Greetings:

I gave up on using the built in Units in Mango. They seem to be.. Sort of broken and generally annoying, since there never seems to be the right M/k/u/m type for whatever I'm doing-- Megawatts, kilowatts, whatever. The Best Practice seems to be to just use the Text Renderer Properties, and set the Suffix to Whatever unit you want.

I tried using the built-in units a number of ways, but I got tired of dealing with the little "dot" for multiplied units which really aren't. I don't remember which unit, but it was something like kwh showing as kw<dot>h.. It's not kilowatt TIMES hours.. Anyways. I've run into trouble with import/export also using built-in units, where m^2 doesn't import right under some conditions (for example). Don't have these troubles using the "text renderer properties" Suffix box

Yeah. The general practice seems to be "use the text renderer properties"... Makes your life easier.

Thanks for the quick updates: @CraigWeb @Jared-Wiltshire

This fixed the Modbus tools, and I just tested it, so we're good to go. Thanks for that. These tools are Super Useful, as even thought Modbus has been around for longer than I've been alive, people who implement it still can't agree if it's 0-indexed or 1-indexed, or what the actual difference is between holding and input registers are.

Also, I verified the flashing save Icon issue with multiple tabs... I think I noticed this before, but in my exhausted stupor the previous night I was sort of not thinking straight.

Thanks!

Greetings, all:

I've been using USB to Serial converters on my little Linux Based Mango devices for my business. I've had varying luck by brand, and I figured this is as good a place as any to talk about by mest brand so far, and some troubles they've had.

The ones I use are the DTech USB 2.0 to RS 422/ RS 485 adapters. These units are based on the FTDI Chipset, and I generally have Good Luck. I've probably installed clost to 50 of these things, with so far 3 failures- One due to a direct lightning hit, and the other two Very Odd, Indeed.

It's this "very odd indeed" one that I want to comment on, as a sort of Use Case for how Super Useful the "Log IO" function can be in Mango. I was doing final testing on a product that was too ship, and found that the Modbus Serial data source was behaving all weirdly-- Sometimes polling correctly, but generally Failing Wholesale.

I was just about geared about to post a mango thread about wondering if the latest Modbus module had some bugs in it, but lo and behold, the "Log IO" showed me something was weird.

So:
The poll should look like this (Using the CAS Modbus Scanning Tool, if you ever need a Modbus Doodad, that's a great little test tool)
[22:21:24] => Poll: C8 04 00 00 00 14 E1 9C
[22:21:25] <= Response: C8 04 28 00 6E 00 9A 08 8D 08 84 08 81 08 8F 08 87 08 A1 00 D4 01 AF 20 E2 00 0E 00 21 00 20 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 28 AD 11

Mango was seeing this:
2019/08/29-22:12:21,943 O c80400000014e19c
2019/08/29-22:12:21,955 I 6feeffffffd73d8efe
2019/08/29-22:12:22,023 I c80428006e00a708da08d808da
2019/08/29-22:12:22,025 I 08e708da
2019/08/29-22:12:22,026 I 08f5
2019/08/29-22:12:22,027 I 00
2019/08/29-22:12:22,027 I d401
2019/08/29-22:12:22,028 I c320
2019/08/29-22:12:22,049 I e1000a002a00250000007000000000000008f8eb71

I was thinking-- OKay, maybe there's a bug in the serial driver? You can see Mango originating the proper request "c80400000014e19c " which is a read input registers starting at 0 for 20.

Then, Mess starts coming back into the device almost immediatly after. You can see the start of my Slave device talking back, "c80428006e00a708da08d808da" .. But before that is this "6feeffffffd73d8efe"

Turns out that Mess was coming from the RS485 chip-- It looks almost as if the Serial device server isn't actually swapping RX/TX direction (It's a single duplex, 19200 link for this connection), and is scrambling itself up. So I plugged in that USB adapter into my Windows Box, and CAS Modbus Scanner says the same mess:
[22:19:12] => Poll: C8 04 00 00 00 14 E1 9C
[22:19:12] <= Response: 6F EE FF FF FF D7 3D 8E FE C8 04 28 00 6E 00 8F 08 6E 08 69 08 5E 08 71 08 65 08 7E 00 D4 01 B6 20 E2 00 0B 00 11 00 0D 00 00 00 6E 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 20 B2 34

There's the valid poll, followed by the Huge Mess of Whatever.

