Eclipse 4diac Logo design once use everywhere Open Source PLC Framework for
Industrial Automation & Control
Eclipse 4diac Weekly #5
2024-10-13 Age: 0 days

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from October 04 to October 11, 2024.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FORTE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FBE

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Weekly #4
2024-10-04 Age: 9 days

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from September 27 to October 04, 2024.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FORTE

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Weekly #3
2024-09-27 Age: 16 days

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from September 20 to September 28, 2024.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FORTE

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Weekly #2
2024-09-20 Age: 23 days

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from September 13 to September 20, 2024.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FORTE

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Weekly #1
2024-09-14 Age: 29 days

Update on what development happened across the Eclipse 4diac project in the week from September 06 to September 13, 2024.

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac IDE

Enhancements and Fixes in 4diac FORTE

Many thanks to all contributors for their work and their feedback!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Save the Date: 4days of Eclipse 4diac Winter School - February 11-14, 2025
2024-09-10 news image Age: 33 days

What are your plans for this winter? Skiing, baking cookies, or maybe a sleigh ride? Whatever you are considering, we have a recommendation for you: Choose a winter activity powered by Eclipse 4diac!

We are excited to announce that Bianca Wiesmayr, Lisa Sonnleithner, and Alois Zoitl form the LIT Cyber-Physical Systems Lab will organize the 4days of Eclipse 4diac Winter School from February 11-14, 2025 in Linz, Austria!

What to expect?

This winter school offers an in-depth exploration of IEC 61499 and Eclipse 4diac. Whether you are a newcomer eager to learn or a seasoned user looking to deepen your knowledge, this event is designed for every one of you.

At the 4days of Eclipse 4diac Winter School, we believe in "no theory without hands-on experience." Thus, every session will be paired with practical workshops, allowing participants to immediately apply what they have learned in real-world scenarios.

Preliminary Program Overview:

Registration Information:

A small registration fee will apply to cover materials and organizational costs. Details about the fee and registration process will be shared soon.

Mark your calendars and join us for an engaging winter of learning, coding, and networking!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


New 4diac IDE Plugin by Aimirim Enables Configurabilty with Universal Automation Devices
2024-07-22 Age: 83 days

Aimirim would like to anounce what we consider a nice contribution to Eclipse 4diac community. The UAORT plug-in is a lighthouse towards configurabilty in IEC 61499 by allowing 4diac IDE users deploy to the UAO (Universal Automation) run-time environment.

We understood that UAO is growing and the demand for this configurabilty is growing also. Aimirim has deployed several complex real world industrial applications using Eclipse 4diac. This allowed us to understand the advantanges of event driven distributed applications and opensource models to speed up industry 4.0 revolution. This experience also make it easier for us to do this job and contribute to the Eclipse 4diac comunity.

That's why we did that, focused on the main goal of unlocking the digitization of industrial operations. Aimirim believes that the growth of this market will drive more opportunities to startups and new talents. Contributing to Eclipse 4diac also represents this belief.

Cheers,
Aimirim Team


Eclipse 4diac Now Supports RevolutionPI by Kunbus!
2024-04-15 Age: 181 days

We are thrilled to announce a significant enhancement to our open-source project: Eclipse 4diac now supports the RevolutionPI device manufactured by Kunbus GmbH. This integration marks a major milestone in our mission to provide comprehensive support for a wide range of industrial devices, empowering developers to build advanced automation and control systems with ease.

With this latest addition, Eclipse 4diac users can seamlessly integrate RevolutionPI devices into their automation solutions, harnessing the full potential of Eclipse 4diac's powerful features and functionalities. Whether you're working on industrial control systems, process automation, or IoT applications, Eclipse 4diac now offers enhanced compatibility and support for RevolutionPI devices, empowering you to bring your automation projects to life with unparalleled ease and efficiency.

To get started with Eclipse 4diac and RevolutionPI support, simply download the latest development version of 4diac FORTE from our Github repository and explore the possibilities today.

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Eclipse 4diac. We look forward to seeing the innovative automation solutions our community will create with RevolutionPI support!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Repositories Now on GitHub!
2024-03-29 Age: 198 days

We are thrilled to announce a significant milestone in the evolution of the Eclipse 4diac project: all our repositories have been migrated to GitHub!

