Transmitter roadmap

What is in the box today, what is next, and what is deliberately not planned. A line moves to “Shipped” only when it has run on the real 4.22.0.0 runtime and a receiver has read it.

Shipped in 1.1.0

• DataSetMessage and NetworkMessage timestamps from the PLC’s real-time clock, on by default, bTimestamp switches them off.
• The library as a CODESYS .package, installed through the CODESYS Installer.

Shipped in 1.0.0

• One publisher block, FB_HLTX_Publisher: one NetworkMessage per publishing interval, one DataSetMessage, a Data Key Frame, UADP over UDP, from Structured Text over SysSocket.
• Variant and RawData field encodings.
• BOOL, SINT, USINT, INT, UINT, DINT, UDINT, LINT, ULINT, REAL, LREAL, STRING and TIME fields, and arrays of every one of those but STRING, in both encodings.
• Unicast and multicast destinations, publisher id, writer group id, dataset writer id, publishing interval, group version and configuration version, all set as inputs of the block.
• A non-blocking send, a bounded cost per call, counters for sent, refused and skipped, and an error state that never faults the application.

Next

• Sub-second timestamps. The 1.1.0 stamp is the real-time clock’s whole seconds.
• Several DataSetMessages in one NetworkMessage (the Sizes array), so one datagram can carry more than one writer.
• Data Delta Frames and KeepAlive messages, to cut the bytes of a mostly steady dataset.
• WSTRING fields.
• A per-field status, so a Bad value can be sent as Bad.

Not planned

• Message security (signing and encryption). The block sends in the clear, on a network the plant already trusts.
• Chunked NetworkMessages. A message that does not fit in one 1500 byte frame is refused, not split.
• The subscriber side. HotLoop core subscribes to UADP; this library publishes.
• MQTT transport. UDP is what a CODESYS runtime reaches without more libraries.