What would you like to see in an improved Perspective Power Chart?

Ignition
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Power Chart – What features would you like to see?

Hi everyone,

We are currently developing a new Power Chart solution for Ignition Perspective, and I would like to get some input from the Ignition community.

One of our main design goals is that the component should feel familiar to anyone already using Ignition's existing Power Chart. We want to retain the concepts, workflows, and functionality users already know, while expanding the chart with additional capabilities that we have repeatedly needed in real world projects.

The reason we started this project is that, over the years, several of our customers have asked for functionality beyond what we normally have available directly in the Power Chart.

Until now, we have typically solved these requirements by building additional functionality around the chart. Examples include things such as:

  • Saving trend configurations per user

  • Loading previously saved trends

  • User-specific trend setups

  • Additional navigation and interaction tools

  • Extended analysis and visualization functionality

  • Project-specific controls placed alongside the Power Chart

Instead of continuing to build these features as separate additions around the chart, our goal is to integrate them into a more complete Power Chart solution.

We work extensively with SCADA systems in the Norwegian aquaculture and fish processing industries, so naturally many of the requirements we encounter originate from those environments. However, I am sure users working in other industries have completely different requirements, workflows, and ideas that we may never encounter ourselves.

So I would like to ask the community:

If you could add or improve anything in the Power Chart, what would it be?

This could be anything related to:

  • Trend configuration

  • Historical data analysis

  • Navigation, pan and zoom

  • Cursors, crosshairs and value inspection

  • Statistics

  • Annotations and events

  • Saved trends and user preferences

  • Alarm visualization

  • Comparison of different time periods

  • Exporting data or images

  • Mobile/tablet operation

  • Operator workflows

  • Performance with large datasets

  • Anything else you regularly wish the Power Chart could do

Please post your ideas below.

If someone has already suggested something you would also like to see, give that post a like/thumbs-up rather than posting the same request again. That should give us a useful indication of which features are most interesting to the community.

There are probably many good ideas and use cases outside the industries we normally work with, so we are very interested in hearing how other Ignition users, integrators, and designers use trending in their applications.

Our intention is to use the feedback from this thread as input when prioritizing functionality during development.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas.

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@MaryiaDreyer

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Attached is a (butchered - it had other stuff in it as well for other things) list of thing I shared with IA about requests for the power chart. Zipped to upload (docx unsupported by the forum)

PerspectivePowerChart_Improvements.zip (514.9 KB)

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Thanks a lot for sharing this! It is exactly the kind of input we were hoping to get.
You also seem to have spent quite a bit of time working with and thinking about the Perspective Power Chart. If we get to the point where we are looking for a few experienced Ignition users to test the solution and provide feedback, would you be interested in trying it out?

For anyone else reading the thread, here is a quick summary of the points from the document:

  • Save/load trend views
  • Recall recent unsaved trend views
  • Preserve the current trend after project updates
  • Improve X-Trace boxes and prevent overlap
  • Show engineering units in X-Trace/legend
  • Show text values for discrete/enumerated tags
  • Improve time-axis labels, ticks and gridlines
  • Remove the strict distinction between Realtime and Historical
  • Add span lock
  • Add “Go to now” and realtime tracking
  • Allow common and manually entered time spans
  • Keep sampled values stable while panning
  • Let users control sampled point count
  • Add Tag Browser search
  • Indicate tags already added to the chart
  • Configure pens while adding them
  • Simplify pen colour changes
  • Add data-point markers
  • Stack/unstack pens into separate plots
  • Configurable legend height
  • Drag directly on time/Y axes to adjust range
  • Add a zoom-window tool
  • Show clear loading indication
  • Better handling when no data exists for the selected range

If any of these are also important to you, please like the reply or comment on the specific point.

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Would like some calculation (oob or easy way to do) like:

  • derivative (rate of change)
  • delta
  • peak-to-peak
  • linear regression
  • integral
  • etc.
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Wow, I'd forgotten how many I had in there... now I feel bad for the folks from IA I showed this to at ICC 2024 :sweat_smile:

Most definitely, count me in!

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The biggest thing I would love to see in power charts is the ability to manipulate the data before it gets graphed. Examples: converting units, applying an offset, etc. You can do that with a time series chart, but then you lose X-trace. No tool does it all.

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I don't think its fixable in a third party module but the data usage of the powerchart really needs to be improved when in realtime mode. Re-polling all the data points instead of just an incremental update is such a bandwidth hog for big charts.

