Visualizers are the centerpiece of the MegunoLink interface. They are dockable windows that:
- show data sent from your Arduino sketch in plots, tables or log files, and
- host buttons and other controls for custom interface panels, uploading programs to your Arduino and managing connections.
Your Arduino sketch sends commands to visualizers, or receives messages from visualizers, through a serial or wireless (UDP, TCP/IP, Bluetooth) connection. Visualizers interpret these commands to plot data, change controls, update tables and display messages.
MegunoLink has visualizers for:
- plotting data,
- building an Interface Panel from buttons and other controls,
- showing data in a table,
- plotting positions on maps,
- logging data to a text file,
- uploading new programs to your Arduino,
- monitoring the raw serial stream, and more.
Creating Visualizers
There are two ways to open a new Visualizer; pick whichever one is most convenient for you. Create a new visualizer by selecting it from the:
- Visualizer menu on the main toolbar, or
- Visualizer toolbox, normally docked to the right side of the MegunoLink window.
The Visualiser Toolbox provides links to our online documentation. It can be collapsed by clicking the pin icon, or closed by clicking the X in the toolbox title bar. If you close the toolbox, you can get it back again by clicking the Visualizers button on the main toolbar.
Open a new visualizer using the Visualizer menu (left) or Visualizer Toolbox (right).
Sending data to Visualizers
Visualizers receive data from the serial stream by looking for messages in a specific format. For example, a time-plot will look for messages like {TIMEPLOT:Battery|data|Voltage|T|12.2}.
Our Arduino library provides tools to format and send these special messages for you. Refer to the documentation for each visualizer for more details.
Organizing Visualizers
Visualizers can be docked side-by-side, on top of each other or moved into a separate, floating, window to create the best layout for your project.
Organize visualizers within the MegunoLink window by grabbing the visualizer tab and dragging it. Widgets will appear showing the locations you can drop the visualizer window when you start dragging. Drop the visualizer onto one of the widgets and it will move to the new location. Drop the visualizer in any other location and it will become a separate window. Press the escape key to stop dragging and leave the visualizer in its original location.
Visualizers docked to the edge of the MegunoLink window can be collapsed to just their tab by unpinning them. Hover over the tab button to open or pin the visualizer.
Renaming Visualizer Windows
If you are splitting your data to different visualizers ( several different plots, or monitor windows for example) it is a good idea to rename the tabs in MegunoLink. This helps you easily identify what each visualiser is showing. It is particularly helpful if you are connecting to several devices, or saving scheduled reports.
To rename a visualiser, right click on the tab and click Rename. You can enter anything you want here to identify what is going on inside the visualizer. In the example below you can see we have renamed the tab Sine Waveform.
Renaming MegunoLink visualizers
Source Selector
Most visualizers display or send data to a source. Sources are created and configured using the connection manager. They represent the connection (USB, RS232 or WiFi for example) to your device.
Use the source selector to choose which connection a visualizers for receiving and sending data. You’ll find the source selector in the toolbar at the top of each visualizer window.
Each visualizer in your MegunoLink project can use a different connection. You can combine the data from several connections to send them to one visualizer using a merged source.
Channel Selector
Many visualizers support message channels. Message channels are “virtual” connections to a single device that group common data together. They let a single Arduino send data to several different graphs, tables or message monitors withing MegunoLink.
The channel selector allows you to choose the channels a visualizer will include. By default, all channels are included. Select the channels you want to include using the channel selector.
