OCC Newsletter for the New Year, 2018
Happy New Year from Original Code Consulting!
2017 was a great year for OCC, and we look forward to an even better 2018. Business is picking up, but we always make time for our existing clients. Don't hesitate to let us know how we can assist with your success in the new year.
Highlights from OCC's 2017:
OCC completed numerous projects in 2017, with repeat clients and new ones, both in industry and academia/R&D. We continued to provide custom solutions when needed, though our flagship MICAS-X product also found significant application. Numerous improvements were made to MICAS-X including many new commands, improved Triggers and Alarms, performance improvements, bug fixes, more file writing features (turning individual files on and off, changing the rate at which data is written to file), new programmatic user dialogs, and many new Drivers, Displays, Instruments, Calculations, and Utilities.
Two new versions of MICAS-X were released:
Student Edition (SE) is free to undergraduate & graduate students and includes several National Instruments drivers, allowing lab experiments and data logging to be set up very quickly.
MICAS-X-RT brings the entire MICAS-X system, except the user interface, to National Instruments Real-Time platforms, for unbeatable reliability and real-time performance, with MICAS-X on Windows acting as a seamless user interface with automatic data archiving.
Our first MICAS-X Ltd project was completed early in 2017. The Ltd version is a slightly restricted variant of MICAS-X with a lower price point which allows our customers to “skin” MICAS-X with a custom look and user interface, including your name and logo. Ltd can be very cost-effective for applications where multiple systems are similarly configured. If you are developing a product for the academic or industrial market, get in touch with us to discuss how Ltd can work for you, saving you both time and money in the process.
CANbus support (specifically for the SAE J1939 standard) is new to the MICAS-X product line as well.
Upcoming in 2018:
This year will see many more new features in MICAS-X, including:
Recipes, which will allow the simplified creation of experiment/test recipes while MICAS-X is running, as well as visualization of how the current recipe is executing.
Mapping Display will provide the ability to display data geographically on high-quality zoomable maps. This will be particularly useful in the field, with live GPS-located data collection and display.
Expressions Driver will be released with a phenomenal improvement in performance over the current Equations Driver, as well as support for many more functions and features.
We have also begun rolling out a few hardware products, specifically for the National Instruments myRIO device. In 2017, we released the OCC myRIO Serial Adapter, which makes the low-voltage myRIO serial pins compatible with standard RS232 serial devices. The OCC myRIO GPS module will be released shortly, allowing GPS tracking for mobile myRIO projects. Later in 2018, we plan to release a myRIO battery kit, with a long-life Li-Ion battery coupled to the myRIO with current and voltage monitoring built in. Together with the GPS module, this will provide the first off-the-shelf solution for truly mobile myRIO projects.
OSDS (the OCC Streaming Data System) has been available as an open-source toolkit for 10 years, and is used in MICAS-X and numerous other programs as a configuration-based tool for acquiring data from a wide range of serial and Ethernet sources. We are now working on ICM, the Instrument Control Module, which will be a LabVIEW OOP-based replacement for OSDS. ICM will also be open source and thus available to any LabVIEW developer, and will be integrated into MICAS-X to provide an even more powerful, cleaner configuration-based tool for data acquisition and control of an even wider range of instrumentation and data sources. Watch for ICM's release later in 2018!
Wishing you all the best in the new year and beyond,