Important: This version is not supported anymore. You should switch to [TAME 4] (https://github.com/tomcx/tame4).
TAME is JavaScript library created for an easy and comfortable access to the TwinCAT ADS WebService. The name is an acronym for „TwinCAT ADS Made Easy“ and stands also for „taming“ the complexity of ADS and AJAX requests. Originally a „wast product“ from the programming of a browser based visualisation for my home, it has become a (in my opinion) useful little piece of software and I hope it will help others who want to develop their own visualisations. I'm not a professional programmer (in fact this is my first "seroius" project), so don't get upset when you look at the code.
The library allows to exchange data with a TwinCAT PLC without any knowledge of ADS. The browser connects to the webserver running on the PLC device and the ADS commands are wrapped in AJAX/SOAP requests. Have a look at the manual and the examples for more information.
If you want to know more about the basics of the access to the ADS WebService with JavaScript look at the example [here] (http://infosys.beckhoff.com/content/1031/tcsample_webservice/html/webservice_samplejs.html).
There are methods for read and write access to single variables, variable blocks, arrays and structures in the TwinCAT PLC, sum commands are supported. New in V3.5 is the option to use the TPY-file generated by TwinCAT. The file contains information about the PLC, the symbols and the data types. With these informations one no longer have to set NetId, port or alignment. Reading structures from the PLC the JavaScript objects will be built automatically without the need of structure definitions. Access to single elements of structures and arrays and also internal variables and parameters of FB's is now possible.
Supported data types are BOOL, BYTE, WORD, DWORD, USINT, SINT, UINT, INT, UDINT, DINT, TIME, TOD, DT, DATE, REAL, LREAL and STRING. There is also a special „type“ named INT1DP: It's an INT in the PLC, but in JavaScript the variable is of type float with 1 decimal place (i.e. a value of 568 in the PLC is 56.8 in JavaScript). The library provides built-in conversion of date and time values to formatted strings and REAL values can be rounded to a desired number of decimal places. For writing arrays and arrays of structures there is an option to choose only one array item to send to the PLC instead of the whole array. Another feature is the automatic structure padding for exchanging data with TwinCAT 2 and ARM-based devices (i.e. CX90xx) or with TwinCAT 3. TwinCAT 3 is supported with V3.4.
Requried is a running ADS WebService, look at the [Beckhoff Infosys] (http://infosys.beckhoff.com) for more information about the installation.
TAME is dual licensed under the MIT and the GPLv3 license.
Beckhoff® and TwinCAT® are registered trademarks of Beckhoff Automation GmbH.