The following new functions and improvements are available in ibaPDA from version v8.13.0.

Support of ibaFOB-H

The ibaFOB-H card facilitates the integration of ibaPDA in the Hitachi Energy MACH3 HVDC control system. This system is applied for controlling plants for High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power transmission.

The card provides for fast data transmission and thus enables high precision data recording of transients by ibaPDA.

The new PCI Express card (PCIe 1.0-x1) has an optical fiber SFP connector for connecting to the MACH3 HVDC control system (via PS935).

No additional interface license is required for ibaPDA to use the card.

Order number of the card: 11.112610

For more information see ibaFOB-H

You will find more detailed information in the documentation of the card.
ibaM-DAQ: Support of the ibaNet connectors X8 and X9

Since release of the dedicated ibaNet-connectors X8 and X9 it is now possible to communicate with other ibaNet devices in the so-called High Performance mode with a clock precision of 1 µs.

The two switched 1 GbE connectors support:

  • Auto-negotiation (100/1000 Mbit, full duplex)

  • Auto-MDI(X)

An ibaNet interface represents the connectors X8/X9 in the I/O Manager. The interface is also available as a network adapter in the Windows network settings. There, you can adjust settings such as IP address and subnet mask. The other connectors X4 and X5 cannot operate in ibaNet High Performance mode.

In order to use the new feature, the firmware version v01.06.001 or higher must be installed on the ibaM-DAQ device.

You will find more detailed information in the documentation of the device.
ibaMAQS: Extended ibaNet connectivity

The permitted number of ibaM-FO-2io--modules per central unit module was increased:

  • ibaM-DAQ: max. 2 pieces ibaM-FO-2io

  • ibaM-COM: max. 4 pieces ibaM-FO-2io

The modules ibaM-FO-2io- are to be used for connecting iba devices, which use the ibaNet protocol (3 Mbit, 32 Mbit, 32 Mbit Flex) for data transmission (e. g. ibaPADU, ibaBM-PN, ibaPADU-S-CM etc.).
Layout management: Locking of layouts and preferences

You can define the basic properties of layouts, such as foreground and background color in the layout tree, on the new Layouts node in the client preferences. Consequently, these properties will be applied automatically to new layouts.

The Layout Manager offers the possibility to lock each layout individually. The locking should prevent any unintended change of a layout. Only unlocked layouts can be changed. No specific user rights are required to lock or unlock a layout.
New functions MMaxDynamic und MMinDynamic

With these two statistical functions in the expression builder, you can calculate the maximum or minimum of a signal in a floating interval. In contrast to the known functions Mmax and MMin with a fixed interval length, the interval length of the new functions can change dynamically.

One potential use case, for example, is the speed-depending adjustment of the interval length for length-based computations.

For more information see MMaxDynamic and MMinDynamic

Extended virtual text functions

The functions ConvertFromText and ConvertToText now support the conversion of the number bases binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal by means of a new parameter “Base”.

ConvertFromText converts a string of numbers of a text signal into a decimal number, e. g. the text “0011” into the numerical value 3 with the base 2 (binary) or the text “FF” into the numerical value 255 with the base 16 (hexadecimal).

For more information see ConvertFromText

ConvertToText converts a decimal numerical value into a number with a specified base as a text signal, e. g. the value 3 into the text “0011” with base 2 or the value 255 into the text “FF” with base 16.

For more information see ConvertToText

Optimized start of acquisition

In order to speed up the start of acquisition after a configuration change, the following improvements have been carried out:

  • The configuration of the bus monitors will only be transferred to the devices if their configuration has changed.

  • The configuration of Flex devices will only be transferred to the devices if their configuration has changed.
S7-Xplorer: Local ports

Usually, the local TCP port used to connect ibaPDA and the PLC is dynamically determined by Windows. For some advanced firewalls this can be a problem, because they require a fixed source port for the connection.

The new version now provides the option for setting the port (“local port”) in the I/O Manager.

You will find a description of this option in the S7-Xplorer interface documentation.
Generic TCP interface: Adjustable message size

In case, ibaPDA cannot detect correctly the end of a message, you can now set up a message size for modules of the interface Generic TCP.
Connection test to server

In dialogs where a server has to be selected, there is a button to test the connection to the selected server.

Example: In the Data Store Manager, near the selection field for the HD-Server, when configuring an HD data store.

Email: More information on start and stop of acquisition

More information about start and stop of acquisition is now available by placeholders to be used in an email text. Additionally, you may use the start or stop of acquisition as a trigger for the email. Thus, you can send an email with every start or stop of acquisition, consisting of information about on which computer, under which user and for what reason it occurred.

For more information see Email

User management: Display names of AD users and improved tooltips

For the tree structure in the user management it is now possible to display the login name or the display name or both names of domain users (Active Directory users). Selection can be done in the context menu on the Domain users nodes.

In order to provide more helpful information about the user rights, you will get extensive tooltips when you hover over the rights in the table. It is the same help text as in the manual or online help.
Kafka data store with AVRO (grouped) data format

For a Kafka cluster timebased data store you can now select AVRO (grouped) as a data format for encoding the data to be sent to the configured Kafka cluster.

You will find more detailed information in the documentation of the Kafka data store (ibaPDA-Data-Store-Kafka).
MindSphere support discontinued

With immediate effect the MindSphere timebased data store is not supported anymore.

The feature was completely removed and consequently, the continued operation of existing configurations is not possible.