OPC UA in 4diac applications
• 4diac on Lego Mindstorms EV3 hack day
  
• How to connect 4diac to the Arrowhead Framework
• An intense session on usability with first results documented here
  
• How to implement drivers for the new modular IO interface
  

Based on these great results we are look forward to the next 4days of 4diac. Be also prepared for great improvements of the 4diac IDE. We will keep you updated.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-11-15 Age: 68 days

We are proud to announce the second maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.11 providing 9 bug fixes for 4diac IDE. These issues where identified and fixed during the 4days of 4diac summit held from November 11^th to 14^th at the LIT | Cyber-Physical Systems Lab in Linz, Austria.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.10.x and 1.11.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.11.2.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-11-11 Age: 72 days

We are proud to announce the first maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.11 providing 13 bug fixes for 4diac IDE. This include a fix for one of our nastiest bugs: the disappearing FB interface commands and types in the FB interface editor.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.10.x and 1.11.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.11.1.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-11-03 Age: 80 days

In roughly a week the doors will open for the 4days of 4diac summit. For the first time the 4diac community is meeting in such a form. Based on that feedback from the attendees whe have identified first topics to be discussed and work on:

• What are the new features of 4diac introduced in the last releases
• Execution performance and real-time execution of 4diac FORTE
• Usability of 4diac IDE, we have a moderator with expertise on that topic for Wednesday Nov 13^th
• 4diac on Lego Mindstorms EV3
• 4diac and the Arrowhead Framework
• Teaching IEC 61499 with Eclipse 4diac
• ...

But there is plenty of space for more!

For the spontaneous people: We still have places left! You can register here.

Looking forward to meet you next week in Linz!
The 4diac Team

2019-10-07 Age: 107 days

We are very proud to announce the 4diac 1.11.0 release!

With this release we officially updated to Eclipse Public License, Version 2.0! Apart from many bug fixes and improvements the main changes and new features in 4diac 1.11.0 are:

• 4diac IDE:
  • Improved Lua code generation
  • Fixes in the dark theme in the console and the algorithm editors
  • Allow setting the font used in the graphical editors and better handling of IEC 61499-2 coordinate systems
  • Changed the default font to a mono-space font, where certain characters can be better distinguished (e.g., I &l)
  • Printing of diagrams
  • Many usability improvements:
    • Several problems with copy/paste
    • Simpler creation of states and actions with <ctrl+left mouse click> in the ECC editor
    • Improved transition presentation and editing in the state property sheet
    • Harmonized look and feel and improved handling of tables (e.g., tabbing through fields, look ahead search in selection boxes)
    • Transition lines pass through the middle control point
    • Provide mouse cursors feedback for indicating connection sources and destinations
    • ...
• 4diac FORTE:
  • Support for the Arrowhead framework
  • Completely reworked and improved OPC UA integration, update to open62541 V1.0
  • Migrated TIME function to NOW and NOW_MONOTONIC function and improved time conversion functions
  • Several fixes in the dynamic type loading code
  • Deprecate Eclipse Neo SCADA SFP support
• 4diac LIB:
  • Set of test FBs and applications for testing the different code generators

A full list of all bugs addressed in this release can be found on the 1.10.0 release page

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.9.x and 1.10.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.11.0.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-09-17 Age: 127 days

Over the last 12 years Eclipse 4diac has grown into the open source PLC solution, with users and contributors all over the world. Up to now we have mostly interacted through our forum, mailing list and Mattermost channel. With the 4days of 4diac summit we would like to change that, and bring you all together in one place.

Therefore, we invite you all to Linz from November 11^th till November 14^th to discuss and program with each other on new 4diac topics and applications.

We wanted to make the event as low barrier as possible: So we provide the meeting rooms and coffee, and you bring your time and ideas. Our goal is turn this event into 4days of showing, discussing, planning, hacking, experimenting, learning with Eclipse 4diac.

4 days for the 4diac community to meet and exchange! For details on location, registration and programm please visit the 4days of 4diac page.

