LEON

After the third new start of the project, it runs finally without any errors. Creating something in Visu+ without any indroduction can be very tough. Learning by doing is the key, but in Visu+ this means “do something, learn and start again from scratch to apply the new stuff…”

Copy&Paste will fail in nearly all cases, except you know every single variable connection between objects.

Anyway, beside some browser applets for demonstration purpose, the visualization looks like this:

Hi folks, there’s a great video about the Phoenix Contact Local Meeting events. Including interviews with English subtitles.

Our project manager Thomas Fuchs gives a short overview about the LEON project within the first minutes.

Last weeks we focused on the web remote control. We had to merge three webpages from different webservers into one well arranged screen. One on the ILC 350 PN of the control cabinet, another one on the ILC 150 ETH of the LEON power box and the last one of the camera. Additionally we had to guarantee that only one person can use the website at the same time.

Because of technical permissions there are some requirements on the user’s site to use the remote control. For example the visualization with WebVisit requires Java with cache disabled. Unfortunately the camera software requires ActiveX, which only is supported by the Internet Explorer. You’ll get such a screen if you visit the page with another browser than Internet Explorer:

If you use the Internet Explorer you will get the login screen. We made three permission levels. In the future the plant is used at school for presentation and programming. Therefore we made a student account, a teacher account and an admin account. If someone uses the plant you get the message, that the plant is used. If you log in with a higher permission level the other person will be disconnected from the remote control. This is the login screen:

The important notices are about preparing your PC for using the plant. We are not proud of the need of preparation, but this are facts which we couldn’t change (see the explanation above). If you have logged in successfully, you get the following screen:

In the main control panel (yes, the headline is written right yet) you can turn the power on for getting the control panel of the control cabinet. It’s reloading itself dynamically at the top right box. Additionally you see the webcam picture on the left bottom. After turning power on this is how it looks like:

After eliminating some little bugs it seems like the remote control is fully functional and ready to use.

We used a little AJAX to get the dynamic feeling we want to have from the control. Furthermore it is used for seeing whether a person is using the remote control or not. If a user with higher permissions takes control over the remote control, AJAX clears the websites content. The user with lower permission only get’s the possibility to try a new login.

We are looking forward to get a new camera firmware to give the possibility for zooming and steering the camera with buttons. Today there is only the possibility with using the mouse and zooming by scrollwheel. Perhaps I make a video for you soon.

Our solar panel is ready to get green energy from the sun. It’ll save energy for use it later e.g. at night.

Here you get some pictures:

We are looking forward to get the missing parts in the next days.

As you may have recognized before, there is an entry called “Leonpedia” in our left handed navigation bar. Until now it might not have been very useful to you.
But as we get on with our work, there are many things we want to explain to you.

Today we start with some multilingual information about VLANs (German / English) as the first part of our technical section.

Please feel free to comment, we appreciate any suggestions!

First we wish you a happy new year. After having a few days of vacation, we are back again today.

In our absence we got our ordered LED-lamps to light our facility at night. For operating by remote control there must be a possibility to see what happens, even if it’s dark in the room. So the lamps are a basic element of our project. You see a first night picture on the right hand. The illumination have to be aligned, but for this first test we hold the lights in our hands. So finally it will be a good possibility to see the facility at night.

The next step is to build a website which allows the user to steer the facility. It have to include the control for the camera, the electrical cabinet and the LEON power box. And this is the problem, because the camera does not give access to any page from outside it’s own webserver. We contacted the company about this problem, but didn’t receive any answer yet.

Here you have some more pictures of the lights:

After having the essential function we make now the additional features which makes this project to LEON: Low Energy Open Netlab.