Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Ben Franksen <[email protected]> · Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:44:10 +0200

On Donnerstag, 16. September 2010, Ben Franksen wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 16. September 2010, Ralph Lange wrote:
> > I would think that camonitor for the complex structures would yield
> > a hard to read, if not unusable output.
> > Of course: If you have a valid use case, please file a bug report
> > explaining your case and including ideas how the camonitor output
> > should look like for the complex types. I will seriously consider
> > it, that's for sure.
>
> (1) The OP asked for it.
> (2) What use is 'camonitor -mp' if I can't see the properties?
> (3) I don't think it is hard to read. Try my hacked version of
>     camonitor.pl, I use the same format (in fact the same code) as
>     caget.pl. It's a bit bulky but note that properties typically
> don't change as frequently as the value.
>
> On Donnerstag, 16. September 2010, Andrew Johnson wrote:
> > We could provide an option to output the complex structures using
> > JSON,
>
> What is the problem with using the same format as caget(.pl) uses?
>
> > Having created the above example I realize one problem with the
> > DBR_CTRL_xxx types is that they don't include a time-stamp, so
> > they're not very good for monitoring values that change over time.
>
> It is still useful. Most times I use camonitor I don't even look once
> at the timestamps. We can also use client-side timestamps.

Another idea for increasing usability: Forget about DBR_XXX in the user 
interface. Instead, let them specify a set of properties and display 
just those, using whatever DBR type is appropriate (i.e. a superset). 
If there is none (e.g. the user requests "timestamp+display_limits") we 
could (a) give up and tell the user why, or (b) set up two monitors, 
one with DBR_TIME_XXX and one with DBR_GR_XXX, then correlate the 
events and merge them.

Cheers
Ben
-- 
"Never confuse what is natural with what is habitual."
                                                 -- Mahatma Gandhi

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System