This strategic move aims to enhance accessibility, collaboration, and engagement within our growing community of developers, enthusiasts, and users. By leveraging GitHub's robust platform, we are opening up new avenues for streamlined contribution workflows, transparent issue tracking, and dynamic collaboration.

You can now find all Eclipse 4diac repositories conveniently housed under the official Eclipse 4diac GitHub organization at https://github.com/eclipse-4diac..

What Does This Mean for You?

Get Involved!

Whether you're a seasoned developer, an enthusiastic user, or simply curious about industrial automation and control systems, there are numerous ways to get involved with Eclipse 4diac:

Fork Us on GitHub!

We invite you to join us on GitHub and become an integral part of the Eclipse 4diac community. Together, let's shape the future of industrial automation and control systems with open collaboration and innovation.

Explore the repositories, fork your favorites, submit pull requests, and let's build something extraordinary together! Visit the Eclipse 4diac GitHub Organization.

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Eclipse 4diac!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Welcomes Zephyr Support to Empower Small Embedded Systems with IEC 61499
2024-03-20 Age: 207 days

The Eclipse 4diac community is thrilled to announce that Dirk O. Kaar contributed a port of 4diac FORTE to Zephyr. We're immensely grateful for the effort that has made this achievement possible. In particular, special thanks go to KT Elektronik, as they enabled Dirk O Kaar's work on this contribution as part of his employment. This propelled our integration with Zephyr forward.

This exciting development opens up new possibilities for industrial control systems and automation professionals, fostering increased efficiency and flexibility in their projects. This integration enables industrial automation developers to leverage the power of Zephyr in their projects within the Eclipse 4diac ecosystem.

With the addition of Zephyr support, Eclipse 4diac users gain access to a robust and scalable real-time operating system that is perfectly suited for applications in the industrial automation domain. Zephyr's lightweight and efficient architecture allows it to run on a wide range of microcontrollers and small footprint devices, making it an ideal choice for resource-constrained environments.

To get started with Eclipse 4diac's Zephyr support, get the latest 4diac FORTE development branch from 4diac FORTE's Github repository and the documentation provided in the Readme.MD for 4diac FORTE’s Zephyr directory.

For using the latest 4diac FORTE develop version you also need a newer 4diac IDE. We recommend using our pre-built milestone version, which gives you a sneak preview of the amazing upcoming 4diac IDE features.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Guest Post: Eclipse 4diac™ for Agrimechatronics: The Project logiBUS® won a prestigious award
2024-02-27 Age: 229 days

logiBUS® Logo is the Fusion of IEC 61499 programming and ISO 11783 compatibiltiy.

Now logiBUS® won a prestigious award: "Award for innovative digital farming" it was awarded at the 44th Annual Conference at the University of Hohenheim of the Society for Information Technology in Agriculture, Forestry and the Food Industry e.V.

Award Award Award Award Award

Cheers,
Franz Höpfinger on behalf of HR Agrartechnik GmbH


Guest Post: Eclipse 4diac™ in Elektor mag
2023-12-06 Age: 312 days
there is a featured Article in Elektor about Eclipse 4diac™ and logiBUS®

Cheers,
Franz Höpfinger on behalf of HR Agrartechnik GmbH


Guest Post: Eclipse 4diac™ for Agrimechatronics: The Project logiBUS®
2023-08-09 Age: 431 days

The folks at HR Agrartechnik GmbH have been busy to port Eclipse 4diac™ FORTE to the ESP32 and integrate the ISOBUS (ISO 11783) protocol over the last year.

logiBUS® Logo is the Fusion of IEC 61499 programming and ISO 11783 compatibiltiy.

ISOBUS, also known as ISO 11783, is a communication protocol standard developed for agricultural equipment to facilitate the exchange of data between different types of farm machinery and implements. The term "ISOBUS" stands for "ISO Bus," where ISO refers to the International Organization for Standardization, and "Bus" refers to a system of communication between multiple devices.

The goal of ISOBUS is to enable interoperability and compatibility among various agricultural devices from different manufacturers. This standard allows tractors, combines, sprayers, seeders, and other agricultural implements to communicate and share information seamlessly. This information exchange can include data such as equipment status, operational settings, and control commands.

