Groov EPIC 3.0 Firmware has been released

groov EPIC
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Big news today Opto Forum lurkers (no, not that news)…. We have a very tasty firmware update for your groov EPIC.
(For the impatient, log into your manage.groov.com portal to download - just be sure and get the right file - heh)

Version 3.0 includes some very very cool features. Let’s take a quick look at some of them.

LDAP. (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). This will enable your EPIC to connect to your existing LDAP server, authenticate a user, and help determine which services a user can access. In short, your IT guys can set it up via groov Manage and then you can log into EPIC with your corporate account credentials. Very powerful. Very cool.

Node-RED. The big news here is that any nodes you have installed will be automatically backed up and restored going forward. (To be clear, this won’t happen going from 2.x to 3.0, but from 3.0 onwards). This makes future firmware updates for those of you using Node-RED so much more seamless. Perfect for those of you with EPICs that don’t have a gateway to the Internet.

Version bump from 1.0.3 to 1.1.3. With this bump comes a slew of nice updates. Check out Mr Node-RED himself running through the cool stuff in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHP7qsaz7ZI&ab_channel=Node-RED

Websocket support. We added this just for @loren1. (‘Cause they asked nicely).

groov Manage now accurately reports the Node-RED runtime status. No more guessing when the editor really is ready to go.

PID. We added all 96 PID loops to groov Manage. You can see and trend any of your PID loops via groov Manage web pages now. Keep in mind if you are using PAC Control, any changes you make in groov Manage will be overwritten by the strategy on the next download/restart. But even so, if you just need to view them from a phone or tablet, now you can.

MQTT. We added long/odd broker URL support (Google and Amazon were the worst offenders here) and extra tag metadata to the topic.

We also added an MQTT log. This is kind of a big deal the one time you need it. When setting up a new broker you can view the log and know for sure if you are connected or are having issues reaching your MQTT broker.

Firmware updates on slow networks are now a lot more robust. (Under the hood tweak to network timeouts when doing the actual firmware update if you were wondering).

Ignition 7 and 8. (Yes, Ignition 8!).
You might have noticed when you logged in to your groov.manage portal to get this update that there were actually two files for 3.0. One with Ignition 7 and one with Ignition 8.
What’s the catch? It’s pretty simple…. You MUST install the Ignition 7 version BEFORE you install the Ignition 8 version. If you are running Ignition 8 and need to paperclip (factory reset) your EPIC, then you MUST install 3.0 Ignition 7 before you install 3.0 Ignition 8.
Both versions of firmware include both full Ignition and Edge.

CORS. For web developers, support for Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) has been
added to the RESTful API to the PAC Control engine. Now, browser applications running on a domain outside of the EPICs domain can read and write tags through PAC Control REST API calls. Simply add the allowed origin (the “outside” domain) in groov Manage.

groovfind.exe support.
Even though groov EPIC has a nice touch screen, you are not always in front of it when setting up or trouble shooting so we added support to use groovfind.exe to list your groov EPIC IP address.
For Windows PC https://www.opto22.com/support/resources-tools/downloads/groovfind-exe
For Mac ‎groov Find on the Mac App Store

groov EPIC power supply information. In this firmware update we laid the groundwork to get more information from the onboard power supplies. See the groov Manage About page for details. More to say about this feature in the future.

Public API access to the scratch pad area and a nice groov Manage page to view it.

Support for two new PAC Control commands.
Shift String Table Elements and Set HDD Module. More to say about these two commands when PAC Control 10.4 is released (Just a heads up that the EPIC will support them when the time comes).

groov Manage now shows the digital point voltage range / type when you are inspecting the I/O web page.

Public API for the USB drive unmount command.
Came about from this thread; https://forums.opto22.com/t/usb-file-management-with-groov-view-and-node-red/3250
Terry will be updating this flow with the official API very soon.

groov View R4.2d has been out for groov Server for Windows and the AR1 for a little while. It has a bunch of bug fixes but no new features. (But just know that a new version of groov View with new features is coming soon).

