Overview¶

The configuration has to be JSON-formatted. It is divided into the following three categories:

Client: basic configuration of the Lablink client (JSON object)
Input: configuration of the client’s inputs, each visualized as individual dataset (JSON array of JSON objects)
Plot: configuration of the plot (JSON object)

In the following, the configuration parameters for these categories are listed.

Client configuration¶

General client configuration

ClientName: client name
GroupName: group name
ScenarioName: scenario name
labLinkPropertiesUrl: URI to Lablink configuration
syncHostPropertiesUrl: URI to sync host configuration
ClientDescription: description of the client (optional)
ClientShell: activate Lablink shell (optional, default: false).

Data plotted to the screen can also be stored as timeseries in CSV files. This can be configured individually for each input of the plotter (see parameter WriteToFile of the input configuration). The following parameters determine the general configuration of the CSV output, which is applied to all data written to CSV files.

CSV output configuration

WriteDataDirURI: Specify in which directory to write the CSV output files as URI. If the specifed directory does not exist, the plotter will try to create it. If not specified, CSV files are written to the current working directory. Paths can be specified as plotter://relative/path/to/dir, where the path will be interpreted relative to the path specified via system property dataDir. For instance, using option -DdataDir=/a/b/c when starting the plotter client and specifiying plotter://x/y/z will result in CSV files being written to directory `/a/b/c/x/y/z. (optional)
WriteDataTimestamp: If true, the timeseries written to the CSV files use timestamps. Otherwise, the elapsed time since starting the plotter is used. (optional, default: false)

Input configuration¶

Configuration for each input

InputID: name of the input, used in plot legend
DataType: data type of the input, allowed values are double and long
Unit: unit associated to the input, used in plot legend (optional)
LineStyle: string specifying the color for points, allowed values are solid, dotted, dashed, dotdashed and dotdotdashed (optional, default: solid)
MarksStyle: set the marks style, allowed values are none, points and dots (optional, default: dots)
Connected: if true, subsequent points in the plot are connected with a line (optional, default: true)
Impulses: if true, then a line will be drawn from any plotted point down to the x axis (optional, default: false)
WriteToFile: if true, then new values will not only be plotted to the screen but also written to a CSV output file called “<InputID>.csv” (optional, default: false)

Plot configuration¶

Note

Either AutomaticRescale has to be set to true or XMin, XMax, YMin and YMax have to be specified!

AutomaticRescale: if true, axes are rescaled automatically at runtime to fit all data on the plot canvas
XMin: left bound of x-axis
XMax: right bound of x-axis
YMin: lower bound of y-axis
YMax: upper bound of y-axis

Other parameters:

Title: title of the plot (optional, default: Plotter)
XLabel: x-axis label (optional, default: time)
YLabel: y-axis label (optional, default: value)
DisplayGrid: control whether the grid is drawn (optional, default: true)
PersistencePoints: a positive argument sets the persistence of the plot to the given number of points, calling with a zero argument turns off this feature, reverting to infinite memory (optional, default: 0)
PersistenceX: a positive argument sets the persistence of the plot to the given width in units of the horizontal axis, calling with a zero argument turns off this feature, reverting to infinite memory (optional, default: 0.0)

Example configuration¶

{
  "Client": {
    "ClientDescription": "A simple plotter.",
    "ClientName": "TestPlotterSync",
    "ClientShell": false,
    "GroupName": "PlotterDemo",
    "ScenarioName": "PlotterSync",
    "WriteDataDirURI": "file:///C:/Development/lablink/plotter",
    "labLinkPropertiesUrl": "http://localhost:10101/get?id=ait.all.all.llproperties",
    "syncHostPropertiesUrl": "http://localhost:10101/get?id=ait.test.plotter.sync.sync-host.properties"
  },
  "Input": [
    {
      "Connected": true,
      "DataType": "Double",
      "Impulses": true,
      "InputID": "Input1",
      "LineStyle": "dashed",
      "MarksStyle": "dots",
      "Unit": "Unit1"
    },
    {
      "DataType": "long",
      "InputID": "Input2",
      "WriteToFile": true
    }
  ],
  "Plot": {
    "AutomaticRescale": false,
    "DisplayGrid": true,
    "PersistencePoints": 0,
    "PersistenceX": 0,
    "Title": "Asynchronous Plotter Demo",
    "XLabel": "runtime in s",
    "XMax": 60,
    "XMin": 0,
    "YLabel": "test data",
    "YMax": 10,
    "YMin": -10
  }
}