ISOBUS provides a standardized physical connection, usually implemented through a standard connector, and a set of communication protocols that allow different devices to exchange information. This can improve efficiency on the farm by enabling operators to control and monitor various implements from within the tractor cab, reducing the need for multiple displays and control interfaces.

The ISOBUS standard defines different layers of communication, such as the physical layer (defining the connector and cabling), the data link layer (defining how data is packaged and transmitted), and the application layer (defining the structure and content of the data exchanged).

In summary, ISOBUS (ISO 11783) is a standardized communication protocol used in the agricultural industry to enable different types of farm equipment to communicate and share data, ultimately leading to improved efficiency and ease of use for operators.

While exising ISOBUS Stacks require heavy C or C++ Programming as well as knowlege of both, the Bus Protocol and the Programming API of the corresponding ISOBUS Stack, logiBUS® ease the same a lot by covering the Complexity in IEC 61499 Function Blocks. Therefore the Programming of a ISOBUS Universal Terminal Softkey Input in Eclipse 4diac™ is the same as programming a digital input. Nothing new to learn.

A corresponding Website is under construction, but first examples are on the Page:

And, to support Open Source, some Customers agreed to publish their Projects:

There will be a featured Speech about the basics of logiBUS® at the Espressif Developer Conference 2023 September 12, 14:30 see Details:

Cheers,
Franz Höpfinger on behalf of HR Agrartechnik GmbH


You Can't Make an Omelet Without Breaking Eggs!
2023-05-31 Age: 501 days

For 4diac FORTE, API stability was always our major concern. However, this came at a cost (e.g., performance, memory usage, memory-safety). Therefore, we decided that we need to do a major rework of 4diac FORTE for the next release!

The first results are already looking very promising. We get twice the speed for FB algorithm execution and reduced the runtime overhead (event and connection processing) by 30%. We hope for more progress to come in the next weeks.

What does that mean for you?

Given the gains that you will get from this rework, we believe that this is a small price to pay. If you have any questions regarding this change, do not hesitate to contact us!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Welcoming our 2023 GSoC contributors
2023-05-10 news image Age: 522 days

Dear 4diac community,

Every year, Google provides funds to students and beginners of open source to learn about contributing to open source projects. We are pleased that two of the proposals submitted for Eclipse 4diac were accepted. The projects allow students to concentrate on open source contributions during their summer break, and provide a unique opportunity for projects like Eclipse 4diac to develop prototypes for new features.

Two of our committers will serve as mentors for our students. Many thanks to Bianca and Michael for introducing Andrea and Paul to our community and providing support.

Please welcome our contributors for 2023!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Making 4diac IDE more enjoyable to use
2023-04-19 Age: 543 days

Dear 4diac community,

Two of our team members conducted usability studies over the past years on our automation solution development tool, the 4diac IDE. We're proud to announce that the results of these studies have been published in a well-regarded scientific journal, and we believe they will help us make the 4diac IDE even better.

As many of you know, developing industrial control software is a challenging task, especially when control systems are unique and need to be maintained for many years. That's why we put a lot of effort into making the 4diac IDE a more intuitive and efficient environment for creating automation solutions.

Our research paper discusses the results of two usability studies we conducted to evaluate the 4diac IDE. We used the cognitive dimensions of notations framework from the field of human-computer interaction to assess the tool's capabilities, and we also conducted a user study with ten industrial automation engineers who used the 4diac IDE in a realistic control software maintenance scenario.

Based on the lessons we learned from these studies, we were able to make improvements to the 4diac IDE that we believe will make it an even better tool for developing industrial control software. We encourage you to read our publication here to learn more about our research and the changes we've made to the 4diac IDE.

We're committed to providing our users with the most usable and efficient environment for creating automation solutions. Thank you for being a part of the Eclipse 4diac community, and keep an eye out for more updates on our ongoing efforts to improve the 4diac IDE!

