Devices¶

The Devices panel allows you to manage:

Incoming serial data;
Control of DVRs.

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:

Character Delimited

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.
Position and Length

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.
Identifier and Length

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.
Identifier and Delimited

The start of each survey field is defined by an identifier, and a character delimiter (usually a comma) separates each data field.
Pre/Post Identifier and Delimited

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 a Survey Out device¶

The Survey Out device lets you send survey data out a serial port, for downstream consumption by another system.

In the Add New Device wizard, choose Survey Device, then choose Survey out. Choose a COM port for output. On the Survey tab, make selections appropriate to what your downstream device is expecting. If you check Include Identifiers, data will be sent with identifiers prepended, like “DateTime=01/01/2001 12:34:56, Depth=100”. Include null values controls what happens if some fields are null: do you want several separators in a row in this case, e.g. “1,,3”? Null value replacement is for downstream devices that cannot cope with this case, so you can have the null field replaced with the value of your choice (“0”, “ ”, etc).

Uncheck fields you don’t want sent. Use Move Up and Move Down to rearrange fields to suit the downstream device.

Date and Time format come from Windows settings – to change them, go to Windows’ Region and Language control panel.

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 Tools ‣ Options ‣ Advanced.

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.