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Not to mention the points all get resampled and can make the trend lines jump wildly every update...

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Yeah, the update pace needs to match the aggregation interval to avoid this. Hard to make the PowerChart do that.

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The ability to add defined phases by time such as Year/Month to show how the trend has changed over time would be helpful or do a comparison in defined time periods. Ability to add defined formulas within the application while trending.

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These would be my biggest gripes/improvements from his list in no particular order:

Save/load trend views
Recall recent unsaved trend views
Preserve the current trend after project updates
Improve X-Trace boxes and prevent overlap
Show engineering units in X-Trace/legend
Simplify pen color changes
Better handling when no data exists for the selected range

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These are a few features I would like to see

  • Realtime Tag Browser component that only shows tags with history enabled.
  • Ability to trend/create expressions.
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Thanks everyone for all the feedback and suggestions so far.

My plan is to implement as many of the requested features as reasonably possible. Once we have working versions to test, we can discuss the details, usability, and whether each feature genuinely adds value.

I appreciate all feedback including critical feedback. The goal is to make the chart genuinely useful for Ignition users, rather than simply adding features for the sake of it.

If anyone would like to test the chart during development but does not want to post their email address publicly, feel free to contact me at post@krautomasjon.no.

I can send you a signed trial .modl build that you can install and test on your own Ignition system. Development builds will initially be shared with a limited number of testers.

You are welcome to send feedback directly by email, but i would prefer feature discussions, suggestions, issues, and general feedback to be posted here on the forum. This allows more people to contribute ideas, describe different use cases, and share opinions about how the functionality should work.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed so far.

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I might suggest instead to PM a group of users here on the forum. This would be simpler for you to manage sending updates through, as well as offering the ability for discussion between testers

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That’s a good idea. For now, it’s just the two of us, but if anyone else is interested in testing and providing feedback, feel free to let me know here and we can add you to the group.

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Hi @Joachim,

I would be interrested to test it.

Thanks

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Great! I’ll add you to the tester group when the first version of the chart is ready for testing.

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We now have a signed Power Chart Pro module, version 0.3.1, ready for early testing.

We are continuing to work through the ideas and requests discussed in this thread.

If anyone else would like to test it, please let me know and I can add you to the test group.

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We now have a signed Power Chart Pro 0.4.9 test build available.

The following list only includes functionality that is currently implemented and has been exercised in our test builds.

New functionality

  • Per-user saved trend configurations with Save, Save As, Open, overwrite and delete.

  • Automatic recovery points for recent unsaved trend configurations.

  • Restoration of the active saved trend after a page reload.

  • Optional time-span locking and a “Go to now” function for returning to realtime tracking.

  • A Zoom Window tool for selecting and enlarging a specific area of the chart.

  • Runtime controls for shifting and resetting individual Y-axis ranges.

  • Configurable logarithmic Y-axes, including logarithm base selection.

  • Optional pen configuration before tags are added, including pen name, colour, axis and plot.

  • Quick plot layouts for combining all pens in one plot or placing each pen in a separate plot.

  • A user-resizable Pen Control area.

  • Configurable data-point markers for individual pens.

  • Per-pen displayed-value conversion using a multiplication factor and offset.

  • Per-pen text mappings for discrete or enumerated values, such as 0 = Stopped and 1 = Running.

  • An optional average line for each pen, calculated across the visible time range, with configurable styling and value label.

  • Previous-period comparison overlays with configurable time offset and line styling.

  • Calculated companion lines for linear regression, delta, peak-to-peak, rate of change and cumulative integral, with optional dedicated axes.

  • Formula pens that calculate values from multiple existing pens using arithmetic expressions.

  • Alarm Journal events displayed as vertical chart markers, with journal selection, searchable alarm-tag selection, priority and alarm-state filtering, configurable line styles and optional labels.

Improvements to existing Power Chart functionality

  • A searchable historian Tag Browser.

  • Clear indication of tags that have already been added to the chart.

  • Improved X-Trace label placement to prevent information boxes from overlapping when values are equal or close together.

  • X-Trace support for comparison, calculated and formula values.

  • Actual source timestamps shown for previous-period comparison values.

  • Engineering units shown together with pen values.

  • Incremental realtime history updates. After the initial load, the chart normally requests only the new data required since the previous update instead of querying the complete visible period again.

The module is still an early test build. We are continuing to test and refine the functionality based on feedback.