The CygNet Thin Web Client (TWC) is CygNet Software’s browser-based Human-Machine Interface (HMI) client application, which allows users to view operational screens and workflows in a web browser using sophisticated web-based technologies. The Thin Web Client is a Single Page Application (SPA) that is built using customer provided and built screens. Those screens are constructed using the design and screen-building components of the Canvas desktop client. Canvas is used to layout HMI components onto a screen (a page of controls) and configure a logical workflow between screen controls and related screens. When published, those screens are converted and compiled into the SPA that resides on the main TWC server. The CygNet Thin Web Client consists of the following components:
- Screen Designer/Builder — An HMI design software application is used to design, create, build, and configure HMI screens for the CygNet TWC web view. Currently the screen designer is a web-enhanced version of the CygNet Canvas HMI desktop client. Screens are constructed using the design and screen-building components of the Canvas client. Use Canvas to layout HMI components onto a screen (a page of controls) and configure a logical workflow between controls and related screens. Canvas also provides the user interface to configure TWC applications and publish the applications via the TWC publishing service to the TWC web service. Once published, those screens are converted and compiled into an SPA residing on the main web server, which are then viewed in a web browser.
- CygNet TWC web view — A browser-based client view is used to view configured interactive web pages (known as applications) via a secure connection, currently any modern web browser (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, etc.) is supported.
- Web Service/Data Retriever — The TWC web service is a runtime Windows service (TWC.Service.Server) responsible for hosting the TWC web application, which responds to requests from the CygNet TWC web view (via REST API/SignalR) and serves up data from a CygNet host (current real-time values, historical values, and current alarms) to pages in the CygNet TWC web view. By default, the main web service uses port 5001. Use the TWC Setup program to install and upgrade the web server to the CygNetTWC\TWC.Service.Server folder.
- Publishing Service — The TWC Publishing service is a runtime Windows service (TWC.PublishingService.Server) that converts, compresses, optimizes, and saves customer-built Canvas screen files into a single page application (SPA). Each application is hosted on the web service and viewed in the CygNet TWC web view in a browser. The publishing service converts and publishes multiple applications in a single action. By default, the TWC Publishing service uses port 7301. Use the TWC Setup program to install and upgrade the Publishing service to the CygNetTWC\TWC.PublishingService.Server folder.
Sample CygNet TWC web view
The following images show sample Canvas pages in the CygNet TWC web view.
|
Click the thumbnail to see |
|
Click the thumbnail to see |
Thin Web Client Technologies
The underlying technology for the CygNet Thin Web Client is Microsoft’s ASP.NET Core Blazor, which is a web framework for building interactive client-side user interfaces using .NET, C#, HTML, and CSS.
The TWC designer, the Canvas desktop application, is used to create and configure user screens to display your CygNet data. Screens are saved in the native Canvas format (.can), which are then converted to a native Blazor display format (.razor), compiled into a ASP.NET Web-assembly application and presented to the user in a runtime Web browser environment (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, etc.)
The client-side web-assembly application running in the Web browser subscribes to CygNet data through a REST Web API and securely receives published updates via the Microsoft SignalR library for Microsoft ASP.NET.
Thin Web Client Sample Screens
A set of sample Canvas screens is available for download from the CygNet Download Site (login required). These screens can be modified to work against your CygNet system to create TWC applications and pages.
CygNet Reference Packages
A CygNet Reference Packages implementation is available for use with Canvas and the CygNet Thin Web Client. The screens, workflows, and sample data provided in the CygNet Reference Package represent the most current capabilities of Canvas and the CygNet TWC and is offered as an example of how you might implement Canvas and TWC to create a similar set of screens for your operators to visualize enterprise data in the Canvas Native view or the browser-based CygNet TWC web view. The Reference_Packages.zip is available for download from the CygNet Download Site (login required).
