Quick Start

This chapter takes you on a tour to quickly get acquainted with the WICE Portal to see how it works.

As the WICE Portal is a web based tool there is no need to install any software on your computer.
All you need is a web browser, such as Internet Explorer, which has Javascript enabled. With the tool you can see which assignments are running in which car, their status, get result files from tasks and much more. In this quick start you will first be introduced to the basic model of how it is supposed to work. Secondly, a simple scenario will show how a task you have created is sent to a car and started. When that task has generated data for you, download that data to your computer for further analysis.

Basic Conceptual Model

To introduce to the concept of how it is supposed to work, see illustration 1 below. There are three parts involved here:

1. You the user
2. The WICE Portal
3. A set of cars.

The user decides to add a task to a specific car when logged in into the portal. Each time the ignition is turned off, the car contacts the portal to see if there is a new task to download and upload any result files to the portal. When the user later logs in he/she can see that the new task is running in the car as well as see that there are new result files for the task. This is the basic model of how it works and what you can do. Next we will go through a scenario showing screen shots from the tool and updates on where we are in the conceptual model just shown. To be precise, each car is configured with a Wireless Communication Unit (WCU) which handles the communication between the car and the portal. In reality, this is the device you “talk” to through the portal.

Terminology

In order to bring some order to everything, the terminology used will be discussed in this section. It is important that you understand the distinctions not to get confused when using the portal. Basically, on the top level there is a task. A task has a single user attached to it, which is the user that created the task and this cannot be changed. Also, each task is associated with only one assignment of each type (MCD-Hub, IDC, Canrecorder, SOH, SignalReader). However, a task can be associated with any number of WCUs. A WCU (Wireless Communication Unit) is the actual hardware that is installed into each car. The rationale behind this is that each WCU runs the same assignment for a task. Fortunately, each WCU running an assignment can be manipulated individually. This is quite natural as the progression for the assignment depends on each WCU or car.
If you find this confusing, try Illustration 2 below.

In the middle is the task which is the connecting entity. Below are the set if different assignment programs available. To the left there is a set of WCUs where the assignment program is downloaded to each WCU. The progression of the assignment program is probably different for each WCU and are therefore treated individually.

A Simple Scenario

Assume that you have a task you would like to be run in a car to collect interesting data to analyze. This scenario shows just this. The steps are:

Illustration 3: Login screen.

1. Log on to the WICE Portal
2. Add a new assignment to a car
3. Log out of the portal
4. Log in again and see how the assignment is doing
5. Download result data generated from the assignment

When surfing to the portal you will see the screen in Illustration 3. It is a simple screen with the possibility to enter a username and a password. Press the login button or enter to log in. If you have not yet received a user name and password, contact your local WICE portal administrator or responsible contact to get a user name and password.

If turned on, you may have to enter a one time password when logging in. This enhances the security by providing something called two-factor authentication. The one time password is typically generated from an app in your smart phone. There is also a program for a desktop computer to generate the one time password. For Android, iPhone and Blackberry you can download an app called “Google Authenticator” to generate these one time passwords for you. An internet connection is not needed in order to generate the passwords. To log in to an account you need to enter your login, ordinary password and the current 6 digits generated by the app. A new 6 digit number is generated each 30 seconds. To simplify logins from the same computer, typically the one at work, you can tick the check box “Remember me”. If you tick this before you hit the login button when using the one time password, you will be remembered by the portal for the next 30 days. The next time you login from the computer you only have to enter your password. When the 30 days have passed you will once again have to enter a one time password to login.

Illustration: New task button in v2.40

When pressing the button the “New Task” dialog will be shown as depicted in Illustration 5. There are five tabs in this dialog which are “MCD-Hub”, “Canrecorder”, “IDC”, “SoH” and “SignalReader”. Illustration 5 deals with the MCD-Hub tab.

MCD-Hub

The tab is composed of four different areas basically, with some differences depending on the type of the assignment. Those are:

Illustration 5: The New Task dialog.

1. Choose which MCD-Hub assignment file. Press the button “Bläddra”/”Browse” to bring up the file selection dialog.
2. Choose which formats to convert to when result files are uploaded to the portal from a WCU.
3. Write a descriptive text for the assignment. This is optional.
4. To select which WCUs should receive the assignment, write the name of the WCU in the box above the “unselected resource” column text. When you type, the WCUs matching your text will automatically appear in the table. To select a WCU drag it from the unselected table to the selected table or press the right arrow between the two tables. To deselect a WCU, simply do the opposite.

You can also select to be notified of events from the WCU by checking the box about emails. If you have not entered an email address already you will get the opportunity to do so when pressing the “Ok”-button. If you change your mind and do not want to transfer any hub assignment, press “Cancel” or press the escape key on your keyboard. Before sending the request to the portal, the entries are validated. If you have not chosen any WCUs you will gently be informed that you must. If there is no email address registered you will get the opportunity to enter one. If every check went fine and the transfer went well, a pop-up showing the message “Transfer ok!” will be presented. If something went wrong the same pop-up will instead show you the error cause.

Can-recorder

Illustration 6: Starting a new task for the canrecorder.

