Episode 08: Unveiling runtime execution engine V24.0 | UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Description

In this episode of UAO Goes Live, Chief Architect Officer Sarath Malkasima introduces the UniversalAutomation.org runtime V24.0 and details what is coming next. New capabilities include partner license management, secure reliable transport (SRT) for runtime‑to‑runtime messaging, and network segregation on SoftDPAC for northbound and I/O communications. Stability, cybersecurity, MQTT fixes, and enhanced watch‑mode debugging also land in this release. The roadmap previews UTF‑8 strings, Modbus Serial for SoftDPAC, explicit Modbus TCP requests, multi‑resource high availability, online Basic FB debugging, cross‑project adapters, a 64‑bit runtime, plus stretch goals such as EtherNet/IP and PROFINET client functions.

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About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

UniversalAutomation.org (UAO) is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to transforming industrial automation through open standards and shared source technology. The association manages the reference implementation of a shared runtime execution engine based on the IEC 61499 standard, enabling true interoperability between hardware from multiple vendors and portability of automation software applications.

By providing a ready-to-use, vendor-neutral runtime environment, UniversalAutomation.org empowers companies to build flexible Industry 4.0 architectures, accelerate digital transformation, and maximize return on investment (ROI) through software reusability and hardware independence.

The development of this runtime is governed by shared source principles, ensuring long-term compatibility and collaborative innovation. Members—including end users, OEMs, system integrators, and technology vendors—work collectively to create a global ecosystem for plug-and-produce automation solutions.

UniversalAutomation.org is growing rapidly as more organizations adopt open automation to overcome vendor lock-in, enable IT/OT convergence, and support greenfield and brownfield projects. Academic institutions are also leveraging this technology to train the next generation of automation engineers.

