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.

String Format¶

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.

Survey Fields¶

Add Survey Fields to reflect the parts of the incoming survey string you’re interested in. Exactly what you can configure for each field depends on the String Format selected, but they all have Name, Type and Unit. If Type is Numeric, you can select a Unit for this field. For example, if the survey string is sending you Depth in feet, select the unit to be Feet. In NEXUS IC’s Configuration ‣ Events ‣ Event Types, find your “Survey - Standard” form, edit the Depth field, and ensure that its Unit is set to Metres. Now IC-Inspection will convert the incoming depth from feet to metres before logging it in the database. Similarly if the survey string is sending you Heading in hundredths of a degree or whatever, you can use Units to convert.

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.

Adding a third-party DVR device¶

In the Add New Device wizard, choose Video Device, then choose Generic Video Recorder. Any device that has implemented our standard DVR control protocol is supported. Supported devices are listed here.

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 Add, or select a Client overlay and click Edit, and you’ll see the Edit Overlay dialog. If you’ve just added a new overlay, you’ll need to fill in the Overlay Name field before you can click Save.

Drag the window larger to make the black overlay region larger. It doesn’t need to match the actual size of your video feed, but it’s convenient for you if you drag it to approximately the same shape.

You can drag fields from the tree at the left onto the black overlay layout region. If the field you want is not shown in the list, ensure that the appropriate survey field is configured and has a value.

Once you have dragged on your first field, you may wish to set its colour, font, size, etc., because additional fields you drag in will “inherit” their settings from the previous field you dragged in.

Once fields are on the overlay, you can “lasso” several fields by click-dragging a box around them, or you can click a single field to select it. You can use the toolbar buttons at the top of the dialog to act on all selected fields at once (to “nudge” them around the screen, align them in a tidy fashion with respect to each other, change their font size, or delete them). You can also use the list at the bottom of the screen to modify individual fields.

To put prefix text on a field (e.g. “Depth: “, etc.) edit its “Region Text”. You generally want a trailing space, so as to separate the caption from the text coming in from IC-Inspection. Short captions are often best — “E: ” for Easting, etc.

If you drag in an “Image” region, you will immediately be shown a file dialog, so that you can choose an image file for this region. If you choose a .PNG file, then the transparency in that file will be honoured: where the PNG is partly or wholly transparent, you will see the video through the image. You can drag on more than one image region if you so desire.

Note that the “Top” and “Left” shown in this list are for the current size of the preview shown here in the Edit Overlay window, not for the actual size of your captured video feed (so as you resize the window, you’ll see these values change). This is because the overlay editor does not depend on the dimensions of the video you are currently capturing. Font size, however, is in the dimensions of your video: a 10-point font on a 576-pixel high SD video will fill about 1/57th of the height of the image and will likely seem about right, whereas this would be too small on a 1080-pixel high HD feed.

If you untick the “transparent” option for one or more fields, those fields will be shown with a solid background rectangle of the colour you select. If you tick the “transparent” box, the text will be shown without a solid background rectangle. This conceals less of the video, but may be less clear on some colours of video. Note also the “Show overlay text shadow” option under Tools ‣ Options ‣ Advanced — ticking this works well with transparent-background fields, because it places a dark border around light text, or a light border around dark text, thus making text more legible if the underlying video colour is similar to the text colour. This option does consume a bit more CPU power, so if your CPU is near 100% during recording, try unticking this option.

If you are using a Marshall Encoder rather than system hardware, some overlay configuration options are ignored because the Marshall Encoder does not support them. Text, prefix, suffix, source, top, left, font size, and font colour are all supported, but font (Courier, Arial, etc.) is not. Additionally, the Marshall Encoder supports at most 16 overlaid fields.

Once you’ve OK’ed out of that chain of dialogs, you should see survey values updating in real-time on your recorders.