We are looking forward to meet you in Linz,
The 4diac Team

After some months of working, the improved OPC UA module for 4diac is now finally merged in the developed branch.

Why change the OPC UA Module?

After working with OPC UA and real cases with different companies using different OPC UA stacks, we realized that the OPC UA module in FORTE wasn't reliable and often crashed, and wasn't easy to extend. Also, we noticed that other companies had the same problem. So we decided to make a deep clean-up of the OPC UA module and add the capabilities we found were needed.

So... what's new?

The changes were done in the FORTE code, and the main things include:

• Client and server are completely separated. Using just clients capabilities won't start the server.
• When using the client, if the connection is lost, FORTE will reconnect.
• You can now look for nodes in remote server using not only the browsename, but also the Node ID.
• You can set a desired Node ID (and name) for the variables you create in your local server. (Numeric, String and Bytestring).
• You can easily integrate your own nodesets to FORTE's compilation.
• You can easily add your own types.
• Support of v0.3.0 and v1.0 versions of open62541.

But, how good is it actually?

• Before, each Function Block has its own thread. Now, not anymore, meaning a great improvement in performance.
• 9 bugs were closed.
• 9 4diac applications were developed that execute more than 1300 test on FORTE's code.
• More than 80% coverage.
• A CI (continuous integration) was set to execute all tests on each commit, using both branch versions of open62541.
• 0 compilation warnings / 0 cppcheck warnings nor errors.

I like it already, how do I use it?

You need to use the develop branch of FORTE. The usage has changed a little, but the documentation is already up online. The main changes are which Function Blocks are used for different OPC UA capabilites and how does the ID looks like.

So, please use it, test it and open bugs for it. And of course, if you want to contribute to it, please do it by pushing your changes to FORTE's branch "feature/MO44GA" which will trigger the CI.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-08-29 Age: 146 days

Hey All!

Here is the last update on my GSoC project. The last phase is now finished and we tried to finalize everything. With this last update, I want to give you an overview of everything that has been done and everything I learned throughout the project.

Before starting the project, I got myself familiar with the programming language Lua. Doing the Lua starting book and all examples within it. My first steps in the Eclipse 4diac IDE where to build a whole set of function blocks to test the code generator. Starting from simple functionality like conditional statements or assigments to calling structured text functions or adapters. I tried to cover nearly all functionality the Eclipse 4diac provides. Overall I created 35 different function blocks for testing the tool:

Afterwards, I already used these function blocks to identify what exactly was working in the code generator. I started creating a buglist in Bugzilla as a roadmap on the bugs I found. After some minor bugfixes, I started fixing the bigger ones. e.g.

• Reworking the deploying mechanisms for function block types and adapter types
• Fixing adapter problems

Unfortunately, I was not able to fix all identified bugs. Eventhough the project is finished with this month, I want to keep working with the Eclipse 4diac team and especially on the dynamic type loader.

To summarize my experience with GSoC and the Eclipse 4diac Team, it was incredible. Not only that I learned a new programming language, Lua, I got to know Xtend, an extension for the Java language itself and also an overlook of the C++ programming language. I also worked a lot in the Eclipse 4diac IDE itself, getting to know the whole programming environment. But the most important thing was to get to know an open and communicative community, that helped me with every problem I had. I had a really splendid time working on this project and want to thank you all for your assistance and help throughout the project.
Thank you all!

Cheers,
Jan

2019-08-21 Age: 154 days

We are proud to announce the third maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.10 providing 14 bug fixes for 4diac IDE, and 3 for 4diac FORTE.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.9.x and 1.10.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.10.3.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-07-23 Age: 183 days

12 years ago a small group of researchers presented the first public version of Eclipse 4diac at the 2007 IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics in Vienna. Our baby made major steps in its early life, now just passing grade school and already helping a lot of people out there.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

We would like to draw your attention to a funding opportunity for experiments around Eclipse 4diac.