Companies and institutions that want to lead the future of industrial automation, develop next-generation control systems, and participate in a global open automation community are invited to join UniversalAutomation.org.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everyone and welcome to this new session of the LinkedIn Live of Vue.io Goes Live. I'm happy to have you today and to release a great news, which is that we are announcing the new release of the Vue.io Runtime Execution Engine, so the V24.0. And at the same time, we take this opportunity to introduce one of our newest officers.
Speaker #1
who is uh sahat sahat sahat welcome thank you greg would you like to introduce yourself to the community yeah sure thank you for giving me this opportunity greg uh myself sarath malakasima taking up the role of chief architect officer for universal automation i have been associated with 61499 technology and the associated runtime for about six years by now. I'm all excited in this role to work with you all and take the Universal Automation to the greatest heights possible. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Yes, as universalautomation.org as an association we are growing and we keep onboarding new members and as well new people within the organization so we are happy to welcome Sarath on board to take over the Chief Architect Officer. roles and as we go for sure you will see new faces coming new members new projects new offers because that's what that is what we are aiming for at universal automation at all to push the technology and to to push uh the use of the 649 so um let's maybe start uh sarat by uh giving the audience uh an overview of uh what is new with this newest version uh of the V24.0 and maybe before starting you can explain to the audience why we call it V24.0. Maybe it could be interesting for all the viewers to know what is the idea behind it.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so as you all know, every year Universal Automation brings to you two sets of releases and the first release is always a .0 release starting with the year number and then followed by a .1 release again starting with the year number. This year, yes we are bringing this first version of the runtime which is 24.0 and I'm sure you are all excited to know about what is new and what more is being delivered and for sure we are also planning to work on the next version which I will also present the details about.
Speaker #0
Great. Great. So, yeah, let's go through the features. What do you have all to present today?
Speaker #1
Yeah, sure. Greg, if you allow me, I would like to bring up a presentation and then start talking about each of those features. Let me bring up the presentation here on the screen. That helps me talk through the set of features which we are going to...
Speaker #0
which you are going to know about good so I let you bring that to the screen and bring that in presentation mode and yeah we can start sharing great yeah so all right good the floor is yours yeah thank you thank you Greg thank
Speaker #1
you everyone for giving your priceless time and deciding to use it and spend it with us today I'm going to walk you through what are all those features that are being delivered as part of 24.0 release and what is that you can expect in the next release okay so here is a quick presentation of these features as a roadmap as you can see here uh the very first feature is for you we are we are adding something called as a ua uao partner license management uh with this you could manage uh your licenses are well managed the next feature is secure reliable transport as you all know there is a transport that happens between the two instances of a runtime be it on different devices or be it between a device and something running in a industrial pc whatever it is so we call this the cross communication between the instances of runtime This is now made more secure and reliable using what we call as the SRT protocol. The other important update that you are going to see is the ability to do network segregation and separation at a soft D-PAC level, which means you could use one network for northbound communications like HMI, OPC UA, communicating with enterprise applications. And you could use another network specifically meant for input and output communication, which is like. talking to the field the plant and the process so this is this i would say is a very very important feature that most of you i'm sure are interested in because you don't want to mix the ivo communication with other communication because ivo communication is very important and it needs to be deterministic so these are the three important features that got added in the 24.0 version and there is more coming as you can see here there are some improvements done for example there were some bug fixes that went into the MQTT implementation there is a great improvement in terms of cyber security the software development version 2 lifecycle version 2 is being implemented you will see a lot of robust and secure implementation of the runtime There is an improvement done in terms of debugging the application. Earlier, it was possible to watch the value of variables, the events and the event counters, all these things only when the runtime is in a running state. But with this improvement, you could do more debugging, more types of root cause analysis and more types of uh uh detailing using being able to use watch in other states of the runtime like for example when the runtime is in stopped state when the runtime is in error hall state you can still watch the variable values the event counters and the events themselves the next improvement is keeping in keeping the ability to compile the runtime up to date with the newer version of the Visual Studios so You now have the ability to compile the runtime using Visual Studio 2022 version. The project files and the solution files are updated for 2022. There has been a lot of technical depth cleanup that is done. Most of it is reducing or removing the unwanted code and also getting rid of some of the implementation, which is no more needed. this in a way also helps reduce the surface attack from a security perspective so this is all some really good exciting news and the most important thing here is a lot of effort has gone into making the runtime more stable reliable and robust so this is what we will we will see in version 20 24.0 and Coming up is what we will see towards the end of the year. we have a plan to come up with the .1 release of the runtime in December 2024. This is how the plan looks like. There is a feature where we are going to support adding support for UTF-8 encoded strings. As you all know, UTF-8 format of strings or encoding of strings is the most common encoding of strings used in uh web development in in in almost all software applications which we think is really good for itot connectivity uh the next one is um the soft d-pack being made uh compatible with modbus serial as you all know uh the softy pack today comes with uh modbus uh tcp but now you will be able to use it with modbus serial if you want to interface your softy pack with modbus devices that are connected over serial communication line. And then to the existing Modbus TCP client, we are adding a ability to be able to make calls explicitly which is you will be able to create a function block and make it part of the application and you are able to drive a request from this function block to a Modbus TCP server whenever you need it there are different use cases and scenarios associated with it uh and and This we see as a very, very useful feature. The next one is the high availability multi-resource support. As you all know, in 23.1 release, we made available the ability to use universal automation runtime in a duplex mode, where you are able to make two instances of the runtime work together in a hot standby redundant mode. failing of one will not affect your plant operations because the second one will take over and continue to monitor and control the plant. So on top of it, we are now going to bring you the ability to have multiple resources to be defined and deployed to this highly available universal automation runtime. This kind of gives you the flexibility to play with assigning parts of the application, which needs to run at a high priority and to a high priority resource and parts of the application which needs to run at a low priority to a low priority resource. So this gives a lot of flexibility in terms of fine tuning the performance of your application by using multiple resources. And the next big thing is the basic FBs online debugging. As you all know today, the debugging of basic FBs is possible only through a uh simulated environment by simulating the execution of the basic FB and you debug there and the current watch and debug also do not allow you to look into what is the state of the internal variables of the basic FBs and what is the let's say the ECC state with the basic FBs online debugging you will be able to take a look into what is the what are the values of the internal variables and And also, what is the current state of the ECC of that block is. So this gives you, again, a lot of advanced debugging capability to really nail it down to the errors in the code, in your structured text code of a basic FP. The next one is a cross-project adapter. Again, this is something which is done in additional to the regular adapter concept of 61499. cross project adapter you are able to really make a adapter work across multiple projects in case if you are using multiple projects in your plant automation or process automation the next big thing again i'm really excited to let you know about this we are going to see a 64-bit runtime coming out soon if everything goes well we will be able to get the 64-bit runtime and unleash the benefits of the 64-bit processor and the platform. So these are all the ones which are let us say more or less planned to be worked out by end of December. But in addition to that there are certain stretch goals what you see in blue and also these features do require some additional effort from the vendors of the devices who are going to put universal automation runtime on their devices. The effort is in terms of buying a commercial stack and making it part of the runtime. So the Ethernet IP scanner with ability to do explicit requests and then Ethernet IP adapter, which is like a server function. Again, these two are available, will be made available in the softd pack. And then, of course, the ProfitNet client. However, these are all planned. I just want to remind you all that since it's a plan, there could be some changes here and there. So I'm sure you're all excited listening to the set of features that are being released as part of 24.0 and what you will get to see towards the end of the year in the .1 release. This is all from me, Greg. I think we can now open it up for questions if we have any.
