Basic Screens and Features

Apr 19, 2024

EVI RMCS Overview

When EVI designed RMCS we had three primary goals:

1. Create a user interface that minimized the retraining necessary for normal, day-to-day use
2. Ensure that the back end could communicate with RM-80 loops using as much existing cabling and hardware as possible
3. Leverage existing code from EVI's Plant Information Computer System (PICS) as the underlying core of RMCS

We believe that all of these goals were met and we added one additional goal:

• Ensure that the user interface can be customized to meet each customer's special needs as much as possible

EVI's RMCS uses a very modular software design that allows the system to be configured in many different ways. The modular nature of the software also keeps development and testing at a manageable level because each of the programs is tailored to a specific task.

Basic Features

When EVI builds a screen package for a customer, we start by creating a set of screens that duplicate (as closely as possible) the customer's existing screens and even keyboard shortcuts. When customers are interested, EVI will also build customer's specific screens using layout and feature ideas generated in conversation with the customer.

The primary user interface program is RMCS Display:

• RMCS Display may be run:
  • As a "regular" window that may be moved around on the screen by dragging the title bar. (In this mode, the window size is set by the selected font and cannot be changed.)
  • As a full screen window
  • In full screen mode, with neither a caption nor menu bar. The menu bar may optionally drop down into visibility when the mouse approaches the top of the screen. The screen shots captured here show the program running in this mode.
• The outer border of the display area may be filled with color in one of three ways:
  • Using the default background color (typically black)
  • Using green or red to indicate the current setting for Audio Enable. This allows anyone to see that audio alarms are disabled from across the room.
  • Using a color associated with the current user's security access level. This allows operators to see that a supervisor, technician or administrator is logged in from across the room.
• The font face used for the display is selectable. RMCS Display will size the font characters so that the largest possible characters are used on the current display.
• Tooltips are used over channel tags on grids and over RM-80 tags on other screens to show current values, status, and sometimes English translations of internal codes used by the software (typically done when space limitations did not allow the translated values to be displayed directly). ToolTips activate when the mouse hovers over an object on the screen.
• Context menus are available for channels, RM-80s, Loops and other objects. These menus provide information (like the description) and quick access to screens relating to the object whose context menu is being displayed. Context menus are activated by RIGHT-CLICK on a screen object.

Most screen layouts are defined by plain text configuration files that may be changed, added and/or deleted. If layouts are changed while RMCS Display is running, the changes will be detected and the page will automatically be reloaded to show the results of the changes.