This Made Me Happy: BRCommunity in Action

[kovarj (Jaroslav Kovar)]

Hi BRCommunity!

I was away for a few days, and when I came back, I had a really nice surprise waiting for me.

Going through what happened here while I was away honestly made me happy.

There were several great examples of cooperation that reminded me once again why I enjoy being part of our Community so much. People are not just asking questions and giving answers. They create solutions, share their work, and help others move forward.

Here’s what you’ll find inside:

• @sven.toensjost shared a 3D-printable removal guard for the APC4100 CFexpress card. A practical solution that everyone can download, print, and use themselves.

B&R APC4100 – CFexpress Card Removal Guard

A customer recently asked for a solution to prevent the CFexpress cards in an APC4100 from being removed without a tool. I designed a small 3D-printed insert to meet this requirement and thought it might be useful to others here as well. This may also be useful in the context of Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) discussions, particularly when considering physical access to removable storage media. The insert provides a simple way to require a tool for card removal; it does not establish CRA compliance…

• A discussion about a TimeInput widget for the TIME datatype turned into @florent.boissadier actually developing the widget and then sharing it back with everyone. I really like this kind of cooperation: a question becomes an idea, and the idea becomes a solution for others.

TimeInput widget for the TIME datatype

Hi Community, As you may already know, mappView has no widget to enter a TIME value, which makes TIMEs awkward to set from a visualization (and leads to the TIME_TO_DT / DT_TO_TIME conversions discussed here: Time conversion). I built one and released it in the community widget library brXtended: Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback or report any bugs you encounter with this widget! I hope it will help! Regards, Florent

• With AsDB no longer supported in Automation Studio 6, @beani developed altDB, an open-source drop-in replacement designed to be compatible with AS6. Another great example of someone putting in the work and then sharing the result with the whole community.

AltDB: An Open-Source Drop-in Replacement for AsDB (AS 6 Compatible)

Hello B&R Community, With the discontinuation of the AsDB library in Automation Studio 6, projects relying on native SQL Server connectivity face migration challenges. To help address this gap, I have published AltDB, an open-source, clean-room drop-in replacement library designed to restore MS SQL Server connectivity in Automation Studio 6 without requiring changes to existing application code. Overview AltDB is written directly against the published Microsoft Tabular Data Stream ([MS-TDS]) …

• And one that personally made me especially happy: after a discussion about Vision, @Frederico_Mantovani came back to thank everyone who helped him. He also mentioned that BRCommunity gives him confidence in B&R products. For me, this is exactly what a good technical community should do.

Camera has CameraStatus 3

Hi @muehlauer Thank you very much for the detailed response. In the meantime, I worked on the DelayNetTime01, as I suspected that the lack of a time reference there could be affecting the system. I solved it last night by performing the calculation described in the Help, taking the POWERLINK timing into account. Your response confirms that the solution I came up with at the last minute was indeed the correct one. Once again, thank you for the detailed explanation. It is this level of commun…

Of course, much more happened here while I was away. But seeing examples like these makes me genuinely happy and proud to be part of BRCommunity. Thank you to everyone who asks, answers, develops, tests, shares, or simply takes the time to help someone else.

You made my day!

Jaroslav