Speaker #0
Yes, sure. Thank you, Sarath, for presenting us all those great interesting points and features for the v24.0. And this outlook for what I assume will be the v24.1 following the naming that you have explained in the beginning of this session. Let me check. Yeah.
Speaker #1
go ahead before we take the questions i would like to also give a brief overview of uh what is in store in terms of long term uh what we saw before is kind of a near term So in long term, I'm trying to tell you what is in roadmap and what is being discussed. To start with, these are all the set of fieldbus additions that are in long term plan, like the Profinet RT server, the EtherCAT master, adding CAN and CANopen, of course, followed by DNP3 and 61850, which are more like, say, energy segment focused. The next one is... the enhancements in terms of OPC UA functionality in the runtime. As you all know, we have today the OPC UA server and the client which you can use from the UAO runtime. Of course, you need a commercial stack to be made, license being used there. But then the possibility here that we are thinking about is bringing in the alarm and conditions, also focusing on bringing the field level exchange for controller to controller and controller to device communication and yeah the most important thing what i would say here is the initiative towards the open process automation which requires a global discovery server that can do certificate management and alias aggregation to be brought into the system from a runtime perspective we would work on enabling the runtime to connect and communicate with the GDS. However, the GDS itself is something that a system planner or a system integrator has to plan and make it part of the system. So this is on the OPC UA side what you can expect in the long term. Apart from the project to project adapter, there is also a thought of bringing up something called as an open adapter, which kind of sets out a interface specification, how UAO runtime can be made to communicate with. other 61499 runtimes. This is still in conceptual state being worked out, but soon I think we'll go into implementation once we have a concrete concept in place. The next one is of course, the big item, the IT-OT connectivity. You can expect a lot here in the long term. There is a thought process in progress to improve the NetIO by refactoring it. by introducing better connection and state management and also the ability to use dns client on the runtime in order to acquire configurable ip addresses then of course the ability to use it languages when you are implementing something in 61499 so a programmable interface to some of these algorithms and functions which you can write in high level programming languages like Python. So this is also being worked out. Yeah, it's going to be exciting once we have all this, even the long term ones being implemented. Thank you so much. Greg, floor is back to you.
Speaker #0
Great. Floor is back to me.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Let's see if we have some questions. Thank you, Sarah, for making it always quite interesting to have a bit of the outlook what is coming and what are the plans, let's say, for the future. And what is good is that we see that people are also following and following tightly what we are presenting. So I just put on the screen a question from Colanda. which is how do we maintain upward, backward, downward compatibility of the versions? Present projects take advantage of the future versions. So any idea on that, Salat?
Speaker #1
Okay, so let me rephrase what I understood from the question. How do we maintain upward, downward compatibility of the versions? My understanding of this question is, how do you maintain For example, let us say I created a project for the current version of the runtime. Now I upgrade my runtime from say version 23.1 to 24.0. So the question is, do I have to do something to download this 23.1 project into 24.0? This naturally is supported, Ramayaji. A 23.1 project can be compiled and deployed to a 24.0 runtime naturally this this compatibility is ensured as part of the release we make sure it is tested and is working now downward compatibility uh is not possible today like for example uh if you want to deploy a 24.0 project to a 23.1 device that is not naturally supported that is something that you have to specifically work out uh if the question is related to the ide compatibility then yes you can always download to lower version of runtimes from a higher version of IDE, but you cannot deploy from a lower version of IDE to a higher version of runtime. I hope this clarifies your question, Ramayya.
Speaker #0
Good. Thank you, Saad. I see other questions coming, like Tatiana, for example, that wants to know about third-party IDEs. So we had the last live that we had was... how to deploy from 4diag to the ua runtime and uh tatiana is saying that uh they are developing their own id for 649 yeah and we'd like to deploy to the ua runtime so yeah it's done for 4diag let's say uh yeah but uh yeah is there how to do it and what's what are the possibilities for other other, let's say, 649 ideas.
Speaker #1
Sure. There is a level of Doxygen documentation that is available within the UAO runtime. Probably you could run a Doxygen command on the UAO runtime source and generate this documentation and go through that. There is a level of description about the deployment protocol, if you are able to understand. Of course, you can leverage that to create a plugin in your IDE to deploy the application to the UAO runtime. having said that what you can do there is understanding the deployment protocol and being able to implement the client side of the protocol which runs in the ide context now that lets you deploy the files or deploy the application compiled application to the runtime but then how do you create the compiled application that's a bit complex i think you need to talk to us we can work together and help you here in realizing what you're trying to do here.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so basically, Tatiana, yes, Sahat is the good point of contact. So for such questions, let's say to go deeper on that kind of project, I think now we have Sahat as a good point of contact for that. So let me go through the questions as well. I see that Tyler has a question. What do attempts to scale to larger installation fall on the roadmap, things like multi-user interface and moving away from single file solution? So before you answer here, Sarath, we need to just make clear, is it really a question for the runtime or is it a question for the IDE? I'm not yet clear on that. Because for sure, yeah, if it's a question for the IDE, then it has to be let's say more asked to the IDE provider, more than to the runtime provider. But, Sarath, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker #1
my interpretation of the question is also the same. The question seems more for IDE than runtime. So, yeah, unless we hear otherwise from Tyler. Yeah,
Speaker #0
yeah. So, Tyler, if you have the data to come back, but you need to ask this question most likely to the IDE provider. Okay, I see that I don't see any more questions. And we are approaching to the end of the session. So what's good here? I see that Tatiana is saying that she will email Sarat. And here we are just showing the contact details of Sarat. So don't hesitate to take them. You can also connect with Sarat on LinkedIn quite easily. and then work with emails and so on. So yes, that's the first live of Saad. Well done.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
And welcome again to the team as the new Chief Architect Officer.
Speaker #1
We should try to do more and more, Greg, here. Not just presenting the roadmap but also maybe picking up one important item that people are interested in and then try to do a kind of technical deep dive into that.
Speaker #0
Sure, that's a good appeal. And don't hesitate from the viewers, if you have some topics on which you want to have a deep dive, just simply reach out to us, reach out to Sarat, or reach out to myself. You can do it through LinkedIn, you can do it through emails. So we can have new topics that you want to be tackled, for example, and we could just organize a simple live and get to your questions. Good, Sarat, any last words on your side?
Speaker #1
No, again, I thank everyone for giving their time, using their time and spending their time to listen to us. And I hope this session was useful and informational to them. Again, my request is that they come up with what they want to know and then we try to do more and more sessions.
Speaker #0
Good. That's a good point. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for watching this new session of the LinkedIn Live. Don't forget this week we have two LinkedIn Live. This was the first one on the v24.0 release. And we have another one on Thursday with the professor Alois Seutel from GKU. So I invite you to also register to that one and follow it closely as we will deep dive a bit about, let's say some project done with Salesforce 99, use of 4D Arcade and so on. So don't hesitate, just register and we'll talk soon. Thank you, everyone.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