If you instead choose the tab “Can-recorder” the following view will show. The new settings for a canrecorder task, compared to an MCD-Hub task, are:

1. Use CAN frame pass-through filter. This is an option you can turn on or off.
2. Specify which CAN buses you are interested in recording from.
3. Enter CAN frame ID. If the above option is turned on you select the Ids of the CAN frames you are interested in. Hit the enter keyboard button or the “Add” button to add the Id. If you would like to remove an Id, press the “Remove” button next to the Id in the table below the entry of Ids.
4. Pre-trigger time. This option sets the pre-trigger time in seconds.
5. Recording time. The option is used to control how many seconds of recording should be carried out.

The “ok” button will be clickable when you have selected a validated set of options. If this is not the case, hover the mouse over the “Cancel” button to find out what must be done in order for the task to be accepted.

IDC

The third tab deals with the Internal Diagnostic Client (IDC). There is no difference between this tab and the MCD-Hub tab except that the type of assignment file is usually ending with “.seq”.

SoH

Illustration 7: An SoH assignment.

The fourth tab is for State of Health (SoH) assignments. With this kind of assignment you can, currently, make four different read-outs. Mileage, ask the car to report how many kilometers it has run. Battery voltage, ask for the current voltage. Read all ECU software numbers in a vehicle and lastly you can read all error codes set by any ECU. To add a GDS file to a vehicle, seeThe_Portal_Administrator_View#The_Edit_Car_Dialog. The tab can be found in Illustration 7.

SignalReader

Illustration 8: Signal reader assignment.

The fifth, and last, tab is the Signal Reader tab. It takes a haf file as input, an all text version of a hub file and performs the same kind of measurements as the MCD-Hub. However, using the signal reader there is also an opportunity the monitor a set of signals in real time. To accomplish this you first select a haf file and then you press the button “Monitor signals”. This adds a new graphical element where you can select which signals should be monitored in real time by dragging the name from the left container to the right container, see Illustration 8 below. When you are done you press the OK button. The monitored signals can later be viewed through the vehicles tab (Vehicles#Show_the_WCU_Position) and pressing the “Show Position” button.

The following (click to collapse) applies to if you are using version 2.39 of the WiCE portal:

In Illustration 4 you see a column labeled “Tasks”. Select your newly created task by clicking on it. The moment you select a task the corresponding WCUs are fetched from the portal and shown as tabs to the right of the “Tasks” column. An example is in Illustration 9. As you can see there is some information presented for you as well as a number of buttons for each WCU. We start by explaining the fields below the buttons From the top they are:

• Status.

This can be in any of four states.

Illustration 9: The set of WCUs associated with the selected task.

1. Pending.
   The hub assignment program has not yet been downloaded to the WCU. This is probably because the WCU has not been connected to the portal since the new task was created.
2. Downloaded.
   The WCU has fetched the has assignment program but not yet started it. The state is transient as it is usually only a matter of seconds between the download and before it is started.
3. Running.
   The WCU has successfully started the hub assignment program. While in this state, data is generated which can later be retrieved.
4. Error.
   If something went wrong, the WCU signals this status along with an error message.
5. Warning.
   A not as serious state as the above.
6. Stop pending.
   The user has issued a stop command for the currently running assignment but it has not yet been picked up by the WCU.
7. Stopped.
   The assignment is stopped.

• Error message. If the status of the WCU is error an extra field will appear showing the error message.
• WCU Description. A textual description of the WCU. The text can be altered by simple selecting the field and start editing. When finished press the enter key or the “Modify WCU”-button. If you would like to see the task description, move the mouse pointer over the “Tasks” column.
• Last status update. This is the date when the WCU connected to the portal and exchanged data.
• MCD Hub Assignment Name. This is the file name of the hub assignment program which was transferred to the portal.
• Car. The car to which this WCU is connected, if any. If you want to see all information associated with the car in question, click the “Car info” button.

As the portal will not push new information about your task on a WCU you will need to initiate a refresh of data. To do this you simply click the “Refresh WCU” button.

Illustration 10: The Get result files dialog.

When there is any result data generated from an assignment the “Get Result Files” button will be enabled. When clicking that button a dialog will appear. What you get here is basically a set of search terms to use to search through your result files on the portal for this particular task and WCU. When hovering the pointer over the search area you will get the number of files that match your search terms as a tool tip.

By pressing the “List Files” button you will get an opportunity to download result files to your local computer. See Illustration 10 below. By default the “Compile by upload date” check box is checked. The idea behind this is that each set of results is grouped into sets of files which corresponds to a particular upload of result files. Each such upload can be huge with several thousands of files. Picking individual files is tedious and mostly you are interested with all of the files of a particular type that was uploaded. The “Compile by upload date” then simply means that one row in the table means one such upload of files. To download result files, select the files you are interested in and click “Get File(s)”. After that a file save dialog will open and you can choose where to save the file. All the files you have selected will be downloaded as a zip-file.

If the file you have selected is of a human readable type, the button “View file” will be enabled. By clicking that button the file is opened in your browser and you can look through it. Another way to open the file is to double click on the file entry. When your program has collected enough data for you you can stop it by clicking the “Stop Assignment” button. A message will be sent to the WCU telling it that the current assignment should be stopped. This concludes this section where we have walked through a simple and rather basic scenario where a task was created and a hub assignment program generated some data that could be later retrieved.

In the The Portal User View section a thorough explanation of the user's view will be presented.