Terminal Block Device

The Terminal Block Device lets you define a Device with your own terminal names. The Device is called a Terminal Block Device, because the terminals function like terminals on a terminal block - they are a place where you can connect wires. The Device provides no other function. Use this Device when you want to group a bunch of signals together.

A common application for a Terminal Block is for displaying status. Imagine a system with many wires with a few signals you would like to see together. Perhaps you have a temperature monitoring system, and you wish to see all the temperature values in one place. You could create a Terminal Block Device and wire each temperature value to a terminal on the Device. From Device Explorer, you can click on your new Terminal Block Device and see all your temperatures.

Terminal Block Device Terminals

The Terminal Block Device has an unlimited number of user defined input, output, and input/output terminals. Since the Device only provides terminals for connecting wires, how you define your terminals (input, output, input/output) is not important to the Device. The only reason for the distinctions is they allow the system to draw the Device more intelligently (e.g. inputs on the left, outputs and input/outputs on the right).

Creating a Terminal Block Device

Terminal Block Devices are created by running the TerminalBlock Script. The TerminalBlock Script takes three optional parameters: the "inputs", "outputs", and "input_outputs" parameters.

inputs :

• a set of names defining input terminals. These are typically wired to outputs elsewhere in the system. The set is a quoted string with its elements separated by commas.

outputs :

• a set of names defining output terminals. These are typically wired to inputs elsewhere in the system. The set is a quoted string with its elements separated by commas.

input_outputs :

• a set of names defining input_output terminals. These are typically wired to inputs and outputs elsewhere in the system. The set is a quoted string with its elements separated by commas.

Example

Running the TerminalBlock Script with the parameters listed below will add a Terminal Block Device with 2 inputs and an output:

id: "tb_device"
inputs: "1,2"
outputs: "out"

The inputs will be called "1" and "2", and the output "out".