Questions about SimData/SimDevice

[MrWaloo]

Hi there,

I know those classes are not yet for production, I just want to test them as a beta tester, but first I would like to understand some points. I could help to develop it as well.
If my help is not needed, please don't hesitate to tell me: I can understand.

SimDevice

In the docstring, it is made mention of a block:

    Registers are always defined as one block.

If I understand it correctly, a block is a list of contiguous registers defined as a list of SimData's.
Must those SimData's be in contiguous registers or are non-defined registers allowed?

registers = [
  SimData(address: 0, datatype=DataType.REGISTERS, values=0x1234),
  SimData(address: 7, datatype=DataType.REGISTERS, values=0x1234),
]

Here the registers 1-6 are not defined, I guess this is allowed and the SimDevice will return the default value if a non defined register is read request. Am I right?

SimDevice with non-shared registers

I the non-shared mode, there are 4 blocks of registers: coils, discrete inputs, holding registers, input registers. Every block can have registers with address 0-65535. How to declare such a device?

co = [
  SimData(address=0, datatype=DataType.BITS, values=True, count=65536)
]
di = [
  SimData(address=0, datatype=DataType.BITS, values=True, count=65536)
]
hr = [
  SimData(address=0, datatype=DataType.UINT16, values=[i for i in range(65536)])
]
ir = [
  SimData(address=0, datatype=DataType.UINT16, values=[i for i in range(65536)])
]

And then? How should be offset_address defined?

Maybe, SimData should have an optional block_type or register_type parameter?

@dataclass(order=True, frozen=True)
class SimData:
    (...)
    block_type: BlockType = BlockType.SHARED

With

class BlockType(enum.IntEnum):
    SHARED = enum.auto()
    COIL= enum.auto()
    DISCRETE_INPUT = enum.auto()
    HOLDING_REGISTER = enum.auto()
    INPUT_REGISTER = enum.auto()

And the principle of offset_address should be forgotten?

[janiversen]

I know those classes are not yet for production, I just want to test them as a beta tester, but first I would like to understand some points. I could help to develop it as well.

Help is always welcome.

Must those SimData's be in contiguous registers or are non-defined registers allowed?

The idea is that you only define the registers you need for your device, SimCore then handles marking the rest as invalid.

Here the registers 1-6 are not defined, I guess this is allowed and the SimDevice will return the default value if a non defined register is read request. Am I right?

yes.

I the non-shared mode, there are 4 blocks of registers: coils, discrete inputs, holding registers, input registers. Every block can have registers with address 0-65535. How to declare such a device?

you define the registers normally, and then use offset in SimDevice to set the start address for a block.

Maybe, SimData should have an optional block_type or register_type parameter?

Not needed! and it would complicate matter since it would make it possible to mix shared and non-shared registers.

And the principle of offset_address should be forgotten?

That principle makes it clear that a device is either shared or non shared. Please do not forget that nowadays it is pretty rare to see a nom-shared device.