Using Lua Sockets with Helm

Helm installs the LuaSocket library for TCP/IP communications.  You can follow the examples and reference there to connect to TCP and UDP devices. Helm scripts run as part of the main Windows “event loop”, so while a script is running the user interface...

Showing Message dialogs and prompts in Helm panels

With Helm 4.7.1, you can now show simple dialog boxes and alerts in Helm panels. You can use these with Lua scripting from PC-based Helm panels (but not WebPanels yet…) The script functions are available using the RootPanel object, and are as follows...

Scripting for Helm Web Panels

Native (PC-based) panels use the ‘classic’ Helm script language, or Lua. When building web panels, you can also use Javascript. Be aware that because Web Panel scripts run in the users browser, they do not have direct access to user files and most network...

Lua Scripts in Helm 4.4

Helm 4.4 introduces some new concepts and capabilities for Lua script support. All existing Lua scripts should work unchanged but use of these new powerful features will require Helm 4.4 or later. This post gives an overview of the new features but does not list the...

Updating Helm display in Lua

If you are programming a sequence of actions in Lua you will soon realise that the Helm user interface does not update until the script is finished. That makes sense under most circumstances for reasons of efficiency. However, if you do want to make lights flash on...