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The following chart shows a sampling of products that include various combinations of web server, web client, and email capability.
We now offer web portal services to go with our remote monitoring devices. Any of our devices which indicate Web Client are ready to connect to our web portal. |
i.CanDoIt® Background
The goal of i.CanDoIt® is to provide a simple and cost effective facility management and remote monitoring solution suitable for use in small sites. The i.CanDoIt® has no site licenses or installation fees. The only software tool needed is a web browser. Multi-protocol support for BACnet, Modbus, and LonWorks are included. The i.CanDoIt® is programmable, even though it is rather powerful without programming. Control Solutions pondered one particular question while doing conceptual design for i.CanDoIt®. Why, with the availability of advanced protocols like LonWorks, is Modbus still so popular? The answer is simple: Modbus is simple. While providing support for interface of LonWorks devices, we took a lesson from Modbus and decided that we should keep i.CanDoIt® simple. Conceptually, i.CanDoIt® is a big spread sheet. It is register oriented just like Modbus, even though the registers are accessible in ways other than Modbus. When data is obtained from LonWorks or BACnet devices, or from local I/O, the data is placed into generic registers that are universally accessible to features of the system. i.CanDoIt® includes data logging, time & date scheduling, and template or rule based alarm processing with email notification and/or I/O activation in response to events. Data logging simply records the contents of registers on a user specified schedule. Scheduling causes register values to be set according to a schedule. The resulting register manipulation may generate network communication with remote devices, control local I/O, or change setpoints for example. i.CanDoIt® has two levels of programmability. It runs user programs at the server level on a 32-bit ARM processor, and at the I/O level on a high performance 8-bit RISC processor directly connected to I/O. The programming language is PL/i, patterned after PL/1 at the source level, and executing byte code like Java at the execution level. The goal of PI/i was to create a compact compiler with a reasonably safe execution environment, and a syntax with some of the power of C while being simpler than C. The register oriented spread sheet model of i.CanDoIt® makes it possible for users to write PL/i programs that are independent of protocol. The same program can run on a LonWorks, BACnet or Modbus network with no changes when only register references are used in the program. The PL/i compiler tools are full self contained within i.CanDoIt and accessible via a browser. Programs can be compiled and sent over the BACnet, Modbus, or LonWorks network to other AddMe III devices that are not web enabled. PC based support tools for working with larger user programs, including external compiler, are free (download from this web site). The i.CanDoIt® web server includes a large number of predefined web pages for configuration and monitoring. Support is also provided for user defined web pages using HTML and JavaScript. Any of the data registers are accessible to user defined web pages via internal CGI processing of user tags. This allows a fully customized look and feel for the system. |
i.CanDoIt® Web Client
and Web Server The i.CanDoIt® package includes both a web server and a web client. This discussion will attempt to summarize what that means. First, let's get the terms straight. If you are on your PC browsing Google, you are the client, and Google is the server. The person or thing doing the browsing is the client, and the thing "serving" or providing the web pages is the server. i.CanDoIt® as a Web Server Viewing i.CanDoIt® as a server is relatively easy to comprehend. If you connect your PC and an AddMe III to an Ethernet hub - assuming you have the IP address stuff figured out - you would use your standard PC based browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc) to view the pages served by i.CanDoIt. The web pages served by i.CanDoIt are used to configure the system, view data, set thresholds, upload files, etc. A demo copy of the web site contained in a typical AddMe III is linked in to the left. i.CanDoIt® as a Web Client Client means the i.CanDoIt device is now going to effectively browse some other web site. What's really happening here is that the URL used to access the remote server contains parameters that constitute data which i.CanDoIt wants to send to that server. That server then responds by serving up an HTML page which contains data the server wants to send back to the i.CanDoIt. One example of where this is used is in maintaining the DynDNS dynamic IP address entry in the DNS data base. The i.CanDoIt knows exactly what the DynDNS server expects, and what that server will respond with. The other example where i.CanDoIt's client capability is powerful is in data logging to a central server. The i.CanDoIt device will periodically use an HTTP Get to log data, and optionally take back configuration parameters. This requires a specially configured server. Any developers interested in exploiting this capability need to contact support@csimn.com to obtain information about the API for using this interface. Why go to all that trouble? One reason is to centralize the collection and redistribution of data. By collecting all the data on a central server, a central web site providing an overview of many remote sites becomes possible. Another reason is to simplify installation at each remote site. By limiting Internet access to browser connections as used by the web client, DSL and cable routers will function as shipped with no further router configuration or requirements for port routing. If you can plug in your laptop and find Google, you can plug in i.CanDoIt and expect it to find its server. No other network configuration is needed. |
