Customer
The customer is a leading Austrian-based provider of integrated hardware and software solutions for development, simulation, and testing in the automotive industry with 10,000+ employees and facilities in 40+ countries worldwide.

Challenge
For the new release of the emission measurement system, the customer required a new graph control for visualization and analysis of real-time data. The control had to meet strict performance requirements and provide a set of specific functions for data analysis and visualization.

Some of important requirements are:

  • Up to 20 simultaneous views (for different grouping of selected channels);
  • Up to 24 devices, 40 channels per device (960 channels);
  • Running in browser window with update rate 5+ Hz and CPU usage under 5%;
  • On the fly statistical calculations for every phase of emission testing.

The first version of graph control had to be available as soon as possible for timely integration into the customer’s product.

Solution
In order to speed-up the development our team decided to use some of available implementations with basic graph plotting capabilities. Our engineers have analyzed the market to find a solution that would meet the customer's performance requirements. None of off-the-shelf products were even close to the required drawing efficiency. We decided to base the new iTrend control on low-level open-source library.
Our team started from the proof of concept version and implemented a set of automated load tests that confirmed our choice. These automated tests have been continuously maintained and extended during the iTrend development to ensure the performance characteristics control.
Another challenge was to provide maximal usability, which is essential to handle a large number of views and channels.

Flexible settings allow the operator to group different channels into meaningful blocks to display multiple graphs on the same axis, adjust time intervals, as well as data storage time for individual channels. Users of the system can adapt the GUI to their needs: customize the theme (light or dark), chart styles, chart types, colors, and zoom.

 

We have worked in tight contact with customer’s experts to implement specific product-oriented analytics. Binding measured values and statistical calculations to the phases of test is one of the important features in the measurement process of exhaust emissions.

Core functionality of iTrend provides:

  • The real-time visualization of measurement data from each channel and display of information about the ongoing test phases;
  • The ability to configure and monitor the statistical parameters calculated from the measured readings;
  • The ability to visualize and analyze historical data, compare results the of various tests.

Using HTML5 technology makes it possible to use iTrend both as part of higher-level software products and standalone in a browser with various operating systems.

Results
iTrend control has been successfully integrated into the customer’s product. We have managed to combine high performance, ability to handle large data volumes with convenient GUI and rich analytical controlset.
Based on the positive feedback, the customer has included iTrend control as part of its standard controlset for use with other software products in its portfolio.