UAO Goes Live brings the conversations from our popular LinkedIn Live series directly to your favorite podcast platform. Each episode explores the world of open, interoperable automation powered by IEC 61499. Join industry leaders, innovators, and experts as they share real-world applications, success stories, and insights that are shaping the future of industrial automation.

Whether you are an engineer, a technology leader, or simply passionate about the next wave of automation, this podcast is your go-to source for cutting-edge discussions, practical knowledge, and thought leadership.

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

---

About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everyone and welcome to this new session of the LinkedIn Live of Vue.io Goes Live. I'm happy to have you today and to release a great news, which is that we are announcing the new release of the Vue.io Runtime Execution Engine, so the V24.0. And at the same time, we take this opportunity to introduce one of our newest officers.
Speaker #1
who is uh sahat sahat sahat welcome thank you greg would you like to introduce yourself to the community yeah sure thank you for giving me this opportunity greg uh myself sarath malakasima taking up the role of chief architect officer for universal automation i have been associated with 61499 technology and the associated runtime for about six years by now. I'm all excited in this role to work with you all and take the Universal Automation to the greatest heights possible. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Yes, as universalautomation.org as an association we are growing and we keep onboarding new members and as well new people within the organization so we are happy to welcome Sarath on board to take over the Chief Architect Officer. roles and as we go for sure you will see new faces coming new members new projects new offers because that's what that is what we are aiming for at universal automation at all to push the technology and to to push uh the use of the 649 so um let's maybe start uh sarat by uh giving the audience uh an overview of uh what is new with this newest version uh of the V24.0 and maybe before starting you can explain to the audience why we call it V24.0. Maybe it could be interesting for all the viewers to know what is the idea behind it.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so as you all know, every year Universal Automation brings to you two sets of releases and the first release is always a .0 release starting with the year number and then followed by a .1 release again starting with the year number. This year, yes we are bringing this first version of the runtime which is 24.0 and I'm sure you are all excited to know about what is new and what more is being delivered and for sure we are also planning to work on the next version which I will also present the details about.
Speaker #0
Great. Great. So, yeah, let's go through the features. What do you have all to present today?
Speaker #1
Yeah, sure. Greg, if you allow me, I would like to bring up a presentation and then start talking about each of those features. Let me bring up the presentation here on the screen. That helps me talk through the set of features which we are going to...
Speaker #0
which you are going to know about good so I let you bring that to the screen and bring that in presentation mode and yeah we can start sharing great yeah so all right good the floor is yours yeah thank you thank you Greg thank
Speaker #1
you everyone for giving your priceless time and deciding to use it and spend it with us today I'm going to walk you through what are all those features that are being delivered as part of 24.0 release and what is that you can expect in the next release okay so here is a quick presentation of these features as a roadmap as you can see here uh the very first feature is for you we are we are adding something called as a ua uao partner license management uh with this you could manage uh your licenses are well managed the next feature is secure reliable transport as you all know there is a transport that happens between the two instances of a runtime be it on different devices or be it between a device and something running in a industrial pc whatever it is so we call this the cross communication between the instances of runtime This is now made more secure and reliable using what we call as the SRT protocol. The other important update that you are going to see is the ability to do network segregation and separation at a soft D-PAC level, which means you could use one network for northbound communications like HMI, OPC UA, communicating with enterprise applications. And you could use another network specifically meant for input and output communication, which is like. talking to the field the plant and the process so this is this i would say is a very very important feature that most of you i'm sure are interested in because you don't want to mix the ivo communication with other communication because ivo communication is very important and it needs to be deterministic so these are the three important features that got added in the 24.0 version and there is more coming as you can see here there are some improvements done for example there were some bug fixes that went into the MQTT implementation there is a great improvement in terms of cyber security the software development version 2 lifecycle version 2 is being implemented you will see a lot of robust and secure implementation of the runtime There is an improvement done in terms of debugging the application. Earlier, it was possible to watch the value of variables, the events and the event counters, all these things only when the runtime is in a running state. But with this improvement, you could do more debugging, more types of root cause analysis and more types of uh uh detailing using being able to use watch in other states of the runtime like for example when the runtime is in stopped state when the runtime is in error hall state you can still watch the variable values the event counters and the events themselves the next improvement is keeping in keeping the ability to compile the runtime up to date with the newer version of the Visual Studios so You now have the ability to compile the runtime using Visual Studio 2022 version. The project files and the solution files are updated for 2022. There has been a lot of technical depth cleanup that is done. Most of it is reducing or removing the unwanted code and also getting rid of some of the implementation, which is no more needed. this in a way also helps reduce the surface attack from a security perspective so this is all some really good exciting news and the most important thing here is a lot of effort has gone into making the runtime more stable reliable and robust so this is what we will we will see in version 20 24.0 and Coming up is what we will see towards the end of the year. we have a plan to come up with the .1 release of the runtime in December 2024. This is how the plan looks like. There is a feature where we are going to support adding support for UTF-8 encoded strings. As you all know, UTF-8 format of strings or encoding of strings is the most common encoding of strings used in uh web development in in in almost all software applications which we think is really good for itot connectivity uh the next one is um the soft d-pack being made uh compatible with modbus serial as you all know uh the softy pack today comes with uh modbus uh tcp but now you will be able to use it with modbus serial if you want to interface your softy pack with modbus devices that are connected over serial communication line. And then to the existing Modbus TCP client, we are adding a ability to be able to make calls explicitly which is you will be able to create a function block and make it part of the application and you are able to drive a request from this function block to a Modbus TCP server whenever you need it there are different use cases and scenarios associated with it uh and and This we see as a very, very useful feature. The next one is the high availability multi-resource support. As you all know, in 23.1 release, we made available the ability to use universal automation runtime in a duplex mode, where you are able to make two instances of the runtime work together in a hot standby redundant mode. failing of one will not affect your plant operations because the second one will take over and continue to monitor and control the plant. So on top of it, we are now going to bring you the ability to have multiple resources to be defined and deployed to this highly available universal automation runtime. This kind of gives you the flexibility to play with assigning parts of the application, which needs to run at a high priority and to a high priority resource and parts of the application which needs to run at a low priority to a low priority resource. So this gives a lot of flexibility in terms of fine tuning the performance of your application by using multiple resources. And the next big thing is the basic FBs online debugging. As you all know today, the debugging of basic FBs is possible only through a uh simulated environment by simulating the execution of the basic FB and you debug there and the current watch and debug also do not allow you to look into what is the state of the internal variables of the basic FBs and what is the let's say the ECC state with the basic FBs online debugging you will be able to take a look into what is the what are the values of the internal variables and And also, what is the current state of the ECC of that block is. So this gives you, again, a lot of advanced debugging capability to really nail it down to the errors in the code, in your structured text code of a basic FP. The next one is a cross-project adapter. Again, this is something which is done in additional to the regular adapter concept of 61499. cross project adapter you are able to really make a adapter work across multiple projects in case if you are using multiple projects in your plant automation or process automation the next big thing again i'm really excited to let you know about this we are going to see a 64-bit runtime coming out soon if everything goes well we will be able to get the 64-bit runtime and unleash the benefits of the 64-bit processor and the platform. So these are all the ones which are let us say more or less planned to be worked out by end of December. But in addition to that there are certain stretch goals what you see in blue and also these features do require some additional effort from the vendors of the devices who are going to put universal automation runtime on their devices. The effort is in terms of buying a commercial stack and making it part of the runtime. So the Ethernet IP scanner with ability to do explicit requests and then Ethernet IP adapter, which is like a server function. Again, these two are available, will be made available in the softd pack. And then, of course, the ProfitNet client. However, these are all planned. I just want to remind you all that since it's a plan, there could be some changes here and there. So I'm sure you're all excited listening to the set of features that are being released as part of 24.0 and what you will get to see towards the end of the year in the .1 release. This is all from me, Greg. I think we can now open it up for questions if we have any.
