Getting started with the MatPLC

This page will explain how to find one's way around the MatPLC. It is rather brief at the moment.

Running the basic demo

The demo is a very primitive four-light chaser. Its only purpose is to make sure that the MatPLC downloaded and compiled OK.

After downloading the tarball and unpacking it in a directory, change to the demo/basic subdirectory and run make. Once it compiles everything, run the demo script in that directory.

During compilation, a message might come up saying that linuxkbd could not be compiled. This is merely a warning; the demo can run without it. Just press Enter to continue - an alternate keyboard interface will be used.

Once the demo is running, you'll see a star moving across the middle of the screen. The direction can be changed using L and R (which may act as toggle buttons, if linuxkbd didn't compile). To exit, hit Q.

If you have trouble starting up the MatPLC, try running
../../tools/run/matplc -s
just in case there's a half-started MatPLC around. The -s option stands for "shutdown", and makes sure the slate is clean. Then try running the demo script again.

Other than that, please ask on the mailing list, giving as much information as you can about how far you got and what failed.

Running the GUI-based oven demo

You will need to be in X for this demo to run (the default on modern Linux boxes). Change to the demo/oven_gkt subdirectory, run make and then the demo script in that directory.

To see the demo in action, first set the machine to automatic and start it, then set the setpoints according the table below, or something similar to that:

FluidTempSP 200 °C

BeltSpeed 10 m/min

AirTempSP Zone1 100 °C

AirTempSP Zone2 120 °C

AirTempSP Zone3 140 °C

Creating your own project

This section not yet written. FIXME

$Date: 2004/12/28 05:31:58 $

FluidTempSP	200	°C
BeltSpeed	10	m/min
AirTempSP Zone1	100	°C
AirTempSP Zone2	120	°C
AirTempSP Zone3	140	°C