New PC setup

The computer that controlled the tow and wave tank was damaged in the Chase OE Lab renovation in 2017.

On December 9, 2017, I (@petebachant) came up to UNH to try to get a new computer setup with the tow tank motion controller, Ethernet serial server, NI cDAQ chassis, and NI USB-6211 (for wavemaker output). This page is meant to be a record of what was done.

1. Noticed that many cable carrier tray sections are loose, the plastic trim on one side of the timing belt housing is damaged, and the on-board servo cabinet disconnect also appears to have been damaged.
2. Turned on on-board 120 VAC, on-board servo, and tow controller cabinet disconnects.
3. Logged on to the new OE-WAVE PC using the local OEAdmin account.
4. Logged in to GitHub on Chrome with my user account to start writing this page.
5. Hid Cortana from the taskbar.
6. Attempted to install Chocolatey from a command prompt (Windows key --> cmd --> enter).
   1. Did not have admin rights to make changes to computer, so I will probably only be able to make changes in this home directory. This could be an issue later.
7. Tried to delete shortcuts from desktop but needed admin rights to do this.
8. Downloaded the Anaconda (Python 3.6) installer. Ultimately it would be great if we could use Anaconda instead of Python(x,y), since Python 2.7 is being deprecated in 2020, but there may be some packages that aren't available for Python 3 yet. More on this later.
9. Opened up NI-MAX to see if I could connect to all the devices.
10. Logged into the cDAQ-9188 (CompactDAQ Chassis) using the credentials listed in https://github.com/UNH-OE/wave-tow-tank-admin.
11. Clicked "Add device" in NI-MAX to add the cDAQ-9188 to the system. After this, the modules were discovered. Note that the Global Virtual Channels should also be backed up in this repository, but those should only be necessary to run TurbineDAQ.
12. Checked the USB-6211 test panels in NI-MAX to ensure we could communicate with that--looks good.
13. Checked the 9205 test panels similar to above--looks good.
14. Checked that Git for Windows was installed--looks good.
15. Enabled ctrl+shift+letter shortcuts for Git Bash (right click on window and click "options").
16. Installed Anaconda with all the defaults (only install for this user; this could be an issue for others using this PC).
17. Pinned Git Bash to taskbar (many things from here on out will be done from there).
18. Checked to see if Git has been configured with git config --global --list--it hasn't been.
19. Checked to see if the old ACS SPiiPlus workspace file was backed up in this Git repo--not there.
20. Logged into the router by navigating to 192.168.1.1 in Chrome and using the credentials listed in the wave-tow-tank-admin repo.
21. Updated firmware for the router. This may not have been done after the recent WiFi security scare, so best to be safe.
22. Pinned the C:/Users/OEAdmin to the Quick Access list in Windows Explorer--this is where many files and/or subdirectories will go.
23. Enabled manual IP address assignment in the router LAN-DHCP settings page. Not seeing the ACS controller connected as a client, however.
24. Opened up SPiiPlus MMI Application Studio and removed the simulator component from the workspace.
25. Right clicked on "Workspace 'New'" and clicked "Add controller".
26. Seemed to be able to connect to controller at 192.168.1.82:701, but it looks like the program manager is empty, so this may not be the correct controller--yep, this connected me to the simulator. Not seeing the ACS controller as a client on the network, so I may need to go read the MAC address and add it at the correct IP manually. Didn't appear to have a MAC address written on it, so this may not be possible.
27. Plugged the ACS EtherCAT network cable into the OE-WAVE PC. Was able to connect to the "Unidentified network".
28. Unloaded and restarted SPiiPlus User Mode Driver from the system tray.
29. Created C:/Users/OEAdmin/dev directory for storing custom software.
30. Cloned Tow repository from GitHub and attempted to run the test.py script within--could not connect to the controller, just like from SPiiPlus MMI App Studio.
31. May have found the controller's MAC address (00:10:F3:23:2A:78) saved here: https://github.com/UNH-OE/wave-tow-tank/blob/master/ACS-NTM/NTM00269B1%20-%20SystemInformation.txt#L120.
32. Attempted to connect to ACS controller from my laptop over Ethernet--no go. Plugged in a connected via serial port using null modem adapter in that controller cabinet--worked. Tried SPiiPlus 2.28, which wasn't any different. Set IP on network connected to controller as 10.0.0.101 (in Windows network adapter settings), and was able to connect via SPiiPlus 2.40.
33. Used local admin Wave account to add OEAdmin to the Administrators group.
34. Removed local install of Anaconda.

Back on January 12, 2018

1. Started up tow systems in typical fashion.
2. Logged in to OEAdmin account on PC.
3. Ran choco upgrade all -y from an Administrator command prompt--no changes.
4. Downloaded Vectrino Plus software.
5. Downloaded Nortek's PdCommATL software.
6. Installed Nortek Vectrino Plus and PdCommATL.
7. Cloned TurbineDAQ to ~/dev/TurbineDAQ.
8. Attempted to run TurbineDAQ, but this failed due to missing pxl library, so ran pip install pxl.
9. Missing MicronOpt package, so ran pip install https://github.com/petebachant/MicronOpt-Python/archive/master.zip.
10. Missing Nortek Python package, so ran pip install https://github.com/petebachant/Nortek-Python/archive/master.zip.
11. Was able to launch TurbineDAQ from it's repository directory by running python turbinedaq.py (in Git Bash).
12. Was able to successfully monitor ACS controller signals from TurbineDAQ software.
13. Cloned the wave-tow-tank repo to ~/dev to have access to NI config backup.
14. Launched NI-MAX by pressing the Windows key and typing "max".
15. Deleted cDAQ chassis from system and imported all config data from ~/dev/wave-tow-tank/NI-MAX/configData.txt.
16. Was then able to monitor DAQ signals from TurbineDAQ.
17. Was able to get the Ethernet serial server to fire up after finding and correcting a loose power supply wire.
18. Installed Quatech Ethernet serial drivers from https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-Zkf2Wfe2qoMD2YqXB7to3Gn1mvv932t.
19. Installed GitHub Atom text editor from https://atom.io.
20. Installed some packages for Atom with apm install symbols-tree-view autocomplete-python python-tools.
21. Looked in the TurbineDAQ source code for which COM port it assumes the Vectrino would run from. Turns out to be COM2, so set the first port of the Ethernet serial server as COM2 in the device manager.