Speaker #0
Yes, sure. Thank you, Sarath, for presenting us all those great interesting points and features for the v24.0. And this outlook for what I assume will be the v24.1 following the naming that you have explained in the beginning of this session. Let me check. Yeah.
Speaker #1
go ahead before we take the questions i would like to also give a brief overview of uh what is in store in terms of long term uh what we saw before is kind of a near term So in long term, I'm trying to tell you what is in roadmap and what is being discussed. To start with, these are all the set of fieldbus additions that are in long term plan, like the Profinet RT server, the EtherCAT master, adding CAN and CANopen, of course, followed by DNP3 and 61850, which are more like, say, energy segment focused. The next one is... the enhancements in terms of OPC UA functionality in the runtime. As you all know, we have today the OPC UA server and the client which you can use from the UAO runtime. Of course, you need a commercial stack to be made, license being used there. But then the possibility here that we are thinking about is bringing in the alarm and conditions, also focusing on bringing the field level exchange for controller to controller and controller to device communication and yeah the most important thing what i would say here is the initiative towards the open process automation which requires a global discovery server that can do certificate management and alias aggregation to be brought into the system from a runtime perspective we would work on enabling the runtime to connect and communicate with the GDS. However, the GDS itself is something that a system planner or a system integrator has to plan and make it part of the system. So this is on the OPC UA side what you can expect in the long term. Apart from the project to project adapter, there is also a thought of bringing up something called as an open adapter, which kind of sets out a interface specification, how UAO runtime can be made to communicate with. other 61499 runtimes. This is still in conceptual state being worked out, but soon I think we'll go into implementation once we have a concrete concept in place. The next one is of course, the big item, the IT-OT connectivity. You can expect a lot here in the long term. There is a thought process in progress to improve the NetIO by refactoring it. by introducing better connection and state management and also the ability to use dns client on the runtime in order to acquire configurable ip addresses then of course the ability to use it languages when you are implementing something in 61499 so a programmable interface to some of these algorithms and functions which you can write in high level programming languages like Python. So this is also being worked out. Yeah, it's going to be exciting once we have all this, even the long term ones being implemented. Thank you so much. Greg, floor is back to you.
Speaker #0
Great. Floor is back to me.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Let's see if we have some questions. Thank you, Sarah, for making it always quite interesting to have a bit of the outlook what is coming and what are the plans, let's say, for the future. And what is good is that we see that people are also following and following tightly what we are presenting. So I just put on the screen a question from Colanda. which is how do we maintain upward, backward, downward compatibility of the versions? Present projects take advantage of the future versions. So any idea on that, Salat?
Speaker #1
Okay, so let me rephrase what I understood from the question. How do we maintain upward, downward compatibility of the versions? My understanding of this question is, how do you maintain For example, let us say I created a project for the current version of the runtime. Now I upgrade my runtime from say version 23.1 to 24.0. So the question is, do I have to do something to download this 23.1 project into 24.0? This naturally is supported, Ramayaji. A 23.1 project can be compiled and deployed to a 24.0 runtime naturally this this compatibility is ensured as part of the release we make sure it is tested and is working now downward compatibility uh is not possible today like for example uh if you want to deploy a 24.0 project to a 23.1 device that is not naturally supported that is something that you have to specifically work out uh if the question is related to the ide compatibility then yes you can always download to lower version of runtimes from a higher version of IDE, but you cannot deploy from a lower version of IDE to a higher version of runtime. I hope this clarifies your question, Ramayya.
Speaker #0
Good. Thank you, Saad. I see other questions coming, like Tatiana, for example, that wants to know about third-party IDEs. So we had the last live that we had was... how to deploy from 4diag to the ua runtime and uh tatiana is saying that uh they are developing their own id for 649 yeah and we'd like to deploy to the ua runtime so yeah it's done for 4diag let's say uh yeah but uh yeah is there how to do it and what's what are the possibilities for other other, let's say, 649 ideas.
Speaker #1
Sure. There is a level of Doxygen documentation that is available within the UAO runtime. Probably you could run a Doxygen command on the UAO runtime source and generate this documentation and go through that. There is a level of description about the deployment protocol, if you are able to understand. Of course, you can leverage that to create a plugin in your IDE to deploy the application to the UAO runtime. having said that what you can do there is understanding the deployment protocol and being able to implement the client side of the protocol which runs in the ide context now that lets you deploy the files or deploy the application compiled application to the runtime but then how do you create the compiled application that's a bit complex i think you need to talk to us we can work together and help you here in realizing what you're trying to do here.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so basically, Tatiana, yes, Sahat is the good point of contact. So for such questions, let's say to go deeper on that kind of project, I think now we have Sahat as a good point of contact for that. So let me go through the questions as well. I see that Tyler has a question. What do attempts to scale to larger installation fall on the roadmap, things like multi-user interface and moving away from single file solution? So before you answer here, Sarath, we need to just make clear, is it really a question for the runtime or is it a question for the IDE? I'm not yet clear on that. Because for sure, yeah, if it's a question for the IDE, then it has to be let's say more asked to the IDE provider, more than to the runtime provider. But, Sarath, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker #1
my interpretation of the question is also the same. The question seems more for IDE than runtime. So, yeah, unless we hear otherwise from Tyler. Yeah,
Speaker #0
yeah. So, Tyler, if you have the data to come back, but you need to ask this question most likely to the IDE provider. Okay, I see that I don't see any more questions. And we are approaching to the end of the session. So what's good here? I see that Tatiana is saying that she will email Sarat. And here we are just showing the contact details of Sarat. So don't hesitate to take them. You can also connect with Sarat on LinkedIn quite easily. and then work with emails and so on. So yes, that's the first live of Saad. Well done.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
And welcome again to the team as the new Chief Architect Officer.
Speaker #1
We should try to do more and more, Greg, here. Not just presenting the roadmap but also maybe picking up one important item that people are interested in and then try to do a kind of technical deep dive into that.
Speaker #0
Sure, that's a good appeal. And don't hesitate from the viewers, if you have some topics on which you want to have a deep dive, just simply reach out to us, reach out to Sarat, or reach out to myself. You can do it through LinkedIn, you can do it through emails. So we can have new topics that you want to be tackled, for example, and we could just organize a simple live and get to your questions. Good, Sarat, any last words on your side?
Speaker #1
No, again, I thank everyone for giving their time, using their time and spending their time to listen to us. And I hope this session was useful and informational to them. Again, my request is that they come up with what they want to know and then we try to do more and more sessions.
Speaker #0
Good. That's a good point. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for watching this new session of the LinkedIn Live. Don't forget this week we have two LinkedIn Live. This was the first one on the v24.0 release. And we have another one on Thursday with the professor Alois Seutel from GKU. So I invite you to also register to that one and follow it closely as we will deep dive a bit about, let's say some project done with Salesforce 99, use of 4D Arcade and so on. So don't hesitate, just register and we'll talk soon. Thank you, everyone.