As always, we value feedback from our community and users. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding 4diac IDE or the usability studies mentioned in this news post, we would love to hear from you. You can provide your feedback on our dedicated feedback page, located at LimeSurvey. Your input will help us to further improve the Eclipse 4diac IDE and make it an even better tool for industrial control software development.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Do not shoot the error
2023-04-03 Age: 559 days

Dear 4diac community,

Our team is actively working on the upcoming release, and we're excited to share some updates on our progress. We're putting a lot of effort into ensuring that the new release meets our users' expectations, and we're working hard to deliver new features and enhancements that will make automation solution development even more efficient and intuitive.

The last version of the 4diac IDE already supported error markers, making it easier to work with inconsistencies in your projects.

The addition of error markers is a significant usability improvement, providing a clear indication of where errors exist in your code. This feature allows users to load broken projects, make changes, and fix errors later. This is a welcome enhancement for users who have been frustrated with the inability to work with inconsistent projects. The feature will make it easier to identify and address errors in the code, streamlining the process of creating automation solutions.

In earlier versions of Eclipse 4diac, certain operations were prohibited because they could potentially lead to errors. However, with the new update, these operations are now allowed, and any resulting errors can be easily handled using the error markers feature.

Michael, the developer who implemented this feature, says that "The implementation of the error markers feature in Eclipse 4diac required a novel approach that involves refactoring features for resolving the errors seamlessly. When loading projects, we scan the project's XML code in real-time, identify errors, and highlight them in the source code editor. We spent a considerable amount of time testing the feature to ensure that it works seamlessly with the rest of the IDE."

If you're interested in learning more about the error markers feature in the 4diac IDE, we encourage you to check out Michael's publication where he discusses the feature and its implementation in more detail. You can find the link to the paper here. Happy reading!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Sunsetting 4diac IDE's Virtual DNS Infrastructure
2023-03-22 Age: 571 days

In the beginning of 4diac IDE, we introduced Virtual DNS as a means to easily collect configuration values for IOs and communication FBs. It was a simple key-value store that greatly reduced the effort. But it was never more than that and had its problems (e.g., editing Virtual DNS in a view is a pain).

In the last months, as part of the work on improving our IEC 61131-3 structured text support, we added a new feature: a file format for providing a set of globally available constants. This feature is now in a state where it can replace the Virtual DNS. Therefore, we will start the process of removing Virtual DNS from the development branch of 4diac IDE. With the next release it will not be available any more.

If you want to try out our new global constants feature get 4diac IDE's latest RC build. There, you can simply create a file with the extension globalconsts and open it in the default editor. In this editor, you can specify your constants textually:

VAR_GLOBAL CONSTANT
    PI : REAL := 3.1415;
    PI_HALF : REAL := PI / 2.0;
    TWO_PI : REAL := PI * 2.0;
END_VAR

You can use the constants in any place in 4diac IDE where literals of the specified type are allowed (e.g., a pin of an FB). The great advantage of the global constants is that they are typed. With that, we can provide feedback whether the constant is allowed at the place you are using it. Also, code completion is possible.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


New comitter on board
2023-03-14 Age: 579 days

Dear 4diac community,

It's always good to see passionate individuals join open source projects like Eclipse 4diac. As a new committer of Eclipse 4diac, Michael will now have the ability to directly contribute to the development of the project and help guide its future direction. It's also great that he's enthusiastic about supporting the community - open source projects thrive on the support and contributions of their users. We are sure Michael's contributions will be greatly appreciated by the Eclipse 4diac community.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Behind the Scenes
2023-03-06 Age: 587 days

Dear 4diac community,

We know that it has been a while since our last release, but we want to let you know that we have been busy making a lot of changes behind the scenes. We plan to release a new version later this year, packed with a wide range of new features and improvements. We believe that you, our valued community, might not be aware of all the changes that have happened since then. To address this, we will be providing regular updates on our recent progress via our news page and social media. Our next release will include all the features that we have been working on, so stay tuned for more information.

In addition to our upcoming release, we would also like to showcase research works that use or improve Eclipse 4diac. If you have been working on a project that involves Eclipse 4diac and would like us to consider featuring it, please send it with a short description of how Eclipse 4diac was affected or how it helped your work, depending on the nature of the project. We value community contributions and are always looking for ways to improve the 4diac ecosystem.

