Monitor tabs

The Monitor dialog displays data from one ODU device, and allows the user to send commands to the ODU.

NOTE 1: Most data fields will contain invalid data, and the WRITE controls will be disabled, until a data read has been executed (either by clicking the Properties button, or enabling Auto-Read on the Comm Port dialog for this port).

NOTE 2: The above example is for devices on a Serial communications port. If the device is connected via an Ethernet port, the Comm Port and Baudrate fields will be replaced with IP Address field. All other fields on the page will remain unchanged.

Controls

Command field - Any command string which is entered in this field will be sent to the appropriate target, when either Carriage Return is entered, or Send Cmd button is pressed.

Implementation note: both the Comm Port and Monitor dialogs contain a Command field and a Send Cmd button. The difference is that commands send from the Monitor tab are sent to the device's address, while the commands sent from the Comm Port tab are sent to address 0 (i.e., they are broadcast to all units, with the RESPOND flag cleared). Commands and responses are always displayed on the Comm Port terminal.

Properties - This button sends a series of commands to the device, which determines and displays information about the device's configuration and status. This data will be displayed in the data area of the Monitor dialog.
Send File - Opens a separate edit control, in which the user can enter a list of commands to be sent to the target. These commands can be either read from a file or copy-and-pasted from other windows.
Polling - this checkbox will cause the program to periodically read configuration data from the ODU and update its status displays. The default polling period is 10 seconds, this can be changed via the Options dialog, accessible from the CommPort dialog.
Logging - Opens the Logging Options dialog. See the Logging Config topic in this help file for details.
Dump Report - This will display a summary of the device configuration, derived from the P command. If ALARMS logging is enabled, the same data will also be written to the ALARMS log file.
Mail Log - Will send a copy of the ALARMS log file for this device to a specified email recipient. When this button is selected, the SMTP Info dialog will be presented, which allows the user to specify all the required email parameters.

Once data is entered and Send Email is selected, the log file will be sent in an email, using the SMTP protocol. Any changes in the SMTP Info will be saved in the program's configuration data and remembered when any future requests are made.

Delete Device - this will cause the current monitor tab to be deleted from the Monitor dialog.

Editing ODU parameters

In normal operation, the device data fields are all in read-only state, as shown above. If polling is enabled, the data fields will be updated every time a polling read occurs. If data editing was enabled at this time, it would be virtually impossible to enter new edit data, since the polling thread would overwrite any changes that were entered!

Notice the Enable Editing button in the image above. If this button is pressed, several changes will take place:

1. Polling will be suspended on the current device. The Polling LED on the Summary dialog will change to yellow to indicate that polling is temporarily suspended on the port.

2. The Write Edits button will be enabled.

3. The Enable Editing button will change to Disable Editing.

4. All the editable fields on the page will be enabled.

The image below shows the Monitor dialog with editing enabled.

In this situation, a user can enter any parameter changes that are required, then press the Write Edits button to write the changes to the ODU. Note that Write Edits will NOT turn off editing mode. When the user is done editing data, press the Disable Editing button to return the device to normal polling mode. Note also that Disable Editing does NOT perform a write operation; all changed data is simply discarded, and current data will be written back to the page on the next polling cycle.

Status-LED bar

This row of indicators presents the status of various options in the Monitor.

LED position	What it indicates
1	Comm port connection
2	ALARMS logging is active
3	ALARMS log sending by email is active
4	TREND logging is active (not currently implemented)
5	TREND log sending by email is active (not currently implemented)
6	(Protection Switch only) PortB mode is active. If this flag is on, radios are accessed through the protection switch. If this flag is off, radios and protection switch are all accessed directly by the serial port.

LED colors and their meanings:

GREEN - ON or ACTIVE

OFF - OFF or INACTIVE

BLUE - Device is currently actively being used

RED - Device is in FAULT or ERROR state. Note that not all devices have a fault state.