SmartGridware IEC 61850

IED View

Browser Based IED Simulator

Copyright © 2000-2018, Monfox, LLC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The SmartGridware IEC 61850 Server Simulator provides a graphical interface for viewing and modifying server data values as well as exercising control operations and manipulating control blocks. Features Include:

1. Start Simulator Application
1. To Start: Click on the "IEC 61850 IED SIM" Icon.
   
   
   
   
   
2. The simulator will attempt to open the TCP port configured at application installation. By default, this is port 8100.
   
   
3. If the default port is already in use, the simulator will find the next open port and use that one.
   
   
4. Once an available port is located, the simulator will start up and create a splash screen showing the URL to connect to from your Web Browser.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. The application will also create a small info dialog displaying this URL and some action buttons:
   
   - Open Browser: This will open the default system browser.
   - Quit: Quit the simulator
   
   
6. Connect to the URL displayed on the info window from your Chrome or Firefox browser. (Explorer is not supported). If Explorer is your default browser, you may want to change the default to one of these browsers.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. License Manager:  If the license key was entered at installation, then this step can be skipped.
   
   You should have received a license key, that looks something like the following:

          
   ---- BEGIN LICENSE KEY ----
   
   7B0C2BBBF566584069BD9A05646118D2841BB7257C31D6EB
   24CA9326E658C2A18E049CF9D6676B64EAC11D1E0EDAED1F
   
   ...
   
   3CDDD806CE169A46D20EFA0CF9B567CC73869138AD4B42B1
   853DD678A776F468EEBE7F066074DE045956A61A6E2F9251
   04790371C1FBD91A5954A61A6E2F9251
   
   ---- END LICENSE KEY ---
           

   Upon connecting to the web server, the license manager dialog should be seen, if a login screen is shown, proceed to the next step. The license manager screen is shown below:
   
   
   
   
   
   To enter the license key, just click the "Update License" button, then copy the license key, including the BEGIN and END LICENSE KEY lines and paste the key into the license key form as follows:
   
   
   
   


Then click the "Commit" button to update the license key.


3. Login Dialog: Login to the IED Sim application using your username and password. The default (which are pre-populated in the evaluation) are:
   
   -  Username: "USER_1"
   -  Password:  "USER_1"
   
   
   
   
   
4. IED Sim Browser Main Window: The IED Sim main window has a top level toolbar used to configure the application and open a new SCL file to simulate
   
   
   
   
   
5. Open SCL: Click the Open button at the top left corner of the screen. This will pop up the "Open SCL Wizard" that is used to start a simulator.






6. Upload your SCL File: If you have not already uploaded your ICD file to the server, you can select the "Upload SCL Files+" button on the wizard then select and upload your SCL file.
   
   
7. Select the SCL file from the file list.
   
   
8. Select the Open Mode. The available options are: Quick, Default and Advanced. Stick with "Quick" initially.
   
   See the Open SCL reference for more information on these options.
   
   
   
9. Open the File: If all is well, the file will open and the simulator will be started, if there are SCL file errors or if the IP address/port in the file is unavailable, you will be directed to a screen that will allow you to view or correct the problems. 
   
   The  "Network Communications"screen allows you to change communications parameters such as IP Address,IP port, etc.Just double click on the value to edit.







Once all parameters are entered correctly, just click "Start" to start the IED simulator.



10. IED Control Panel: Once the SCL file is loaded and the IED simulator started, the IED Control Panel will be available. Just click on the Tab corresponding to the IED to display the control panel.
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. Tree View: Open the tree view to see the simulator's LDs, LN, DOs and DAs.
    
    
    
    


12. Context Specific Help: For help on other functions of the IED Server Simulator, just click on the help ('?') icon at the top right of the window.

The Open SCL Wizard is used  to open and load SCL (ICD,CID,etc) files for simulation. The basic actions supported by the Open Wizard are:

• SCL File Upload
• SCL File Open
• SCL File Compilation
• IED  Configuration
• IED Communications Setup
• IED Simulation Start

The Open SCL Main Panel allows you to upload SCL files, delete SCL files, select a file to open. See below:

Here are the Fields and Functions available:

• Uploading: Click on the Upload SCL Files button, then select the file to upload. The filename and upload status will be shown in the upload status box just below the upload button.


• User Group: The selector button to the right of the 'Cancel' button allows the user to select the User Group to assign to this simulator instance. Any Logged in Users that are assigned to this user group will be able to view, access and control this simulator if they have the sufficient access permission (read/write).