And lastly, speaking of bug zaps, as usual there were fixes and updates in the EPIC across the board in this release… Including, but not limited to….(too excited about all the other cool stuff to link to the all the KBs - sorry-not-sorry)

groov EPIC 3.0.0
• KB88826 - Output of TPO with Percentage (Duty Cycle) Above 100% is Not Constantly On
• KB89111 - Default Scaling for Analog Channels Not Set Correctly
• KB89181 - Node-RED Behaves Oddly After User Logs Out
• KB89183 - PAC REST API May TimeOut When Reading a Range of String Table Entries
• KB89246 - groov Analog Totalization Works Incorrectly When Input Goes From Invalid to Valid PAC Control Engine 10.4a
• KB89147 - Subroutine Variable with Same Name and Type as Global Variable may cause Control ngine Reset
• KB89198 - PAC Controller May Become Unresponsive During Downloads
• KB89217 - PAC Control Set I/O Unit Configured Flag Command Ignored for Certain I/O Unit Types
• KB89149 - Persistent Float Variables are Reset When Using Background Downloading groov Manage 3.0.0
• KB89168 - Signing out of groov Manage in One Tab Does Not Sign Out of All Tabs
• KB88896 – Incorrect Behavior on Touchscreen When Touch-Sensitive Pad on Module is Touched
• KB89126 - Generic MMP Page Does not Flag Invalid Hexadecimal Value and Displays Empty Error essages
• KB89155 - Files Downloaded from USB are Prepended with Path
• KB89167 - Invalid MMP Addresses on Generic MMP Page May Cause I/O Server Disconnect groov View 4.2d
• KB89287 - Can’t Display Swagger UI in groov View’s Build Mode MQTT 1.5.3
• KB88935 - MQTT Topic Identifiers with Spaces are Truncated at First Space
• KB89007 - MQTT Broker Client ID with Spaces or Non-Alphanumeric Characters Not Allowed
• KB89068 - MQTT Client Publishes Topics Erratically
• KB89070 - Whitespace Surrounding Strings is Trimmed During Writes
• KB89227 - No Historic Queuing When Primary Application ID is Not Set

And since you made it this far… a tease…. RIO Firmware 3.0 is in the works……

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Congratulations! That’s an impressive list of new functionality. Thank you for the hard work you’re doing, and we’re looking forward to 3.0 for the RIO… :slight_smile:

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Thanks @loren1
It is a very exciting list of new functionality.
You are going to love the list of new stuff we are adding to RIO!

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Awesome updates! The PID loops are great.

I’m curious about suggestions for how to create process recipes to use in conjunction with the PID loops without using PAC Control? I know I could achieve it with Node-RED but I can’t seem to think of an obvious, clean way to achieve it.

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The answer you seek is here…

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I saw that post in the forums awhile back… but that is really just a way of achieving the PID loop itself in Node-RED it seems (unless I’m missing something)?

What I am trying to find is a simple, clean solution to create and run process recipes. We do a lot of furnace brazing so we have various furnace run recipes that are basically just temperature set points and times. From my limited experience in the traditional PLC space, it seems like most of the traditional HMI solutions offer some form of recipe management solution. Seems like this would fit in well on the groov View side of things but I don’t see a solution there (again, unless I’m just missing something obvious)?

I can see from the various Opto22 training videos that PAC control offers this ability but I don’t want to use and depend on a Windows only app for having to build and manage process recipes. I’m much more interested in using the modern, browser based side of the EPIC control where no external developer tools are required.

I know I could sit down and create a workable solution in Node-RED, I was just hoping that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees and I was missing an already existing solution baked into the EPIC control / groov environment.

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Ah, see, that should teach me not to read and ‘answer’ forum posts on my phone while I am out of the office… I thought you were after PID config and tweaking via Node-RED.
What you really want is recipes, which may or may not be connected to the PID.

No. You are not missing anything, our official way of supporting recipes is via PAC Display and PAC Control.
You will need to roll your own via either groov View or Node-RED dashboard if you don’t want to run PAC Project.

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You will need to roll your own via either groov View

Can you point me to an example of this being done in groov View by chance? That might be helpful to get my wheels turning.

I’ve been searching through the various Opto22 support resources and such but I haven’t found anything that is specifically a groov View solution for this.

I did find this forum thread that gives me some ideas for a combo Node-RED / groov View solution.

Am I alone in thinking that a specific recipe configuration and management tool would be a great addition to groov View?

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Well done, you found the example/concept that would be where I would start.

To be honest, I cant recall anyone asking for it in the past.
I can put a request ticket into the system so that its at least recorded, but its going to be very difficult to pin down due to the fact that you are asking for a controller-less solution.
Off the top of my head, your recipe is going to be a list of three values, a time, a value, a PID loop number.
groov View would have to take care of the clock/timer side, then use MMP to push the set point to the PID loop when the time comes.
Some people are going to want real time values, some are going to want timer offsets from a process start trigger and so on… These sorts of nebular schedules are very difficult to make in software.

So no, you are not alone, it would be a great addition. If you have a really solid idea of what you need, we would be very grateful to see them.
If you feel comfortable doing it via the forums, it would be great so we can kick it around with others.
(Starting a new topic thread would be the go in that case).

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I’ll work on solidifying the idea and start a new thread for it perhaps next week.

Thanks for the responses.

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