Curious if there is a way to add new devices automatically without using the Designer. Our current use case doesn't require Designer so not having to install it every time would be a bonus. If anyone has found a way to add Devices without this, let me know!
Yes, via script:
https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/system.device.addDevice
Numerous related discussions on this forum:
https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/search?q=addDevice%20order%3Alatest
Yes I did see the addDevice but I am looking for a way to achieve this without using Designer.
No, you have to write the code to add devices using this scripting function in the Designer initially.
After that, though, you could invoke this code from a Perspective or Vision Client.
Or just go add them in the Gateway.
At all?
No, you will have to use the designer to write a script in a UI project. Then, if well-written, the UI project can do the work in the future.
Thank you for confirming Phil and Kevin. Definitely a feature I would like to see in the future.
Why should you be able to "design" a project without the designer?
You haven't explained your use case or how you imagine this might work enough to get help let alone request a feature.
Our use case is just using Ignition as a OPC Server and serving those tags to a separate OPC client. We would be bulk adding a bunch of devices once and then potentially going back to change/add devices. We do not use Designer or any of its' features, so not having to install it onto computers that we do not manage just to add Devices automatically would be nice. Even if there was the ability to upload something like a csv file, excel sheet or a text file in a specific format to the web page, that would be nice.
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Okay. Not that it helps you now, but when Ignition 8.3 is released (late 2024? who knows) I think there will be a couple ways this could be approached.
Right now, you'd probably need to use the Designer to author a web service, using the WebDev module, that could be used to dynamically add devices based on the parameters provided to the service call. Then you could use scripting or whatever else, external to Ignition, to call that web service.
(this would be one of the approaches in 8.3 as well, except you won't need to roll your own web service to respond)
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Thanks Kevin, I will look out for that when Ignition 8.3 comes out.
I never considered using Ignition without Vision or Perspective. Something new to ponder.