If you have any suggestions for future updates or would like to share how you've used 4diac IDE in your work, please reach out to us through our mailing list or social media channels. We can't wait to hear from you!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


See Eclipse 4diac Live at ARC Industry Forum Americas 2023
2023-02-02 Age: 619 days

Eclipse 4diac was already featured at previous the ARC Industry Forums. But this year Eclipse 4diac developers and user will be there to show how they use and how Eclipse 4diac can help you.

If you are there, attend the Industrial Open Source Software Session on Wendesday Feb 8th to see as live! This is not only great for Eclipse 4diac but is in general a great message for Open Source Software for Industrial use.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


1st Eclipse 4diac Virtual Community Meeting
2022-11-29 news image Age: 684 days

On popular demand we are very happy to announce the first virtual Eclipse 4diac Community Meeeting. This community meeting is intended as a place for the Eclipse 4diac community to get to know each other and the exchange ideas around Eclipse 4diac.

The 1st Eclipse 4diac Virtual Community Meeting will be held on December 13th, 5pm CET.

You can join the Meeting via Zoom: Zoom Meeting Link

Our planned agenda is as follows:

we use a publicly available document to manage the meeting’s agenda. You can add items to it anytime.

We look forward to talking with you all.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac in Other News
2022-11-16 Age: 697 days

Eclipse 4diac was featurd twice in the last two month in the german pod cast "Open Source in der Industrie":

Many thanks to Dr. Julian Feinauer und Robert Weber for this opportunity.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


15 Years of Eclipse 4diac!
2022-07-07 Age: 829 days
Eclipse 4diac's birthday cake

It is hard to believe that 15 years have passed since on July 7th, 2007 the first public 4diac version was presented by Thomas Strasser and Alois Zoitl at the IEEE IES International Conference on Industrial Informatics.

In these 15 years, the development of Eclipse 4diac had its ups and downs - but nowadays it is used by universities and research institutions all over the globe. And, increasingly, even companies are using or investigating 4diac for their use cases. Martin Melik-Merkumians (ACIN, TU Wien), a long time Eclipse 4diac committer, summarizes our history: Being part of the team since 2009, I (well, probably all of us) had the high hopes to make a significant impact to the automation industry and its users with 4diac. Although I had never given up this hope, it didn't always look like it in all these years. All the more it is pleasing to see now, how we managed to change minds in academia and industry.

Already 7 years ago (in 2015), our proposal for an official Eclipse project was accepted. While some developers retired, new ones joined. Currently, we have 8 committers - and many more contributors! In the past 3.5 years, 4diac IDE has shaped my work, my PhD studies, and my free time: I deeply enjoy developing new features that benefit users of the IDE. I am happy to be part of the development community, which welcomed me warmly and is a great network of support., Bianca Wiesmayr (LIT CPS Lab, JKU).

In the last years, the maturity of Eclipse 4diac has increased tremendously. We implemented numerous improvements and usability enhancements that we did not even dare to dream of 15 years ago. This would not been possible without the feedback from our users. Alois Zoitl (LIT CPS Lab, JKU), one of the co-founders and project lead, points it out very nicely: Many thanks for the feedback from our users and for the fruitful discussion sessions we had in the last 15 years. I am looking forward to many more constructive discussions for further improvements to turn Eclipse 4diac into the best IEC 61499 solution.

Hence, we are looking forward to the next 15 years of Eclipse 4diac!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Google Summer of Code 2022
2022-06-10 news image Age: 856 days

As in every year, Eclipse 4diac participated in the Google Summer of Code to extend our community.

Paul will work this summer on 4diac IDE in the context of testing Function Blocks (semi-)automatically. This is a part of our ambitions to make developing Function Blocks in 4diac IDE easier for you.

Paul is a physics student with additional interest in computer science. With this project, he hopes to gain practical experience in Java and learn working on large-scale projects with collaborative development.

In this summer, he will gain first experience in contributing to an open source project. We are always happy to introduce new contributors to our processes! Our committers Bianca and Alois serve as mentors for the project.

We will post updates over the summer!