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About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everyone and welcome to this new session of the LinkedIn Live of Vue.io Goes Live. I'm happy to have you today and to release a great news, which is that we are announcing the new release of the Vue.io Runtime Execution Engine, so the V24.0. And at the same time, we take this opportunity to introduce one of our newest officers.
Speaker #1
who is uh sahat sahat sahat welcome thank you greg would you like to introduce yourself to the community yeah sure thank you for giving me this opportunity greg uh myself sarath malakasima taking up the role of chief architect officer for universal automation i have been associated with 61499 technology and the associated runtime for about six years by now. I'm all excited in this role to work with you all and take the Universal Automation to the greatest heights possible. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Yes, as universalautomation.org as an association we are growing and we keep onboarding new members and as well new people within the organization so we are happy to welcome Sarath on board to take over the Chief Architect Officer. roles and as we go for sure you will see new faces coming new members new projects new offers because that's what that is what we are aiming for at universal automation at all to push the technology and to to push uh the use of the 649 so um let's maybe start uh sarat by uh giving the audience uh an overview of uh what is new with this newest version uh of the V24.0 and maybe before starting you can explain to the audience why we call it V24.0. Maybe it could be interesting for all the viewers to know what is the idea behind it.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so as you all know, every year Universal Automation brings to you two sets of releases and the first release is always a .0 release starting with the year number and then followed by a .1 release again starting with the year number. This year, yes we are bringing this first version of the runtime which is 24.0 and I'm sure you are all excited to know about what is new and what more is being delivered and for sure we are also planning to work on the next version which I will also present the details about.
Speaker #0
Great. Great. So, yeah, let's go through the features. What do you have all to present today?
Speaker #1
Yeah, sure. Greg, if you allow me, I would like to bring up a presentation and then start talking about each of those features. Let me bring up the presentation here on the screen. That helps me talk through the set of features which we are going to...
Speaker #0
which you are going to know about good so I let you bring that to the screen and bring that in presentation mode and yeah we can start sharing great yeah so all right good the floor is yours yeah thank you thank you Greg thank
Speaker #1
you everyone for giving your priceless time and deciding to use it and spend it with us today I'm going to walk you through what are all those features that are being delivered as part of 24.0 release and what is that you can expect in the next release okay so here is a quick presentation of these features as a roadmap as you can see here uh the very first feature is for you we are we are adding something called as a ua uao partner license management uh with this you could manage uh your licenses are well managed the next feature is secure reliable transport as you all know there is a transport that happens between the two instances of a runtime be it on different devices or be it between a device and something running in a industrial pc whatever it is so we call this the cross communication between the instances of runtime This is now made more secure and reliable using what we call as the SRT protocol. The other important update that you are going to see is the ability to do network segregation and separation at a soft D-PAC level, which means you could use one network for northbound communications like HMI, OPC UA, communicating with enterprise applications. And you could use another network specifically meant for input and output communication, which is like. talking to the field the plant and the process so this is this i would say is a very very important feature that most of you i'm sure are interested in because you don't want to mix the ivo communication with other communication because ivo communication is very important and it needs to be deterministic so these are the three important features that got added in the 24.0 version and there is more coming as you can see here there are some improvements done for example there were some bug fixes that went into the MQTT implementation there is a great improvement in terms of cyber security the software development version 2 lifecycle version 2 is being implemented you will see a lot of robust and secure implementation of the runtime There is an improvement done in terms of debugging the application. Earlier, it was possible to watch the value of variables, the events and the event counters, all these things only when the runtime is in a running state. But with this improvement, you could do more debugging, more types of root cause analysis and more types of uh uh detailing using being able to use watch in other states of the runtime like for example when the runtime is in stopped state when the runtime is in error hall state you can still watch the variable values the event counters and the events themselves the next improvement is keeping in keeping the ability to compile the runtime up to date with the newer version of the Visual Studios so You now have the ability to compile the runtime using Visual Studio 2022 version. The project files and the solution files are updated for 2022. There has been a lot of technical depth cleanup that is done. Most of it is reducing or removing the unwanted code and also getting rid of some of the implementation, which is no more needed. this in a way also helps reduce the surface attack from a security perspective so this is all some really good exciting news and the most important thing here is a lot of effort has gone into making the runtime more stable reliable and robust so this is what we will we will see in version 20 24.0 and Coming up is what we will see towards the end of the year. we have a plan to come up with the .1 release of the runtime in December 2024. This is how the plan looks like. There is a feature where we are going to support adding support for UTF-8 encoded strings. As you all know, UTF-8 format of strings or encoding of strings is the most common encoding of strings used in uh web development in in in almost all software applications which we think is really good for itot connectivity uh the next one is um the soft d-pack being made uh compatible with modbus serial as you all know uh the softy pack today comes with uh modbus uh tcp but now you will be able to use it with modbus serial if you want to interface your softy pack with modbus devices that are connected over serial communication line. And then to the existing Modbus TCP client, we are adding a ability to be able to make calls explicitly which is you will be able to create a function block and make it part of the application and you are able to drive a request from this function block to a Modbus TCP server whenever you need it there are different use cases and scenarios associated with it uh and and This we see as a very, very useful feature. The next one is the high availability multi-resource support. As you all know, in 23.1 release, we made available the ability to use universal automation runtime in a duplex mode, where you are able to make two instances of the runtime work together in a hot standby redundant mode. failing of one will not affect your plant operations because the second one will take over and continue to monitor and control the plant. So on top of it, we are now going to bring you the ability to have multiple resources to be defined and deployed to this highly available universal automation runtime. This kind of gives you the flexibility to play with assigning parts of the application, which needs to run at a high priority and to a high priority resource and parts of the application which needs to run at a low priority to a low priority resource. So this gives a lot of flexibility in terms of fine tuning the performance of your application by using multiple resources. And the next big thing is the basic FBs online debugging. As you all know today, the debugging of basic FBs is possible only through a uh simulated environment by simulating the execution of the basic FB and you debug there and the current watch and debug also do not allow you to look into what is the state of the internal variables of the basic FBs and what is the let's say the ECC state with the basic FBs online debugging you will be able to take a look into what is the what are the values of the internal variables and And also, what is the current state of the ECC of that block is. So this gives you, again, a lot of advanced debugging capability to really nail it down to the errors in the code, in your structured text code of a basic FP. The next one is a cross-project adapter. Again, this is something which is done in additional to the regular adapter concept of 61499. cross project adapter you are able to really make a adapter work across multiple projects in case if you are using multiple projects in your plant automation or process automation the next big thing again i'm really excited to let you know about this we are going to see a 64-bit runtime coming out soon if everything goes well we will be able to get the 64-bit runtime and unleash the benefits of the 64-bit processor and the platform. So these are all the ones which are let us say more or less planned to be worked out by end of December. But in addition to that there are certain stretch goals what you see in blue and also these features do require some additional effort from the vendors of the devices who are going to put universal automation runtime on their devices. The effort is in terms of buying a commercial stack and making it part of the runtime. So the Ethernet IP scanner with ability to do explicit requests and then Ethernet IP adapter, which is like a server function. Again, these two are available, will be made available in the softd pack. And then, of course, the ProfitNet client. However, these are all planned. I just want to remind you all that since it's a plan, there could be some changes here and there. So I'm sure you're all excited listening to the set of features that are being released as part of 24.0 and what you will get to see towards the end of the year in the .1 release. This is all from me, Greg. I think we can now open it up for questions if we have any.
Speaker #0
Yes, sure. Thank you, Sarath, for presenting us all those great interesting points and features for the v24.0. And this outlook for what I assume will be the v24.1 following the naming that you have explained in the beginning of this session. Let me check. Yeah.
Speaker #1
go ahead before we take the questions i would like to also give a brief overview of uh what is in store in terms of long term uh what we saw before is kind of a near term So in long term, I'm trying to tell you what is in roadmap and what is being discussed. To start with, these are all the set of fieldbus additions that are in long term plan, like the Profinet RT server, the EtherCAT master, adding CAN and CANopen, of course, followed by DNP3 and 61850, which are more like, say, energy segment focused. The next one is... the enhancements in terms of OPC UA functionality in the runtime. As you all know, we have today the OPC UA server and the client which you can use from the UAO runtime. Of course, you need a commercial stack to be made, license being used there. But then the possibility here that we are thinking about is bringing in the alarm and conditions, also focusing on bringing the field level exchange for controller to controller and controller to device communication and yeah the most important thing what i would say here is the initiative towards the open process automation which requires a global discovery server that can do certificate management and alias aggregation to be brought into the system from a runtime perspective we would work on enabling the runtime to connect and communicate with the GDS. However, the GDS itself is something that a system planner or a system integrator has to plan and make it part of the system. So this is on the OPC UA side what you can expect in the long term. Apart from the project to project adapter, there is also a thought of bringing up something called as an open adapter, which kind of sets out a interface specification, how UAO runtime can be made to communicate with. other 61499 runtimes. This is still in conceptual state being worked out, but soon I think we'll go into implementation once we have a concrete concept in place. The next one is of course, the big item, the IT-OT connectivity. You can expect a lot here in the long term. There is a thought process in progress to improve the NetIO by refactoring it. by introducing better connection and state management and also the ability to use dns client on the runtime in order to acquire configurable ip addresses then of course the ability to use it languages when you are implementing something in 61499 so a programmable interface to some of these algorithms and functions which you can write in high level programming languages like Python. So this is also being worked out. Yeah, it's going to be exciting once we have all this, even the long term ones being implemented. Thank you so much. Greg, floor is back to you.
Speaker #0
Great. Floor is back to me.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Let's see if we have some questions. Thank you, Sarah, for making it always quite interesting to have a bit of the outlook what is coming and what are the plans, let's say, for the future. And what is good is that we see that people are also following and following tightly what we are presenting. So I just put on the screen a question from Colanda. which is how do we maintain upward, backward, downward compatibility of the versions? Present projects take advantage of the future versions. So any idea on that, Salat?
Speaker #1
Okay, so let me rephrase what I understood from the question. How do we maintain upward, downward compatibility of the versions? My understanding of this question is, how do you maintain For example, let us say I created a project for the current version of the runtime. Now I upgrade my runtime from say version 23.1 to 24.0. So the question is, do I have to do something to download this 23.1 project into 24.0? This naturally is supported, Ramayaji. A 23.1 project can be compiled and deployed to a 24.0 runtime naturally this this compatibility is ensured as part of the release we make sure it is tested and is working now downward compatibility uh is not possible today like for example uh if you want to deploy a 24.0 project to a 23.1 device that is not naturally supported that is something that you have to specifically work out uh if the question is related to the ide compatibility then yes you can always download to lower version of runtimes from a higher version of IDE, but you cannot deploy from a lower version of IDE to a higher version of runtime. I hope this clarifies your question, Ramayya.
Speaker #0
Good. Thank you, Saad. I see other questions coming, like Tatiana, for example, that wants to know about third-party IDEs. So we had the last live that we had was... how to deploy from 4diag to the ua runtime and uh tatiana is saying that uh they are developing their own id for 649 yeah and we'd like to deploy to the ua runtime so yeah it's done for 4diag let's say uh yeah but uh yeah is there how to do it and what's what are the possibilities for other other, let's say, 649 ideas.
Speaker #1
Sure. There is a level of Doxygen documentation that is available within the UAO runtime. Probably you could run a Doxygen command on the UAO runtime source and generate this documentation and go through that. There is a level of description about the deployment protocol, if you are able to understand. Of course, you can leverage that to create a plugin in your IDE to deploy the application to the UAO runtime. having said that what you can do there is understanding the deployment protocol and being able to implement the client side of the protocol which runs in the ide context now that lets you deploy the files or deploy the application compiled application to the runtime but then how do you create the compiled application that's a bit complex i think you need to talk to us we can work together and help you here in realizing what you're trying to do here.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so basically, Tatiana, yes, Sahat is the good point of contact. So for such questions, let's say to go deeper on that kind of project, I think now we have Sahat as a good point of contact for that. So let me go through the questions as well. I see that Tyler has a question. What do attempts to scale to larger installation fall on the roadmap, things like multi-user interface and moving away from single file solution? So before you answer here, Sarath, we need to just make clear, is it really a question for the runtime or is it a question for the IDE? I'm not yet clear on that. Because for sure, yeah, if it's a question for the IDE, then it has to be let's say more asked to the IDE provider, more than to the runtime provider. But, Sarath, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker #1
my interpretation of the question is also the same. The question seems more for IDE than runtime. So, yeah, unless we hear otherwise from Tyler. Yeah,
Speaker #0
yeah. So, Tyler, if you have the data to come back, but you need to ask this question most likely to the IDE provider. Okay, I see that I don't see any more questions. And we are approaching to the end of the session. So what's good here? I see that Tatiana is saying that she will email Sarat. And here we are just showing the contact details of Sarat. So don't hesitate to take them. You can also connect with Sarat on LinkedIn quite easily. and then work with emails and so on. So yes, that's the first live of Saad. Well done.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
And welcome again to the team as the new Chief Architect Officer.
Speaker #1
We should try to do more and more, Greg, here. Not just presenting the roadmap but also maybe picking up one important item that people are interested in and then try to do a kind of technical deep dive into that.
Speaker #0
Sure, that's a good appeal. And don't hesitate from the viewers, if you have some topics on which you want to have a deep dive, just simply reach out to us, reach out to Sarat, or reach out to myself. You can do it through LinkedIn, you can do it through emails. So we can have new topics that you want to be tackled, for example, and we could just organize a simple live and get to your questions. Good, Sarat, any last words on your side?
Speaker #1
No, again, I thank everyone for giving their time, using their time and spending their time to listen to us. And I hope this session was useful and informational to them. Again, my request is that they come up with what they want to know and then we try to do more and more sessions.
Speaker #0
Good. That's a good point. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for watching this new session of the LinkedIn Live. Don't forget this week we have two LinkedIn Live. This was the first one on the v24.0 release. And we have another one on Thursday with the professor Alois Seutel from GKU. So I invite you to also register to that one and follow it closely as we will deep dive a bit about, let's say some project done with Salesforce 99, use of 4D Arcade and so on. So don't hesitate, just register and we'll talk soon. Thank you, everyone.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

