Import and access a lot of external Variables

Daniel_Glocker

Hello!

My name is Daniel and i work as a system integrator for Building and energy automation. I was disapointed in the (comercaialy) available software to visualice the data i am generating and also for controlling big buildings.

I was wondering if a video game engine is not only better developed but also well suited for such a task!

I am started watching some tutorials about godot and i think a lot of it could work quite well for what i have in mind. One thing which i dont understand yet what a good way of getting all the variables in godot and back into my PLC

I am well aware that i will have to write my own communication stack to make that happen via TCP but i am not quite sure where and how to do that in Godot!

My Problem is that on an average Projekt i have about 2000 Variables and i need to connect all of them to different devices. I have quite good structure in my variables so i hope to make an Object for a Valve and easyly make several instances for all valves in the project and connect them to the variables (i have about 10 variables per valve)

i hope you can help me understanding Godot so far that i can work in the right direction!

(if someone is intrested - i am using Beckhoff PLC and planing on using the open ADS protokoll which is implemented in Beckhoff allready!

wombatstampede

Hi Daniel, Godot works well with a Dictionary datastructure. This can be serialized to and from a JSON string/textfile.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/getting_started/workflow/best_practices/data_preferences.html?highlight=dictionary https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/classes/class_dictionary.html?highlight=hash

Here's an example for a local declaration of such a structure:

        var lvlInfo = { 
       			   		"areas": [
       						{
       							"res": "res://levels/area_0b.tscn",
       							"menuCameraPos": "Level/area_0/menuCameraPos",
       							"spots": "Level/area_0/CameraSpots",
       							"levels" : [
       								{"startpos": "startpos1",
       								 "boatIndex": 0,
       								 "init": {
       								 	"show": ["Level/area_0/Area_0","Player/Cat1"],
       									"moor": ["br","ar"],
       									"camprep": "circle",
       									"camera": "left"
       								 },
       								"complete": {
       									"enter": "Area_0"
       								},
       								 "hints": {
       									"b_notmoored" : {
       											"and" : ["b_moorinit"], 
       											"hint": "moor"
       										},
       									"b_throttleup" : {
       											"and" : ["b_notmoored"],
       											"hint": "throttleup"
       										}
       								 }
       								}
       							]
       						}
       					]
       			}

Such a structure can be built from arbitrary data, CSV, JSON or whatever you want to parse/encode. (JSON is already implemented as I said). It can be also be assembled from separate structures. Holding 2000 variables + some parameters each should be no problem.

The app/game can save this data to local space or transfer it as a string or whatever structure to remote servers.