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


4diac 2.0.1: First Maintenance Release for 4diac 2.0
2021-12-29 news image Age: 1019 days

We are happy to announce the first maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 2.0 providing 29 bug fixes for 4diac IDE as well as 2 bug fixes for 4diac FORTE. This include fixes for monitoring subapp interfaces and in the 4diac FORTE C++ code generation. A full list of all fixed issues can be found here.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For users of the previouse releases a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 2.0.1.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Use of Eclipse 4diac at HIT Robot Group
2021-10-22 news image Age: 1087 days

Today we have something new in our news section an interview with one of our latest users Tibalt Zhao from HIT Robot Group.

Alois: Who are you? Tibalt Zhao R&D team lead at HIITTECH
Tibalt: We are the R&D team of HIITTECH (哈工智云) which is incubated from HIT robot group. Our company is dedicated in delivering software solution for advanced process control. Currently, we are focusing on cement industry and circulate fluid bed (a kind of boiler). I am the team leader. The team comprises of software engineers and service engineers.
Alois: How did you learn about IEC 61499 and the Eclipse 4diac project?
Tibalt: We are a team experienced both in terminal units and SCADA systems applied in the electricity grid. We have our own flow (graphical) programming platform to develop control logic in terminal units. The platform is a key to ensure quality for requirements different from batch to batch of hardware delivery. We are following the status of IEC 61131 and IEC 61499 as they are the standard for industrial control languages. Eclipse 4diac is one of the most popular open-source project for IEC 61499. And at the beginning of our project, our colleagues recommended Eclipse 4diac to us. And after looked into the docs and codes, we decided to adopt 4diac as our control platform.
Alois: You have contributed many bug fixes and enhancements to the 4diac project. So, what's your team's goal?
Tibalt: When I am designing the architecture, I read from you and James Christensen that IEC 61499 is a standard for software reuse in embedded, distributed control systems. This is what we are looking for, the philosophy, standard, graphical programming, and the open-source project.
We are feeding back with code for bug fix, enhancements, and suggestions to the 4diac project as we respect EPL license. We believe that the community's prosperity could benefit all who are working with 4diac and IEC 61499. Our business value is in FBs we are encapsulated and total solution we delivered to our customer with HMI and big data database.
Alois: What do you like most on 4diac?
Tibalt: First, the tiny footprints of the run time environment. Second, the architecture taking care of hard real time application. And the RTE which could run cross platform including Linux, windows, freeRTOS and so on.
Alois: What in 4diac is disturbing your work most?
Tibalt: The way to composite function block is a little bit disturbing as we have done lots of CFBs. We hope to see the subapplication type soon. I heard that in 2.0.0 release, we can have subapplication type.
Alois: Yes we are working hard to make subapplication support better. But what is exactly the problem of CFBs if I may ask?
Tibalt: First, every time we make a CFB, we need to generate cpp codes from IDE and compile them with source code of 4diac FORTE before it can be tested. You know, the process can be done for several times to get the CFB ready to release even by an experienced engineer. And even a tiny new requirement, for example change the pin name or add an output pin to give more details of failure execution, we have to repeat the compilation process. Secondly, IDE cannot "watch" in the second tier of function block network, which means if there is a CFB embedded inside another CFB, it is almost impossible to debug. Engineers need a good way to encapsulate the FBs as we all know that a very big FBN is too complex to maintain. We can make the basic blocks in IDE is a good start. But please make the process simple that the service engineer could build the blocks by themselves within IDE.
Alois: Can you describe/show something about your first 4diac application?
Tibalt: Sure. Our application is the advanced process control for a mill.
function block network of the advanced process control
Function block network of the advanced process control.
The mill consumes around 192,000 KWh electricity per day to spit out around 9600 tons of crushed raw materials 88% of which is smaller than 80 micrometer. Before the installation of our software, the mill is operated by 3 operators per day. During working hours, they must focus on the conditions of the mill and taking care of the feeding speed of raw materials and water, roller pressure, fan speed, separator speed, and so on. After the installation of our solution, their workload is greatly reduced, and the condition of the raw mill is much more stable. Below are numbers compared between controlled by operator alone and operator with APC solution.
The comparison of critical parameters.
The comparison of electricity consumption.
The comparison of the average production per hour.
Alois: Wow this is pretty impressive. Thanks a lot for your insights.