This was a brand new converter, right out of the box. If I have a chance, I'll look at it under the microscope and see if I can figure out why it's broken, just for my own edification.

So: Anyways, lesson learned here: If Mango is showing Bizarre Things with Serial, check your USB adapter first.. I had another one of these adapters fail sort of randomly, and that one is here on the floor next to me. I'll see if this one has the same random problem.

Speaking of this, does anyone have any other trustworthy but sub $50 USB to Serial 485 devices? There seems to be a certain lack of these things out there that don't suck, and I use a LOT of 485... I've used several brands, and these DTech ones are the least achy-breaky of the ones I've tried. If my projects had higher budgets, I'd be getting Name Branded Units , but I can't justify $300 converters on these devices...

Cheers,
-Greg Linder

Greetings, all:

I'm trying to find out how to use the "Point Unreliable" status in Mango to select between bad sensors when one dies.

For example, I have (3) Sensors, all merrily logging data under Normal Conditions. Generally, we use an average of (2) of these sensors to do things with. Then, along comes a Badger who eats our comm cable (or whatever) and one of our sensors stops responding via Modbus.

Mango tells us that that that sensor's data point is now "point unreliable" and we raise an event to signal that someones' gotta fix it. However, in the meantime, we still need to run calcs with the other (2) good sensors. Basically, I need my meta point to automatically see that "this point is unreliable" and switch to the second (or third) sensor.

Basically, I'd like something similar to the getDataPointWrapper()'s "Enabled:True", but that instead returns "PointUnreliable:true" or something. It would make sense to me that such a thing would be available via getDataPointWrapper(), but it doesn't appear to be there.

Where does one find the "point unreliable" status via scripting / meta point? If possible, I'd like to avoid using the Events to detect this, as we have MANY cases of this kind of thing, some of which are already covered by other alarms /events / whatever.

Thanks!

Greetings, all:

Here's a new one for you.

I did an apt-get upgrade on our server and then restart Mango, and.. Now I'm getting dates that seem to make sense. I need to run this again tomorrow when I"m not so tired, but I think updating the server and rebooting mango.. Fixed this?

This is odd and slightly disconcerting, but yay for how software sometimes behaves.

I'll run some more reports, but I think resetting mango and apt-get updating our Linux install fixed this (for now anyways).

Thanks for your help..

Cheers,
-Greg

Thanks for the prompt response here- Something odd must be happening.

I've just been poking around again and here's what I've found:
(1) When in Watchlist, with a 1 week sum rollup type plotted over the "last 1 month" default setting, with a Line chart type, the data points displayed update on the Fridays (in this case, 4/23, 4/30, 5/7, 5/14, and 5/21) at midnight.

(2) When I run a report with the same settings, as seen below,

Mango says the same thing: I get the following timestamps out of Mango:

44309.00
44316.00
44323.00
44330.00
44337.00

Which, when converted to Date in Excel, are the same dates
04/23/21
04/30/21
05/07/21
05/14/21
05/21/21

As when we use the rollup as described before.

I'm also getting "previous month" data in the same way (1 month rollup sum), and that data outputs just fine: It timestamps as the START of the month, 4/1, and merrily outputs the proper sum for the month.

That's why I was investigating what Mango understands as a "week".

I just tried this on another Mango instance we run- And it did the same thing. Using the "week" rollup has end times starting on the FRIDAY of the week at Midnight.

Our systems are set to MDT time; I've gathered that it may make a difference for Java's internal time handling if we use the City-based time, rather than MST/MDT/etc (since midnight moves around).

