Example of a network variable event handler – Echelon LNS User Manual

Page 233

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LNS Programmer's Guide

219

When you design such a monitoring application, you should bear in mind

that the network’s primary focus is on the execution of the control
algorithm, and that any network traffic generated, or any device or

network resources consumed by your monitoring approach, should not

prevent the network from fulfilling its primary task. You should design
network applications to be as unobtrusive as possible.

4. Each individual device on a network responds to a certain number of

network variable poll requests per second. The LNS application has

substantial processing power and a high performance network interface
at hand, and can typically handle more network variable poll requests

per second than most L

ON

W

ORKS

devices. When defining the poll

interval, make sure not to flood a single device with poll requests by
exceeding its individual limit. Not only would the device be unable to

respond to the request at the desired schedule, the polling requests would

also flood the device’s input buffers and might cause transient errors in
the operation of the control algorithm.

5. The poll interval is the interval between the last completion event for a

poll, and the next poll request. So if you were to set the poll interval for a

network variable to be 5 seconds, and it took 0.5 seconds to poll the

network variable, LNS would poll the network variable about every 5.5
seconds. In doing so, LNS avoids queuing poll requests for the same

network variable, and slows down polling for a particular device when its
responses are slow. This also causes less bandwidth to be consumed by

polls, because LNS automatically slows down if there is a large number of

retries for a given network variable.

6. After a network variable poll fails, the LNS Object Server will reduce the

polling interval of the device containing the network variable to once per
minute. If multiple network variables were being polled on the device, the

polling will be restricted to a single network variable regarded as the

"probe network variable." You should note that polling of the probe
network variable is randomized over each minute, so these polls may not

necessarily occur exactly once every 60 seconds. This has the effect of

distributing the probe polling more evenly. The LNS Object Server will
resume normal polling of the device as soon as it successfully polls the

probe network variable. Depending on the interval, it might recover in
less than 60 seconds. Note that normal polling may also resume before

the probe network variable is successfully polled if the LNS Object Server

detects a message from the device - for example if the device sends a
network variable update, or if the LNS Object Server pings the device.

Example of a Network Variable Event Handler

The following shows a sample event handler you could use for the

OnNvMonitorPointUpdateEvent

. In this example, the application checks if the Tag

property of the monitor point returned by the event matches a certain value to determine
whether it should display the monitor point’s value. If the tag matches, then the

application obtains the monitor point’s new value from the

DataPoint

returned by the

event. There are several ways your application can format and display the data stored in
the

DataPoint

object. For more information on this, see Data Formatting in page 241.

Dim roomTemp as String

Private Sub lcaObjectServer_OnNvMonitorPointUpdateEvent( _

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