Eclipse 4diac 2.0.0
2021-10-14 news image Age: 1095 days

Have you been waiting for 4diac 2.0.0? It's finally here!

We've been working on improving your experience with Eclipse 4diac. For 4diac IDE, the following major changes were introduced:

For 4diac FORTE, we have mostly provided bug fixes and stabilization patches:

For details, please consider the release page of our New and Noteworthy.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy our graduation release. We are looking foward to sharing more documentation on the new features in the upcoming weeks.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Eclipse 4diac Project Graduation
2021-10-06 news image Age: 1103 days

We are happy to announce that the Eclipse 4diac passed the graduation review today. This is a major step for the project and its community. We could show that we are working as open source project following the Eclipse development process. It also means that we are leaving the incubation phase.

Thanks to the great 4diac community for making this possible.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


4diac 2.0.0 Release Feature Freeze Phase
2021-09-06 news image Age: 1133 days

As every year, the beginning of September starts the feature freeze phase for the 4diac autumn release. We have many new features and bug fixes in this release:

More details will follow in the next weeks as separate news items.

We provide a nightly build update site which allows you to automatically update your 4diac IDE. Just add
http://download.eclipse.org/4diac/nightly/update
to your update sites.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


4diac IDE Icon Update
2021-06-21 news image Age: 1210 days

The last few months we've been working hard on redesigning the icons of the 4diac IDE.

As this is the first major revisit of the existing icons, we had to change a lot. Major motivations for the redesign were to increase readability and consistency throughout the icons.

Icons Done

This is the list of icons already redesigned.

Function Blocks

System

Device

Event/Data/Adapters

ECC

All these icons are Work in Progress, they may be subject to change.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


4diac 1.14.0 Released!
2021-05-03 news image Age: 1259 days

We are very proud to announce the Eclipse 4diac 1.14.0 release!

With Eclipse 4diac 1.14.0 we provide you with a large set of improvements in 4diac IDE and 4diac FORTE:

All in all we could address 150 issues in the work for the new Eclipse 4diac version. A full list of all bugs addressed in this release can be found on the 1.14.0 release page.

As always please download, test, and report any issues. For users of the previous releases a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.14.0.

Cheers,
The 4diac Team

PS: With Eclipse 4diac 1.14.0 the 4diac IDE requires at least Java 11 installed on your machine! If you download the official 4diac IDE package a correct Java version is already included. Many thanks to the Eclipse JustJ project for that support.

PPS: Windows 10 users: Windows 10 Defender significantly slows down Eclipse and therfore also 4diac IDE. The reason is Windows 10 Defender scanning the JAR files. The problem has been reported to Microsoft here. Until then, a workaround to this problem is to add 4diac IDE root directory to Windows 10 Defender's exclusion list, detailed steps are shared here.

Note: This is not just an Eclipse 4diac issue on Windows 10.


On Our Way to 4diac 1.14.0!
2021-04-26 news image Age: 1266 days

Your patience is paying of. In the last weeks we could fix a few major issues in 4diac IDE. One clearly visible example you can see below. Thanks to Bianca's detective skills we where finally able to fix the cut of texts when zooming in or out of our graphical editors.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


Before and after the new scaling code
Postponing the 4diac 1.14.0 Release!
2021-04-13 news image Age: 1279 days

In the last two weeks we noticed a few major issues in the release version of 4diac IDE. As we want to further investigate this we have to decided to further postpone the 4diac 1.14.0 release to May 3rd.

We are sorry for the inconvenience. 4diac 1.14.0 will have an amazing list of new features. So it is definitly worth the waiting.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team


4diac 1.13.1: First Maintenance Release for 4diac 1.13
2021-01-21 news image Age: 1361 days

We are proud to announce the first maintenance release for Eclipse 4diac 1.13 providing 12 bug fixes for 4diac IDE. This include fixes for the virtualDNS handling, corner cases in the new selection feedback and in the 4diac FORTE code exporter. A full list of all fixed issues can be found here.

As always please download, test, and report problems and bugs. For users of the previouse releases a simple Help -> Check of Updates should upgrade you to 1.13.1.

Cheers,
The Eclipse 4diac Team