Our visualization pipeline:

At first we were uncertain about what system we wanted to use to visualize Cabot. At first we tested simple visualization and a GUI in CodeSys, but as CodeSys is a slow program we wanted to use third-party software. We knew that we had two options, Ignition and CDP-Studio. Both of which are new software packages to all of the group members and it would require a communication protocol. As the project went on we deprioritised the visualization and GUI, untill we heard from another group that they were using Blender. Blender is a 3D graphics program with no built in support for communication, but has great modelling tools and rendering capabilities. Since blender has a Python API, and we now had MQTT setup, we decided to give it a go.

While the 24_7 CDP-Studio Dashboard was being developed, the blender script and visualization was developed in parallel. Lets go into the details of the Blender pipeline.

Visualization in Blender: