Management Platform¶
In order to allow the configurator to focus on the configuration, VC Hub has grouped all other configuration-related tasks into our Management Panel. Before starting your configuration, you need to configure your project in the Management Panel.
Below you will find a list of important features of the VC Hub Management Panel, which can be accessed by clicking on the corresponding links.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Projects | VC Hub allows you to create several configuration projects at the same time, each of which can contain its own individual screen, but all of which share all of the management platform's configurations, such as tags, device connections, database connections, and network configurations. |
| Devices | Devices are the field devices that you need to connect to when configuring your project. VC Hub can connect your various devices via a variety of fieldbus protocols. VC Hub can connect your devices via various fieldbus protocols. For example, if you have a large number of Modbus TCP devices at your site, you can use the Modbus TCP connection provided in the VC Hub device to create a connection to these devices at your site. |
| Tags | Different devices (or rather different fieldbus protocols) have different address spaces. To deal with this difference, VC Hub provides the concept and functionality of assets and tags, which are associated with the VC Hub platform and not with the device (protocol), but a tag can be bound to the address of various devices by binding. For example, a temperature tag can be bound to an address in a Modbus device or to an address in an OPC UA device. What's more, VC Hub supports the asset-based construction of your tag system so that it matches the physical model of your actual field device, making it easy to manage and operate. |
| Alarming | Alarming are an important and indispensable feature of VC Hub systems, and VC Hub provides you with industry-standard alarms, but before you can configure alarms, you need to configure some alarms in the management platform. For example, alarms need to be stored eventually, in order to store them, you need to configure the alarms with an history storage. In addition, you can also configure the duration of stale alarms. |
| Scripts | Scripts is an advanced feature of the VC Hub system that allows you to realize complex business scenarios that are not possible with the configuration, e.g. if you need logic algorithms for tags, VC Hub uses Javascript as a simple and efficient scripting language and provides support for scripting in multiple scenarios. The scripts that you configure in the administration platform are run on the server (VC Hub runs on the server as a Web Server), such as tag change scripts, cycle scripts, and schedules (running scripts in the form of schedules). Of course, we also provide you with scripting functions that are relevant to your configuration, such as control scripts, action scripts, and so on. |
| Networking | The network configuration provides you with redundancy ,networking , and other configuration functions. In many scenarios where your VC Hub needs to operate reliably and stably, redundancy is an essential feature, and you can quickly build your high availability scenarios with the simple configuration provided by VC Hub. In addition, if you have large-scale application scenarios, such as multiple production lines, multiple branch offices, etc. that need to be monitored and controlled, then VC Hub's networking capabilities provide you with the ability to deploy multiple VC Hub applications on different production lines or branch offices, and then combine them for use together. VC Hub also offers functions such as secure configuration between network transmissions. |
| Databases | VC Hub supports you in using a wide range of data as a database for historical or alarm data. In addition to traditional relational databases such as MySQL, SQLServer, and so on, the higher-performance time-series database Influx DB is also supported. For storing historical data, VC Hub also supports a variety of modes, such as single-history repository storage, double-history repository storage VC Hub also supports various modes of historical data storage, such as single history storage, dual history storage, or remote history storage. |
| Security | VC Hub provides a security-based role management system that allows you to build various roles for your field applications, such as Engineer, Operator, Maintenance, and so on. For your convenience, VC Hub also gives you several built-in roles for direct use. |
| Workspace | For the convenience of the configurator, VC Hub allows you to build multiple workspaces. However, the configurator can only operate one workspace at a time. If you need to operate other workspaces, you must manually switch between them. |
| Diagnostics | VC Hub is a complex system involving various aspects, so in order to monitor and diagnose the VC Hub system itself, it provides a wealth of diagnostics functions. For example, you can use the diagnostics to check in real time the CPU and memory occupied by the VC Hub system, as well as to check in real time the operating performance of VC Hub. |
Notes:
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VC Hub only has a built-in SQLite database for storing the necessary system configuration information, etc. Therefore, VC Hub does not provide any databases of its own, but only connectivity and access to these databases, so you will need to configure these third-party databases, such as MySQL, SQL Server, etc., on your own.
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A project is a collection of projects, a project can contain several projects, which share the same system configuration, such as device configuration, tag configuration, database configuration, etc.
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After switching projects manually, you may need to re-login to the system, because the users between different projects are independent, even if you have a user UserA in Project A, and there is a UserA with the same name in Project B, there is no correlation between these two users.