1 Introduction

Testmanager is a graphical application for visualising and changing the signals and parameters of EtherLab control processes. It connects to one or more processes via the MSR protocol, using the PdCom library on the client side and PdServ on the process side.

The signals and parameters of the connected processes are listed in a tree. They can be linked to operating and visualisation widgets (bar graphs, dials, LEDs, time graphs, buttons, input fields, ...) simply by dragging them onto the widgets. In this way, an operator interface is created without programming. The arrangement of the widgets is stored in a layout file.

Further features include:

• Arbitrary number of tabs, which can be detached as separate windows.
• Stylesheets on global, tab and widget level.
• Python scripts that react on process values.
• Parameter sets, which can be saved, compared and restored.
• Display of process messages and broadcasts.
• Encrypted (TLS) and authenticated connections.

1.1 Main Window

The main window consists of the following areas:

• Menu and tool bar at the top, with actions for layout files, adding tabs and toggling the edit mode.
• Tabs in the centre. Each tab is a canvas that holds the widgets.
• Docks around the tabs, which can be moved, stacked on top of each other (as in the bottom area of the figure) or detached:
  • Data Sources: tree of the connected processes and their variables,
  • Property Editor: properties of the selected widget,
  • Data Slots: process data connections of the selected widgets,
  • Python Script and Python Shell,
  • Parameter Sets,
  • Broadcasts and Messages.
• Status bar at the bottom.

The Windows menu shows or hides the individual docks and the tool bar.

The status bar shows the total network throughput of all data sources, received data on the left and sent data on the right. The throughput of a single data source is displayed in the Values column of the data source tree.