---

About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everyone and welcome to this new session of the LinkedIn Live of Vue.io Goes Live. I'm happy to have you today and to release a great news, which is that we are announcing the new release of the Vue.io Runtime Execution Engine, so the V24.0. And at the same time, we take this opportunity to introduce one of our newest officers.
Speaker #1
who is uh sahat sahat sahat welcome thank you greg would you like to introduce yourself to the community yeah sure thank you for giving me this opportunity greg uh myself sarath malakasima taking up the role of chief architect officer for universal automation i have been associated with 61499 technology and the associated runtime for about six years by now. I'm all excited in this role to work with you all and take the Universal Automation to the greatest heights possible. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Yes, as universalautomation.org as an association we are growing and we keep onboarding new members and as well new people within the organization so we are happy to welcome Sarath on board to take over the Chief Architect Officer. roles and as we go for sure you will see new faces coming new members new projects new offers because that's what that is what we are aiming for at universal automation at all to push the technology and to to push uh the use of the 649 so um let's maybe start uh sarat by uh giving the audience uh an overview of uh what is new with this newest version uh of the V24.0 and maybe before starting you can explain to the audience why we call it V24.0. Maybe it could be interesting for all the viewers to know what is the idea behind it.
Speaker #1
Yeah, so as you all know, every year Universal Automation brings to you two sets of releases and the first release is always a .0 release starting with the year number and then followed by a .1 release again starting with the year number. This year, yes we are bringing this first version of the runtime which is 24.0 and I'm sure you are all excited to know about what is new and what more is being delivered and for sure we are also planning to work on the next version which I will also present the details about.
Speaker #0
Great. Great. So, yeah, let's go through the features. What do you have all to present today?
Speaker #1
Yeah, sure. Greg, if you allow me, I would like to bring up a presentation and then start talking about each of those features. Let me bring up the presentation here on the screen. That helps me talk through the set of features which we are going to...
Speaker #0
which you are going to know about good so I let you bring that to the screen and bring that in presentation mode and yeah we can start sharing great yeah so all right good the floor is yours yeah thank you thank you Greg thank
Speaker #1
you everyone for giving your priceless time and deciding to use it and spend it with us today I'm going to walk you through what are all those features that are being delivered as part of 24.0 release and what is that you can expect in the next release okay so here is a quick presentation of these features as a roadmap as you can see here uh the very first feature is for you we are we are adding something called as a ua uao partner license management uh with this you could manage uh your licenses are well managed the next feature is secure reliable transport as you all know there is a transport that happens between the two instances of a runtime be it on different devices or be it between a device and something running in a industrial pc whatever it is so we call this the cross communication between the instances of runtime This is now made more secure and reliable using what we call as the SRT protocol. The other important update that you are going to see is the ability to do network segregation and separation at a soft D-PAC level, which means you could use one network for northbound communications like HMI, OPC UA, communicating with enterprise applications. And you could use another network specifically meant for input and output communication, which is like. talking to the field the plant and the process so this is this i would say is a very very important feature that most of you i'm sure are interested in because you don't want to mix the ivo communication with other communication because ivo communication is very important and it needs to be deterministic so these are the three important features that got added in the 24.0 version and there is more coming as you can see here there are some improvements done for example there were some bug fixes that went into the MQTT implementation there is a great improvement in terms of cyber security the software development version 2 lifecycle version 2 is being implemented you will see a lot of robust and secure implementation of the runtime There is an improvement done in terms of debugging the application. Earlier, it was possible to watch the value of variables, the events and the event counters, all these things only when the runtime is in a running state. But with this improvement, you could do more debugging, more types of root cause analysis and more types of uh uh detailing using being able to use watch in other states of the runtime like for example when the runtime is in stopped state when the runtime is in error hall state you can still watch the variable values the event counters and the events themselves the next improvement is keeping in keeping the ability to compile the runtime up to date with the newer version of the Visual Studios so You now have the ability to compile the runtime using Visual Studio 2022 version. The project files and the solution files are updated for 2022. There has been a lot of technical depth cleanup that is done. Most of it is reducing or removing the unwanted code and also getting rid of some of the implementation, which is no more needed. this in a way also helps reduce the surface attack from a security perspective so this is all some really good exciting news and the most important thing here is a lot of effort has gone into making the runtime more stable reliable and robust so this is what we will we will see in version 20 24.0 and Coming up is what we will see towards the end of the year. we have a plan to come up with the .1 release of the runtime in December 2024. This is how the plan looks like. There is a feature where we are going to support adding support for UTF-8 encoded strings. As you all know, UTF-8 format of strings or encoding of strings is the most common encoding of strings used in uh web development in in in almost all software applications which we think is really good for itot connectivity uh the next one is um the soft d-pack being made uh compatible with modbus serial as you all know uh the softy pack today comes with uh modbus uh tcp but now you will be able to use it with modbus serial if you want to interface your softy pack with modbus devices that are connected over serial communication line. And then to the existing Modbus TCP client, we are adding a ability to be able to make calls explicitly which is you will be able to create a function block and make it part of the application and you are able to drive a request from this function block to a Modbus TCP server whenever you need it there are different use cases and scenarios associated with it uh and and This we see as a very, very useful feature. The next one is the high availability multi-resource support. As you all know, in 23.1 release, we made available the ability to use universal automation runtime in a duplex mode, where you are able to make two instances of the runtime work together in a hot standby redundant mode. failing of one will not affect your plant operations because the second one will take over and continue to monitor and control the plant. So on top of it, we are now going to bring you the ability to have multiple resources to be defined and deployed to this highly available universal automation runtime. This kind of gives you the flexibility to play with assigning parts of the application, which needs to run at a high priority and to a high priority resource and parts of the application which needs to run at a low priority to a low priority resource. So this gives a lot of flexibility in terms of fine tuning the performance of your application by using multiple resources. And the next big thing is the basic FBs online debugging. As you all know today, the debugging of basic FBs is possible only through a uh simulated environment by simulating the execution of the basic FB and you debug there and the current watch and debug also do not allow you to look into what is the state of the internal variables of the basic FBs and what is the let's say the ECC state with the basic FBs online debugging you will be able to take a look into what is the what are the values of the internal variables and And also, what is the current state of the ECC of that block is. So this gives you, again, a lot of advanced debugging capability to really nail it down to the errors in the code, in your structured text code of a basic FP. The next one is a cross-project adapter. Again, this is something which is done in additional to the regular adapter concept of 61499. cross project adapter you are able to really make a adapter work across multiple projects in case if you are using multiple projects in your plant automation or process automation the next big thing again i'm really excited to let you know about this we are going to see a 64-bit runtime coming out soon if everything goes well we will be able to get the 64-bit runtime and unleash the benefits of the 64-bit processor and the platform. So these are all the ones which are let us say more or less planned to be worked out by end of December. But in addition to that there are certain stretch goals what you see in blue and also these features do require some additional effort from the vendors of the devices who are going to put universal automation runtime on their devices. The effort is in terms of buying a commercial stack and making it part of the runtime. So the Ethernet IP scanner with ability to do explicit requests and then Ethernet IP adapter, which is like a server function. Again, these two are available, will be made available in the softd pack. And then, of course, the ProfitNet client. However, these are all planned. I just want to remind you all that since it's a plan, there could be some changes here and there. So I'm sure you're all excited listening to the set of features that are being released as part of 24.0 and what you will get to see towards the end of the year in the .1 release. This is all from me, Greg. I think we can now open it up for questions if we have any.
