Introduction
Welcome to Novembers’ progress report! Here we highlight the most important news and platform improvements for the month. This report gives you context on the current status of the platform, latest improvements, and insights into work going on behind the scenes.
Usage summary
We are proud to see that user and customer numbers are increasing worldwide as shown in the map. It’s exciting to see all our users creating their own components and systems, and shared with the Simumatik community!
We are happy to support our customers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many educational institutions are now capable of teaching from home and delivering their learning outcomes by using virtual labs created in Simumatik.
Custom support
Since launching our paid subscriptions to customers, we’re actively demonstrating the platforms’ potential and showing its educational and professional use. If you are interested in a demo, you can click here and request one.
Organizations that have struggled with the Covid-19 situation have been offered online workshops and custom virtual model building to help get them up to speed. Here’s a picture taken from a 4 day workshop at Uppsala University where we taught students about virtual commissioning.
If this sounds like something you could benefit from, please contact us directly and we’d be happy to chat about your requirements!
Component editor
The most important platform release of last month has been the new component editor. Following the Simumatik data-model, it helps users to build out components in a visual way making it easier to model them. You just need programming skills to define the components’ behaviour.
To support learning around the editor, we’ve released a series of tutorials showing how to use the tool and create new components. You can access them here.
Below you can see the result of one of the tutorials, a box that changes its colour on click!
Components development
In collaboration with our customers, we have developed the public component library to include new electric, pneumatic and hydraulic components. If you have a paid user subscription with us, you can even use the Component Editor to dive into how they are built, and use them as a basis for creating your own!
3rd Party integration
In the area of third-party software and hardware integration, we have now given users the ability to control their systems using Python. To understand more about this, go to our new Python controller tutorial.
To help you fine-tweak your programming skills, we have created a maze system challenge for you! Program the autonomous robot with Python and navigate through the maze to the finish!
In addition to the Python driver, we’re also experimenting with IoT (Internet of Things), where new drivers have been developed to support MQTT protocol. We’re working away on many new drivers and currently testing one for Allen Bradley PLCs for example.
If you are using a third-party software that is not currently supported, feel free to contact us.
Automatic updates
We ensure that the Simumatik web app and online servers are automatically upgraded for you, so that every time you load them, you get access to all new features, fixes and performance improvements for free. In addition to this, the local server has now been improved and is capable of automatically updating itself upon launch. This means you just install this once and keep it updated forever!
Finally, we’re currently working on implementing this feature to the Gateway too, so the entire eco-system is self-updating. Stay tuned for more news!