Just now, to try this out, I set up the same report on out first machine to do "last 7 days", with the following settings:

With those settings, I would expect Previous 28 days and sum of 7 days, I would expect this to give me dates of Today (at midnight) or 7 days ago (at midnight). From right now (17:22 MST 5/26/21) that would give me 26, 19, 11, etc as the dates. Instead, I get this:

44309
44316
44323
44330
44337

Which excel turns into this
4/23/2021
4/30/2021
5/7/2021
5/14/2021
5/21/2021
Which is the same as when I used the "previous week" rollup type.

Anyways; The date shown by this instance is "Wed May 26, 2021, MDT"

Which means the clock isn't off by a few days, which would explain this.

Any thoughts on this?

Greetings, all:

I'm trying to get rollups to play better with weekly reports.

I've got a bunch of metapoints that run on times to calculate various things. These are all working fine.

However, I don't know how to get these to reliably output as "business week" style things in the report.

By "Business Week" I mean Last 7 days from Sunday night (So, say, Monday -> Sunday as a "business week"). We're outputting data that is compared to something else, and they use Business Week as Data. Mango's "week" is apparently DAY OF YEAR Modulus 7, which is fine, but provides difficulty for "business week" output.

Here's my report setup:
TIME PERIOD: Previous 7 days
Rollup Type: SUM of 7 DAYS
Configured Data:
Data calculated hourly

With that, when I run the report, I'm expecting the Time Stamp to be the START of the period or the END of the period. For example, when we do a "Previous 1 month" the timestamp stored in the excel spreadsheet is the 1st of the previous month.

However, with the time period / rollups I described above ,the timestamp stored in the excel spreadsheet tends to be like, the Friday in the middle of the period? I'm confused by this, and so are the customers.

So: Guess my questions are:
(1) How does Mango chose the timestamp when using Previous 7 Days time period and 7 day sum rollup, and
(2) Is there something I'm missing about how to get Mango to understand the concept of "business week" (Monday->Sunday) rather than modulus week (Day of Year % 7)?

This throws off our calculations a bit, since if you use a SUM on a month in the Watchlist viewer, you get fine data, and it all jives. But if you do SUM over a week, it looks odd, and insists on plotting values on Fridays rather than any other day. This presents a problem for us, since the data we're comparing to is done on Business Week (Monday -> Sunday) type basis.

Cheers,
-Greg

To restate above:

My User has a THING in EDT that is monitored. The Mango Server lives in MST. The USER wants to see data on their site in their timezone, so they put in 8/1 to 8/31, they want to see data from 8/1 to 8/31 IN THEIR TIMEZONE (as set by the user timezone setting). They do not want to see that data read in at a different timezone and adjusted, because is in my example earlier, they want 8/1 to 8/31 in EST/EDT, and are getting 7/31-8/30, because "month" changes to midnight.

Any feedback here on this? I really hate daylight savings time, as it provides unnecessary headache to all of this.

What I just told my customer is "You'll have to set your TZ to MST, since that's the best way to make all this line up"

Am I using this wrong? Which bit am I missing?

Greetings:

This just came up again with one of my customers- The Time Zone changed, and things are a little broken again. Is this something that can be fixed so that the not incorrect improper correctional timezone adjustment adjusting is adjusted so that the reports run based on the USERS TZ Selection (and not on the Server's TZ with some adjustment applied?).

Cheers,
-Greg

Greetings, all:

Busy day here in our world headquarters.

I'm trying to do some basic automation here: I've got a device that reliable gets modbus holding register write commands when using the "set" button on the data point details screen.

However, in the script I'm working on, doing the VariableName.set(100) doesn't seem to trigger the Modbus write. This is automatically operated by a context update. When it does, I expect it to write 100 to the external context point mapped to VariableName.

So: Here's what's happening:
(1) The Script is firing properly, and the Set command is running: The graph on the point details screen shows the value being set to 100.
(2) The connected modbus device never gets the value 100
(3) If I manually click "set" on the Details Screen, the connected modbus device gets the command, and operates as expected.

So: What am I doing wrong? The Modbus data point is set for "settable", and since the unit responds as expected using the SET button, I expect that that my modbus serial is working correct.

