Devices¶
The Devices panel allows you to manage:
- Incoming serial data;
- Control of DVRs.
Toolbar¶
- Add a DVR or survey device.
- Edit the selected device. If the device has Diagnostics information available, you can view it here.
- Delete the selected device.
- Disbale/enable the selected device. When the selected device is enabled, this button will be in the “down” state.
- Edit IC-Recorder text overlays.
- Use this to show/hide the legend at the bottom of the grid.
- If selected, you will see a diagnostics pane appear in the bottom of the Devices panel. The Diagnostics pane will show details relevant to the device selected in the list.
- If selected, and the device selected in the list is capable of showing still images (e.g. it’s a DVR), you will see a preview of those still images here. You can specify a capture interval, and IC-Inspection will request an image from the device every time that interval elapses.
- The usual.
These survey devices are exactly analogous to their equivalents in IC-Inspection 5 — it’s the same code at heart.
Adding a Custom Survey device¶
In the Add New Device wizard, choose Survey Device, then choose Custom Survey. Choose a COM port as input. Under Properties, 9600 8N1 are industry-standard, though you should check them with whoever is supplying the survey string to you.
The following string formats are supported by IC-Inspection:
- Each unique survey field in the incoming Survey string is separated by a character delimiter (usually a comma), and each survey field is defined by its index in the Survey String.
- Each survey field has a fixed length. If the survey field is less than this defined length, it may be padded with either zeros or spaces as appropriate.
- The start of each survey field is defined by an identifier, and the end of the survey field is defined by its length. Again, the field may be padded with zeros or spaces as appropriate.
- The start of each survey field is defined by an identifier, and a character delimiter (usually a comma) separates each data field.
- The start and end of each survey field is defined by an identifier, and a character delimiter (usually a comma) separates each survey field. Identifier and Delimited is the most common format for an incoming Survey string. If this format is used, then in a noisy signal environment, IC- Inspection will still be able to correctly identify data even if only a partial string was received.
Delimiter should be set to match whatever is coming down the survey string. Comma (,) is the most common.
End of Line Signal should be set to be compatible with whatever is coming down the survey string. Enter ASCII control characters by typing a number prefixed with a #, so carriage return is #13, line feed is #10, and carriage return followed by line feed (the most common case) is #13#10.
Adding an IC-Recorder device¶
In the Add New Device wizard, choose Video Device, then choose IC-Recorder.
If you’re adding several IC-Recorders, you should give each one a different Display Name so that you can tell them apart.
If you have several instances of IC-Recorder running on one PC, they will each have a different port number. By default, the first run will have port 4500; the second, port 4501; and so on. You can change this in IC-Recorder’s .
If IC-Recorder’s title bar doesn’t say “Connected”, then on the toolbar click Enabled twice, to disable then re-enable the device. This forces a fresh attempt at connection.
When you click Start to start an inspection, all Video Devices will attempt to start recording. While the Video Devices are in the process of starting recording, you will see a progress dialog. If this dialog persists for more than a couple of seconds, this may indicate a problem with one or more of your Video Devices. Check the status of each device, both here in IC-Inspection, and on IC-Recorder’s own window (which may be on a different PC). When you click Stop to stop the inspection again, all Video Devices will attempt to stop recording.
Text Overlays¶
If you are using IC-Recorder to record video with overlay, you can configure the overlay using either the Text Overlays button here in IC-Inspection, or by using a similar button in IC-Recorder. But the IC-Recorder button is only intended for IC Recorder stand-alone, so you should use the button here in IC-Inspection. The reason is that when you have multiple recorders, you generally want the same overlay on each (except for channel name). Configuring here in IC-Inspection lets you do the configuration once and have it sent to all the recorders. (If a recorder is not currently connected, it will receive the configuration when next it is connected.) To do this:
- Click Text Overlays.
- Choose the overlay you wish to edit and click Edit, or click Add.
- Size the dialog to roughly represent the aspect ratio of your recorders.
- Drag fields from the tree at the left onto the screen layout at the right. Drag regions around, use the Nudge buttons, or use the fine-tuning in the list at the bottom right. Select fonts, colours, prefixes, suffixes, etc. You can multi-select regions by ‘lassoing’ them in the screen layout.
- Once you’ve OK’ed out of that chain of dialogs, you should see survey values updating in real-time on your recorders.