Web panels can use all the Helm router control components. Beginning with the sample 16 x16 XY panel supplied with RouteMaster, we’ll show you how to create groups of inputs and outputs, and uses Group Selector control to move between them.
Open the Helm panel Sample 16x16XY.helm in Helm Designer
You’ll find this panel file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Rascular\Routemaster\Sample WebPanels
Let’s make some room at the bottom
I’ve moved the Rascular logo up out of the way, and expanded the Root Panel downwards to make space.
Now add some Group Selector controls
Place an Input Group Selector control onto the panel as shown, and then an Output Group Selector. Now let’s see how we configure them.
Configure the Input Group Selector
The only really vital piece of configuration you need to do at this point is to assign the control to a RouterBus. You do this in the Linkage section of the Properties.
Configure the Output Group Selector
Again the most important configuration item is to link the control to an Output Selector on the panel. You do this by choosing from the dropdown menu in the Linkage Properties section.
The buttons on the Group Selectors now reflect the Groups names defined in the router
I’ve adjusted the font size of the button text to stop the text spilling over.
Where are the Group names defined
Select the router and click the ellipsis (…) for the GroupMapFile property. A dialog will open that shows you the currently defined groups.
[InputGroups]
VTRS=1-10
SERVERS=11-20
BARS=21
[OutputGroups]
SAT=1-4
TX=5-8
The ones shown are the defaults created when you add a router. These are there to show you the syntax of group maps. It isn’t difficult to master and an in depth explanation is given in this article.
In Web Panels the groups are defined in the RouteMaster configuration so how they are set up in Helm is only relevant for test purposes. So now let’s publish the panel and look at it in a browser.
Configuring Groups in RouterMaster
First of all make sure the RouteMaster server is not running.
Go to the Configure Routers.. menu to open the Manage Routers dialog and select the router to edit. In this case we have only one router so the choice is easy. Click on the Edit Groups.. button and the Router Groups Editor will open.
It has two panes, Source Groups and Destination Groups. You use these in exactly the same way as the [Input Groups] and [Output Groups] sections of group map files shown above. As you can see I’ve defined different groups for RouteMaster from the ones in the Helm panel we published. So let’s the Web Panel in action.
a Web Panel with Group Selectors
Now the group selectors let you change the sources and destinations displayed on the input and output sides of the XY panel. Here we’re showing the EU-based stations as sources. If we click the group selectors to US then we’ll show US stations.
This feature is very useful with large routers where it becomes unwieldy to show a button for every single source or destination. And because the groups are set up centrally within RouteMaster, if you want to make changes there’s no need to re-program all your panels.