Everything is set to superadmin, so I don't think there's a roll issue here. I have the current alarms enabled, and I'm not getting any alarms when the set command runs.

My script is literally two lines:
if(PC1.value > 0) {
ModbusOutput.set(100);
}

I just need the number 100 to get written out to the register mapped as ModbusOutput when the PC1 value (which comes in from another modbus point) is > 0.

This is literally the most basic thing ever, and I'm annoyed with myself that it doesn't appear to work.

Thanks!

Cheers,
-Greg Linder

This.. Is a Spicey MeatBall Solution..

So:
(1) The 3.7.7 release has a broken Excel importer, since it's on its way out, anyways.
(2) The only way to modify existing points is to use the REST API as an admin and delete point values using XIDs?
(3) I really don't want to delete.. I want to export, filter, and re-import. I suppose I could do the filtering on a Meta, and "generate history", but there's no way to move that back into the Active polled point, which is used elsewhere in our system for doing other math-related things.

I really think there needs to be some way to do this sort of bulk "export / filter / re-import" way native to Mango..

This, and the benefits of Copy and Paste at the data source level, are two things that have been vanished from the Legacy interface that cause me no small amount of consternation.. I mean, the legacy UI could copy'n'paste data sources, which was a really easy way to roll things out. Now I'm exporting JSON, finding and replacing XIDs, and re-importing, which takes at least a billion times as longer than "copy, paste, rename".

Now I have to go whip up another external tool to Mango to do this export / filter / import thing? I mean.. I guess I can write a custom Excel importer using the "data import" thing, and pipe that back into the system... But the "remove" type of excel interface made this so it was a feature we were trying to sell as a benefit to fix this kind of data catastrophe, which happens more often than not.

Greetings, all:

Perhaps I'm alone in this one, but I (sometimes) have data that writes trash into the database. I try to keep it out, but, well, then a sensor breaks lose and is swinging around in the wind writing a bunch of garbagy numbers into something.

The way I used to do this, as described in a previous thread, was to use the Legacy Point Details screen to export (all) the data from the sad point as an excel file. Into excel it goes, with Standard Excel Stuff Applied to find the points to delete. I would then take the modify (add/delete) column, copy'n'paste as values (so the math and stuff doesn't go back into the import file), and save that as an excel, then use the Legacy UI Data Point Import screen to load that back in.

This worked reliably until I upgraded to 3.7.7.. Now, when I do that process, I see the following message:
Error importing row 12, Invalid text in modify column, add or delete only allowed

The modify columns in question, in fact, contain only the word delete or nothing at all. This has worked in the past.

I know with the V4.0 rollout the Legacy UI is going away entirely; Is there still a way to do this sort of "all the data out, filter it, and load it back in" style of feature? Has this function been removed somehow in 3.7.7? Is there a better way to do this?

I realize that I can filter more with metapoints, and set extreme import sets, and lots of other things when the data is first polled into the system. That's all fine and good. But, well, things happen, and sensors go crazy, and sometimes you're left with a big stack of gibberish that needs some hand-adjusting to straighten out. I don't like doing this, since it's a pain in the butt, but, well, sensors do fail in ways that can't easily be filtered on the input.

This particular example relates to a temperature sensor issue: The sensors were damaged somehow, and the values (although in a valid input range) are clearly changing in ways that are not physically possible. We've identified the problem, and fixed it, but I have a reasonable amount of records in the system that need deleting or adjusting to make this data point usable. Any advice here?

I've got a message into customer support: I'll post here when I get a response (unless they respond here first).

Thanks!

I appreciate your help on this:

I've been gradually rolling out Option (1), and it seems to work out ok. Seems to be it would be a Handy and Useful Feature to have an alarm point that would fail within the Persistent publisher itself when the link fails (for any reason). Maybe some people do persistent links that come up and down randomly through the day, but it seems that the persistent link feature is generally intended to be used.. Well, persistently.

Anyways, the not changed event detector option for the persistent metrics seems to do the job.

Thanks!

-Greg