• Open Mode: The Open Mode is selected using the selector to the left of the "Open" button at the bottom right of the wizard.
  
  There are 3 main Open Modes:
  1. Quick: This mode will attempt to load and start the simulator using the default parameters in the SCL file. This doesn not give the user options to change parameters or view SCL parsing status and warnings unless there are parse errors in the SCL file. If successful, this mode will not require any further input from the user in order to start the a simulator for the SCL file.
  2. Basic: The Basic mode will bring the user to the SCL load results panel that will display any warnings and errors resulting from the load of the SCL file. By selecting the 'Next' button, the user will go to the network configuration screen where changes may be made to IP address, port numbers and other network related configuration parameters before starting the simulator.
  3. Advanced: The Advanced mode will bring the user to the Advanced Configuration Panel. This panel allows the user to configure:
     • Validation: Lax or Strict. This affects the syntax and contextual checking of the SCL file. Lax mode is the default and will ignore common syntax issues found between Edition 1 and Edition 2 SCL version.
     • Edition: Selects the edition of the SCL file to load. Any will attempt to auto determine the SCL version from the file.
     • GOOSE and Sampled Value (SV) parameters: For example: the network interface, MAC address, and Sync flag
     • Client SCL File(s): For applications requiring interaction with another IED.
     • Advanced Configuration: Parameters that affect the simulator behavior but are not commonly used. Some of these parameters allow for simulation of 'non-compliant' devices or control implementation specific behaviours at the protocol or encoding level.
     Once the advanced configuration parameters have been selected, the 'Next' button will load the SCL file and take the user to the SCL results screen just like the 'Basic' mode.
• Delete File: The 'trash can' button to the right of a file name is used to delete the file from the user's directory.

The Advanced Configuration Panel allows the user to configure:

• Basic IED Properties
• Client SCL Files
• Advanced Configuration Parameters

The IED Properties panel allows the user to configure basic parameters such as SCL validation mode, SCL edition, IED To Select (if SCL has multiple IED's defined), GOOSE and SV network device configuration (MAC Address), etc). See the open IED Properties panel below:

• Validation: Lax or Strict. This affects the syntax and contextual checking of the SCL file. Lax mode is the default and will ignore common syntax issues found between Edition 1 and Edition 2 SCL version.


• Edition: Selects the edition of the SCL file to load. Any will attempt to auto determine the SCL version from the file.


• IED:: If an SCL file contains multiple IED definitions, this field will allow you to select which IED to load for simulation.


• GOOSE and Sampled Value (SV) parameters: For example: the network interface, MAC address, and Sync flag

For applications requiring interaction with another IED, you can load a client SCL file containing the SCL structure of the other server

Parameters that affect the simulator behavior but are not commonly used. Some of these parameters allow for simulation of 'non-compliant' devices or control implementation specific behaviours at the protocol or encoding level.

The SCL Load Results Panel shows and SCL errors and warnings along with the number of instances of the LDs, LNs, DOs and DA's created for simulation.Any SCL errors should include a line number and give some detail as to the error. Note that errors are not necessarily fatal and many times you can continue with a simulation even if errors are found in the SCL load.

The SCL Network Configuration Panel provides an editable tree view of the Network configuration parameters for each Access Point in the loaded SCL file.

Editing: In order to edit a parameter, simply double click on the value column of the parameter and a value editor will appear. For IP addresses, the editor will provide a selector containing the available IP addresses for the current host.

NOTE: Very often the IP Address and Port in the SCL file WILL NOT match an available IP Address/Port on the local system. In these cases you WILL NEED TO SPECIFY A DIFFERENT IP ADDRESS and PORT. The editor for the IP address should list the available IP addresses for this host.

The User Admin Window provides admin users the ability to administer users and user groups. See below:

The functionality provided by this window consist of:

• Add User: Add a new user. This will prompt for a new user name.
• Remove User: Remove an existing user. This will provide a selector of existing user names.
• Edit User Fields: Any user field, except the username can be modified by double clicking on the field in the user table.
• Change User Permission: Select whether the user has Read, Admin and File Access privilege
• Add Group: Add a new group. This will prompt for a group name.
• Remove Group: Remove an existing group. This will provide a selector of existing group names.

The IED Sim application allows you to set color preferences for:

• Icon Colors
• Background Colors>
• Title Color

It also has predefined 'theme's you can chose from.

To set the color preferences select the 'palette' icon in the top toolbar. You will get a popup shown below:

The IED Sim Control Bar is a 'ribbon' bar just below the top level toolbar.

