Ping Interface to the pi system

Configuring I/O Rate Tags Manually

There are two configuration steps.

1. 
   Configuring the PI Point on the PI Server
   
2. 
   Configuration on the Interface Node
   

Configuration on the PI Server

Create an I/O Rate Point with the following point attribute values.

Attribute	Value
PointSource	L
PointType	float32
Compressing	0
ExcDev	0

Configuration on the Interface Node

The following procedure for I/O Rate point configuration on the interface node assumes that the tag name of this point is syping01. With respect to I/O Rate point configuration, an interface node is the computer on which the Interface runs.

1. 
   Edit or create the file named iorates.dat in the dat subdirectory of the directory where the PI-API was installed. To find out the name of this PI-API directory, look at the pipc.ini file located in the Windows directory (typically, C:\WinNT or C:\Windows). The pipc.ini file contains an entry for PIHOME and PIPCSHARE. The PI-API directory is given either by the value for PIPCSHARE (if both PIHOME and PIPCSHARE exist in pipc.ini) or by the value for PIHOME (if only PIHOME exists).
   

Because PIHOME is typically C:\Program Files\PIPC, the full name of the iorates.dat file is typically C:\Program Files\PIPC\dat\iorates.dat.

In the iorates.dat file, add the tag name of the I/O Rate point; followed by a comma; and finally, followed by a number between 2 and 34 or between 51 and 200, inclusive. For example:

syping01,11

2. 
   Set the value for the  ec parameter in the Interface’s startup command file (described later) to be the same number as that entered in the iorates.dat file. For the above example,
   

PIPing.exe –ec=11 ...

Because the Interface’s startup command file has changed, the user needs to stop and restart the Interface in order for these changes to take effect.

Startup Command File

Configuring the Interface with PI ICU

On Windows, the PI Interface Configuration Utility (PI ICU) is a graphical tool that allows a user to configure the Interface’s startup command file. OSIsoft strongly recommends that the user run the PI ICU to configure and maintain the Interface's startup command file.

When running the PI ICU, the user should make sure “piping” is selected for the Type of interface. That is,

The interface-specific tab (i.e., “piping”) allows the user to enter values for the startup parameters that are particular to PI-Ping. That is,

Set Timeout Duration

This check box lets the user set the timeout threshold for a ping response. By default, the Interface waits 3 seconds for a remote machine to respond to a ping. If the remote machine does not respond within this time, PI-Ping writes I/O Timeout to the corresponding point.

The user can optionally set a timeout threshold between 1 and 3600 seconds. At startup, the Interface prints information regarding the timeout threshold value. For example,

PI-Ping 1> Ping timeout threshold set at 3 seconds

Manual Maintenance of the Startup Command File

OSIsoft strongly recommends that the user run the PI ICU to configure and maintain the Interface's startup command file. However, if he chooses to do so, the user can manually edit the command file that starts up the Interface.

For proper operation, the Interface requires various command-line parameters. These parameters begin with the dash character (-). For backwards compatibility, the Interface also supports the slash character (/).

The user should put these parameters, along with the name of the Interface executable, into a startup command file. For example,

PIPing.exe -f=00:30:00 -host=localhost:5450 -ps=J -id=1

For Windows, various filename extensions are associated with command files. For example, .bat and .cmd are both acceptable. However, only the .bat extension is valid for a command file used by the Interface.

The name of the startup command file must be the name of the Interface executable, with the .exe extension replaced by the .bat extension. Thus, the startup command file for this Interface will typically be PIPing.bat. (The installation program installs a sample command file named PIPing.bat.new. The user may use this file as a template for his own PIPing.bat.)

The contents of a PI Interface command file may contain the caret line continuation character (^). For example, a PIPing.bat file with contents

PIPing.exe ^

-f=00:30:00 ^

-host=localhost:5450 ^

-ps=J ^

-id=1

is equivalent to the above example.

The maximum length of each line in a command file is 1024 characters. The number of parameters is unlimited, and the maximum length of each parameter is 1024 characters. If a value for a parameter contains a space, use a pair of double quotes to enclose such a value. For example,

PIPing.exe -ps=J -id=1 –stopstat="Intf Shut" ...