The European network MIDIH supports selected application and technology experiments around Big Data with a reference architecture based on a stack of proven technologies (including Eclipse 4diac) with up to 60 000 € funding. Individual applicants can - once again - submit applications until 06.08. Topics can, for example be, additive manufacturing, inter- and intralogistics, modelling/simulation, VR/AR and AI/ML.

Further information is available at https://midih.eu/opencall_2.php

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-06-29 Age: 207 days

Here is a new update on my GSoC project. We have now finished the first phase and i already started to fix the first bugs. Deploying FBs with very basic functionality should now work again from the development branch. The next step is to find the causes, why certain functionality is not working properly. Therefore, i created a new list of bugs as roadmap we are going to do. You can find more detailed information in the eclipse wiki

Cheers,
Jan

Our powered by 4diac traffic light demonstrator reached Gothenburg to take part in the workshop of the Productive 4.0 project. The 4diac application can now communicate with the Arrowhead Framework over HTTP REST and/or OPC UA.

The documentation about how to use this amazing library in 4diac can be found here. You can easily register your own services and look for orchestration rules for your devices.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-06-11 Age: 225 days

My first two weeks of GSoC are now over and i have my first results to share with you. If there are any questions, as always, feel free to ask over Mattermost or the mailing list.

I just finished the first test phase of the dynamic type loader. To summarize, simple Basic FBs can already deployed without any troubles, e.g., calculations, FOR loops and Conditions (i.e., IF, CASE). In addition, all types of ECCs i found and internal variables also work. Datatypes seem to be working too, except Time Types. There is an open bug for this already. For functions, there is an open bug too.

I newly discovered, that some of the simple Structured Text functionality is still not supported, like WHILE/REPEAT loops or standard functions.

Cheers,
Jan Holzweber

2019-05-31 Age: 236 days

Over the last months we where working to give the 4diac logo and icons a new more polished look. This has come to an end and we are happy to present the new logo and icon suite:

I hope you like the new logos. With this post we already updated the 4diac web-page to the new design.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

It is a great pleasure for me that this year we got a student project sponsored in the Google Summer of Code. Jan Holzweber will work on our Lua-based dynamic code loading infrastructure and turn it from experimental prototype into a usable stable feature.

Please give Jan a warm welcome and your support.

I’m looking forward to work as mentor with him.

Cheers,
Alois

2019-04-14 Age: 283 days

We are proud to announce the second maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.10 providing 11 bug fixes for 4diac IDE, and 6 for 4diac FORTE.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For 1.9.x and 1.10.x users a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.10.2.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

fortiss showed two 4diac-based demonstrators at the Inspire Automation Camp from 25th to 27th February organized by Festo in Esslingen.

A Pick-and-Place module demonstrates the skill-based approach for an automation system using OPC UA. The module consists of a vertical axis, a horizontal axis, a gripper and a conveyor belt that are controlled by a Festo CECC-D, an emBrick, a Kunbus RevolutionPi and an INSYS MRX3 respectively. This engineering approach hides the implementation complexity on the target system by providing a standardized interface to the process via skills. The gripper, for example, is controlled by a skill gripper that can be called via OPC UA.

The second demonstrator shows 4diac's TSN capabilities by sending two streams, a prioritized TSN stream and a non-prioritized best-effort stream, between two Beaglebone Black devices via 3 TTTech Akro 6/0 TSN switches. All devices have a common time base, which is achieved by the Precision Time Protocol (IEEE1588 - PTP). The prioritized stream is synchronized to a specific sending time point. The demonstrator shows on the one hand how 4diac uses the deterministic features of TSN, which means that the transmission of packets can be guaranteed and on the other hand that synchronizing the application and network schedule reduces latency and jitter of the transmitted packets.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

You are a student currently working or planning to work with 4diac and looking for a summer project? We have something for you! 4diac is participating in Google Summer of Code 2019. This means that Google may sponsors your project with 4diac.

