Vertiq Testing Tool v0.2.0 Release Information

What is This Post About?

Vertiq has released a new version of our graphical testing tool, the Vertiq Testing Tool (VTT). This version improves performance from previous releases of the tool, and significantly expands its real-time plotting capabilities, by allowing for multiple parameters to be plotted simultaneously on the same graph. This post will describe in detail these updates to help you understand what is possible with the updated tool.

What is the Vertiq Testing Tool?

The VTT is a graphical interface that makes it easier to control and gather data from Vertiq modules using their serial interface. It serves as a companion to the Control Center. While the Control Center is focused on configuring, flashing, and getting support for your modules, the VTT focuses on testing and real-time plotting of data from your modules. For more information on using the VTT, see the Getting Started page on our documentation. You can download the VTT from Github or follow the link on our Support page.

Plotting Multiple Metrics On a Single Plot

The most obvious change in this new version is the ability to plot multiple metrics simultaneously on a single plot. In previous versions, only one metric could be plotted at a time on each plot window. Now, when adding metrics to the plot, you can configure how many are graphed,  configure whether they have a visible y-axis, and edit the color of their line. The picture below shows what a very basic plotting setup looks like in this new release of the VTT, with just one plot and one metric. Note that the metric now has a color, which can be configured by clicking on the small gear icon next to the metric name.

If we add another metric, we can see that both will be plotted simultaneously on the same graph in their configurable colors.

This makes it significantly easier to track how the values of different metrics relate to each other. For example, we could use this to examine how supply current and velocity scale together. The picture below shows an example of plotting current consumption and the module’s velocity together while using the control panel to change the module’s velocity.

It is also still possible to create separate independent plotting windows, and to plot multiple values in those windows as well. For example, to get a better sense of how both the supply voltage and current change with velocity, you could create two plot windows side-by-side, one that plots supply voltage and velocity, and one that plots supply current and velocity. The picture below demonstrates this.

Performance Improvements

Also in this new release are back-end improvements to improve performance by reducing memory consumption and the responsiveness of the user interface. Switching tabs is notably faster, and the memory consumption of the tool when running for long periods of time has been improved.

Questions

If you have questions about these updates, you can contact support@vertiq.co for more information.