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After three months of development we (the Lintouch Team) are proud to announce the availability of the new stable release of the Lintouch Server, Lintouch Runtime, and Lintouch Editor.
This version includes bug fixes plus several new important features. You are welcome to download, install, test, and use this version.
Please see Section 4, “What is Lintouch” for more information about Lintouch.
- Lintouch Server reimplemented in C
The original Python based implementation of the Lintouch Server was deprecated due to various reasons (speed, size, and ease of installation being among them) in favor of plain C based implementation.
The new server (excluding any server plugins) consumes less then 200kb of the disk space. You have to add another ~ 500kb for Apache Portable Runtime plus its dependencies and a space for your Linux system. The small size makes the Lintouch Server ideal for specialized low-cost and low-speed embedded devices.
All existing server plugins have been ported to the new C language based API to maintain backwards compatibility.
- New Visualization Objects
- Display Templates
The SVGImage template is able to render not-so-complex SVG images (due to SVG rendering limitations posed by Qt library). It will help you make your projects more portable across various screen resolutions, because SVG is essentially a vector based image format (unlike bitmap based JPG or PNG formats).
- Qt Technical Widgets template library
New template library ltl-qwt contains all widgets from Qwt library available as Lintouch Templates. The library includes control & visualization primitives such as Knob, Dial, Wheel, Plot, and others.
- New Connectivity Options
- Modbus/TCP
New pure-C based implementation of Modbus/TCP connectivity for Lintouch provides ModbusTCPMaster and ModbusTCPSlave plugins that have been successfully tested with PLCs from Modicon and Beckhoff.
- SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
Lintouch SNMP Server Plugin allows the Lintouch Server to periodically poll specified SNMP OIDs (Object IDs) using SNMP v1/SNMP v2c protocol.
SNMP protocol is usually used to manage/configure/monitor networking equipment such as routers, switches, and servers.
- Exec
Lintouch Exec Server Plugin allows the Lintouch Server to periodically execute configured commands and grab their return value and/or output.
This way an arbitrary commands can be executed at the server machine to provide a bridge to monitor the data that can not be accessed via other server plugins.
Similar approach is used by the Nagios an open source host, service and network monitoring program.
- Uses only the Loopback interface when in Local Mode
Lintouch Runtime does not bind anymore to all network interfaces when used without Lintouch Server in so called Local Mode. This protects the Lintouch Server embedded within the Lintouch Runtime from being accessed via network from the other computers.
- Import/Export/Reimport Connection
Existing connections can be exported from Lintouch projects to a custom CSV (comma separated values) format understood by all major spreadsheet applications.
New connections described in CSV can be imported and later on updated into the existing Lintouch Projects making it easier and more comfortable to edit connections with a lot of variables.
- Import/Export/Reimport Resource
Working with resources (images, text files, or arbitrary data files) is now easier. It is possible to export existing resources from the projects and reimport (update) new versions of the existing resources to the projects.
- Other UI Changes
Template Properties Dialog has been reorganized and contains the ability to manually move/resize template to the precisely specified coordinates. New keyboard shortcuts have been added to speed up access to the Variables Dialog (Ctrl-K), Resources Dialog (Ctrl-R), and Preview Dialog (Ctrl-P).
Selection/Move/Resize handles are now painted always above all other templates and outside of the template occupied area. This makes it easier to move/resize objects that are partially occupied by another objects. It is also possible to resize templates to a very small size (think in pixels).
Lintouch can be downloaded and installed directly on the Windows and Linux based platforms. The detailed instructions are available at our website.
The list of supported platforms includes Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, SuSE Linux 9.x, Debian/GNU Linux 3.1 (sarge), and LSB based distributions. Source RPM archives are provided in order to support other RPM based Linux distributions.
The source code of Lintouch Runtime and Lintouch Server is distributed under the GNU General Public License 2. It can be downloaded and compiled by hand. The detailed instructions are available at our website.
Lintouch is a real-time data monitoring/controlling system used in automation industry and developed by S.W.A.C. GmbH Germany and S.W.A.C. Bohemia s.r.o.
Lintouch is an effort to build fully software-based open source control panel software suite. Control panels are usually called HMI - Human Machine Interface, or MMI - Man Machine Interface in the automation industry.
Lintouch supports variety of hardware/software platforms (Win32+Intel, Linux+Intel, Linux+PPC).
Lintouch has been designed with extensibility in mind. New Server Plugins can be developed to bring in new connectivity (ModBus/TCP, and Hilscher already available). New Templates (GUI Objects) can be implemented to define new control and visualization primitives (Buttons, Lamps, and other Technical Objects already available).
To get more information about Lintouch please visit our website http://lintouch.org.