We got you interested? Then please consider the following points:

• Get in contact with us to discuss potential project topics on our mailing list
• For inspiration we compiled first project ideas
• See the official Google Summer of Code web-page for a detailed description of how to apply

Looking forward working together with you!

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

DH electronics presents at the Embedded World trade fair their new "Multiprotocoll IoT Edge Computer with voice-controlled PLC and Cloud connection" product. This product features Eclipse 4diac as PLC environment. See it live in hall 2 booth 100!

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

2019-01-22 Age: 365 days

The European Innovation project FED4SAE is currently eliciting proposals for innovative industrial application development projects in the domain of Cyber-Physical Systems and Embedded Systems. FED4SAE is looking for companies that want to:

• Develop novel and innovative smart solutions to take a leading position in their target markets.
• Use the most advanced technologies and industrialized solutions to link the physical world with the virtual world in combining hardware and software expertise.
• Gain premium access to resources, competencies and reduce development time.
• Enter into a unique European ecosystem gathering leading industrial companies, world-class research organizations, innovation accelerators and private investors.

To do this, FED4SAE offers companies:

• Product support via industrial platforms – existing products provided by market leaders ( AVL, Intel, ST, and Thales ) – in the domain of cyber-physical and embedded systems that can bring the innovation to a state of maturity.
• Technical expertise via advanced platforms (e.g., Eclipse 4diac) by RTOs ( BME, CSEM, Digital Catapult, Fraunhofer IISB, fortiss, KTH, and Unican) – either innovative technical solutions or testbeds – which will add value to the product.
• Innovation management – focusing on business – to help your innovation get to the market via the FED4SAE and the Smart Anything Everywhere ecosystem.
• Up to €58,000 in funding – representing 70% of the declared budget in your proposal.

Companies are encouraged to contact any of the FED4SAE project partners for guidance and feedback on their initial project ideas.

The call is open until March 5th, 2019. More information can be found online here.

On February the 6th fortiss GmbH in Munich hosts an Eclipse Insight event about "cross domain engineering". The addressed domains are industrial automation, internet of things and embedded systems. There will be interesting talks and demonstrations related to Eclipse 4diac, Eclipse BaSyx, AutoFOCUS3 (provides the base for Eclipse SystemFOCUS), Eclipse Hono, Eclipse Kura and Eclipse Kapua. Detailed agenda and registration on eventbrite.

We are pleased to see you there!

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

In our currently running usability survey a hotspot for disappointment is showing up, namely the application deployment. Interestingly we started on this already in the last release. With 4diac 1.10. the following improvements are available:

• No more connection refused error messages: 4diac IDE automatically deactivates monitoring if needed and after the deployment re-enables it.
• No more invalid state error messages: Deployment checks the running resources in a device and lets you overwrite them:
  
• Deploy from where you want: With a new deploy main menu and pop-up menu you can select deployable entities (i.e., resources, devices, or full systems) and deploy them on the fly.

We hope that this makes deploying a less painful experience in 4diac IDE.

Outlook

However we know that this is only a first step. More work is needed to fully get rid of the deployment perspective as a whole.

Furthermore there is a major disturbing step in deployment that we haven’t talked about yet: FB type management. Every time you change an FB or create a new one, C++ code for the FB has to be created and 4diac FORTE needs to be recompiled.

In order to overcome this issue we added as experimental feature a dynamic type load option. Here 4diac IDE detects during deployment the availability of FB types and for missing types code is automatically generated and sent to 4diac FORTE. To enable this feature you need to compile 4diac FORTE with LUA enabled and change in the system configuration of your application the device profile to dynamic type load.

However bear in mind that this feature is still experimental. Nonetheless we need testers for it. So we are heavily looking for your feedback on it!

Your feedback really always helps and there are several ways to provide it:

• Submit issues and suggestions through our bug tracker
• Fill out our anonymous 4diac IDE UX questionnaire
• Participate in our usability assessment

Thanks in advance for your support,
The 4diac Team