Equipment Manager
The Equipment Manager is a special view that allows to manage the Equipment components, Data Points, and Folder components added to a specific Application component.
The Equipment Manager lists all Equipment components and Data Points used in the specific Application component. The view shows the following fields:
- name of the Data Point;
- value on the Out slot;
- Data Point's status;
- enabled or disabled status.
The Equipment Manager view is not editable; however, it allows to add, remove, duplicate, and rename Equipment components, Data Points (withing the Equipment components and directly in the Application component), and Folder components, which help organize components in the application.
Once a specific Data Point is clicked in the Equipment Manager view, it is displayed in the Object Properties window, where it can be freely edited. Also, the view allows for multiediting of compatible Data Points–if compatible Data Points are selected in the Application Manager, their common slots are available for multiedition in the Object Properties window.
Opening the Equipment Manager
The Equipment Manager view is accessible in the context menu of the Application component.
The Equipment Manager view is also automatically opened if either the Application component is double-clicked in the Workspace Tree window.
Good Practice Tip
In future developments, the RAC18-IP controller will have a Haystack functionality implemented in its firmware, which calls for some good practice mechanisms that can be introduced now, with the current functionalities.
The Haystack functionality will offer multiple advantages of using tags–it will help identify parts of equipment controlled by the application and used Data Points, filter data by equipment, sensor, or value, any many more.
In order to facilitate a future use of the full Haystack functionality, the Equipment component has been included in the Core library. It is therefore recommended to use the following structure when creating applications:
Applications container
Application component
Equipment component
Data Point(s)
other components
Equipment component
Data Point(s)
other components
Such structure will be fully recognized in the Haystack functionality and will require minimum effort to use its full potential once updated.
Difference Between Equipment and Folder Components
The Equipment component with Haystack functionality will allow to identify the types and other characteristics of controlled devices by tags, which will be a main difference between the Equipment and Folder components–the Folder component is merely an organizing component; in the future, it will not carry any Haystack tags functionalities. It is therefore very important to use the Equipment components in the applications structure.
Also refer to: Equipment Manager
Licensing
The license for the new generation of iSMA CONTROLLI controllers driven by the nano EDGE ENGINE is constructed against the number of Data Points: each device based on the nano EDGE ENGINE is granted a specified number of license points (Data Points in this case), which can be used within applications. Therefore, the licensing system is only of quantitative, not functional, character–only the real number of Data Points in applications is taken into account, regardless of how many communication protocols are used to expose them, or how many network points are controlled. With the nano EDGE ENGINE-generation devices it is possible to create as big an application (or applications) as the number of licensed Data Points. No elements in the Networks, Services, or System containers are subject to license limitations, other than Data Points in the Applications container.
Note: In order to check the number of license points, please refer to the License in the device.