Speaker #0
Yes, sure. Thank you, Sarath, for presenting us all those great interesting points and features for the v24.0. And this outlook for what I assume will be the v24.1 following the naming that you have explained in the beginning of this session. Let me check. Yeah.
Speaker #1
go ahead before we take the questions i would like to also give a brief overview of uh what is in store in terms of long term uh what we saw before is kind of a near term So in long term, I'm trying to tell you what is in roadmap and what is being discussed. To start with, these are all the set of fieldbus additions that are in long term plan, like the Profinet RT server, the EtherCAT master, adding CAN and CANopen, of course, followed by DNP3 and 61850, which are more like, say, energy segment focused. The next one is... the enhancements in terms of OPC UA functionality in the runtime. As you all know, we have today the OPC UA server and the client which you can use from the UAO runtime. Of course, you need a commercial stack to be made, license being used there. But then the possibility here that we are thinking about is bringing in the alarm and conditions, also focusing on bringing the field level exchange for controller to controller and controller to device communication and yeah the most important thing what i would say here is the initiative towards the open process automation which requires a global discovery server that can do certificate management and alias aggregation to be brought into the system from a runtime perspective we would work on enabling the runtime to connect and communicate with the GDS. However, the GDS itself is something that a system planner or a system integrator has to plan and make it part of the system. So this is on the OPC UA side what you can expect in the long term. Apart from the project to project adapter, there is also a thought of bringing up something called as an open adapter, which kind of sets out a interface specification, how UAO runtime can be made to communicate with. other 61499 runtimes. This is still in conceptual state being worked out, but soon I think we'll go into implementation once we have a concrete concept in place. The next one is of course, the big item, the IT-OT connectivity. You can expect a lot here in the long term. There is a thought process in progress to improve the NetIO by refactoring it. by introducing better connection and state management and also the ability to use dns client on the runtime in order to acquire configurable ip addresses then of course the ability to use it languages when you are implementing something in 61499 so a programmable interface to some of these algorithms and functions which you can write in high level programming languages like Python. So this is also being worked out. Yeah, it's going to be exciting once we have all this, even the long term ones being implemented. Thank you so much. Greg, floor is back to you.
Speaker #0
Great. Floor is back to me.
Speaker #1
Yeah.
Speaker #0
Let's see if we have some questions. Thank you, Sarah, for making it always quite interesting to have a bit of the outlook what is coming and what are the plans, let's say, for the future. And what is good is that we see that people are also following and following tightly what we are presenting. So I just put on the screen a question from Colanda. which is how do we maintain upward, backward, downward compatibility of the versions? Present projects take advantage of the future versions. So any idea on that, Salat?
Speaker #1
Okay, so let me rephrase what I understood from the question. How do we maintain upward, downward compatibility of the versions? My understanding of this question is, how do you maintain For example, let us say I created a project for the current version of the runtime. Now I upgrade my runtime from say version 23.1 to 24.0. So the question is, do I have to do something to download this 23.1 project into 24.0? This naturally is supported, Ramayaji. A 23.1 project can be compiled and deployed to a 24.0 runtime naturally this this compatibility is ensured as part of the release we make sure it is tested and is working now downward compatibility uh is not possible today like for example uh if you want to deploy a 24.0 project to a 23.1 device that is not naturally supported that is something that you have to specifically work out uh if the question is related to the ide compatibility then yes you can always download to lower version of runtimes from a higher version of IDE, but you cannot deploy from a lower version of IDE to a higher version of runtime. I hope this clarifies your question, Ramayya.
Speaker #0
Good. Thank you, Saad. I see other questions coming, like Tatiana, for example, that wants to know about third-party IDEs. So we had the last live that we had was... how to deploy from 4diag to the ua runtime and uh tatiana is saying that uh they are developing their own id for 649 yeah and we'd like to deploy to the ua runtime so yeah it's done for 4diag let's say uh yeah but uh yeah is there how to do it and what's what are the possibilities for other other, let's say, 649 ideas.
Speaker #1
Sure. There is a level of Doxygen documentation that is available within the UAO runtime. Probably you could run a Doxygen command on the UAO runtime source and generate this documentation and go through that. There is a level of description about the deployment protocol, if you are able to understand. Of course, you can leverage that to create a plugin in your IDE to deploy the application to the UAO runtime. having said that what you can do there is understanding the deployment protocol and being able to implement the client side of the protocol which runs in the ide context now that lets you deploy the files or deploy the application compiled application to the runtime but then how do you create the compiled application that's a bit complex i think you need to talk to us we can work together and help you here in realizing what you're trying to do here.
Speaker #0
Yeah, so basically, Tatiana, yes, Sahat is the good point of contact. So for such questions, let's say to go deeper on that kind of project, I think now we have Sahat as a good point of contact for that. So let me go through the questions as well. I see that Tyler has a question. What do attempts to scale to larger installation fall on the roadmap, things like multi-user interface and moving away from single file solution? So before you answer here, Sarath, we need to just make clear, is it really a question for the runtime or is it a question for the IDE? I'm not yet clear on that. Because for sure, yeah, if it's a question for the IDE, then it has to be let's say more asked to the IDE provider, more than to the runtime provider. But, Sarath, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker #1
my interpretation of the question is also the same. The question seems more for IDE than runtime. So, yeah, unless we hear otherwise from Tyler. Yeah,
Speaker #0
yeah. So, Tyler, if you have the data to come back, but you need to ask this question most likely to the IDE provider. Okay, I see that I don't see any more questions. And we are approaching to the end of the session. So what's good here? I see that Tatiana is saying that she will email Sarat. And here we are just showing the contact details of Sarat. So don't hesitate to take them. You can also connect with Sarat on LinkedIn quite easily. and then work with emails and so on. So yes, that's the first live of Saad. Well done.
Speaker #1
Thank you.
Speaker #0
And welcome again to the team as the new Chief Architect Officer.
Speaker #1
We should try to do more and more, Greg, here. Not just presenting the roadmap but also maybe picking up one important item that people are interested in and then try to do a kind of technical deep dive into that.
Speaker #0
Sure, that's a good appeal. And don't hesitate from the viewers, if you have some topics on which you want to have a deep dive, just simply reach out to us, reach out to Sarat, or reach out to myself. You can do it through LinkedIn, you can do it through emails. So we can have new topics that you want to be tackled, for example, and we could just organize a simple live and get to your questions. Good, Sarat, any last words on your side?
Speaker #1
No, again, I thank everyone for giving their time, using their time and spending their time to listen to us. And I hope this session was useful and informational to them. Again, my request is that they come up with what they want to know and then we try to do more and more sessions.
Speaker #0
Good. That's a good point. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for watching this new session of the LinkedIn Live. Don't forget this week we have two LinkedIn Live. This was the first one on the v24.0 release. And we have another one on Thursday with the professor Alois Seutel from GKU. So I invite you to also register to that one and follow it closely as we will deep dive a bit about, let's say some project done with Salesforce 99, use of 4D Arcade and so on. So don't hesitate, just register and we'll talk soon. Thank you, everyone.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

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About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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