IED Tabs: At the top of the bar will be a list of 'tabs' , one for each IED currently active in the simulator.

IED Nicknames: The IEDs are identified by a Nickname composed of the first few characters of the IED name followed by an instance identifier if applicable.

Active IED Control: When an IED tab is selected, that IED's control panel is activated just below the Tabs. All of these actions then apply to the active IED. See the panel below:

Icon Form: If the screen dimensions are reduced, the control panel will drop the action names and just display the icons. Tooltips are supported so you can 'mouse-over' the icons to see the action names. See below:

As shown in the above examples, the IED Control Bar is divided into several 'panels' each having a related set of functions. These are:

• IED Action Panel: Action menu, Restart and Close Functionality
• Status Panel: IED Status + Start/Stop Operation
• Data View Panel: Tree, Dataset and Custom IED data Views
• Network Panel: Access Control, Network Control, Association Status & Control
• Control Blocks : Control block specific configuration and control screens.
• Command Panel: MMS Message Monitor, IEDSim Javascript console, Data Export

The Action Panel contains IED level operations for initiating specific functions, restarting the IED or closing the IED. In addition to the operations, the Action Panel displays the IED Nickname in the main area of the panel and the full IED name along with the IP Address and IP Port in the label.

The Action Menu provides access to the IED Control Bar functions for the IED.

The IED Restart button will restart the IED Simulator for this IED.

The IED Close action will shutdown the simulation for this IED. It will shutdown the network listeners, terminate any associations and clean up the IED simulation.

The IED Status panel shows the current status of the IED simulator for the IED.It also allows the user to Start or Stop the IED simulator by just clicking on the status icon.

The Status panel icon shows Running or Stopped.

To Start or Stop the IED simulator by just clicking on the status icon.

The Data View Panel contains 3 different view options:

• IED Tree View
• Custom View
• Dataset View

The IED Tree View provides a dynamic, tree-based view of the entire contents of the IED's data structure. It provides a logical view rather than a 'functional' view. This means that the FC elements are not part of the tree structure. This provides a more concise view of the IED data. The basic functions supported by the tree view are:

The IEDTree View in the IEDSimulator provides a live data view of the data objects in the simulator. It is arrange in a hierarchical manner as found in the SCL definition: LD->LN->DO->DA. As data values in the IED change, the updated values are instantly updated in the Tree View.

The IEDTree View indicates behavior/mode, quality state, changed state and health using icons. These indicators are propagated up to the LN and LD levels to alert the user to lower level information so they can easily drill down to the actual attribute causing the icon state. See the following example:

The following Icon legend describes the meaning of the different tree icons:

Double-clicking on the value field of any leaf Data Attribute (DA), will bring up the value editor for that DA. There are different value editors for the different data types supported by SCL.

When setting values there are 2 different 'modes' to take into account:

Specifies whether the local 'set' operation should trigger the normal processing of the value as through is came in through a protocol (MMS) operation. The mode is indicated on the 'Mode' toolbar button. The icon with the 'gear' in the middle means 'process', if the gear is not shown, then it is in direct/pass-thru mode.

IED Tree View: Process Mode

IED Tree View: Pass-thru Mode

Multi-set mode specifies whether a value set operation should be executed immediately on confirmation or grouped with multiple set operations such that they are all executed together. When in multi-set mode, the value editor will only 'stage' the value to be committed at a later point.

Once all of the desired values are 'staged', just press the 'commit' button, if the commit dialog is not already displayed' then hit the commit button to perform the group of set operations.

The IED Custom View is a flat data attribute view created by dragging and dropping nodes from the IED Tree View into the custom view window. You an drag any node from the treeview from the Logical Node (LN) down to a Data Attribute (DA). The Custom view will display only the leaf DA instances with their values in a table format. See below:

To populate, just drag and drop from a tree view.

Functional Constraint Filtering: You can filter the attributes by Function Constraint using the filter function. The filter button pops up an FC selection pane so you can select the specific FCs you want to see in the view.

Column Filtering: You can also filter by column. Just type in a character string in the associated column and the visible entries will be filtered.

You can choose the visibility of the LD, FC and Type columns using the corresponding buttons in the toolbar.

As with the IED Tree View, you can modify values one by one or using a multi-set operation. See the IED Tree View Local Data Set section.

The IED Dataset View is a flat table view like the IED Custom View. It contains the values for each DA in each dataset as shown below:

The Dataset View supports the same functionality as the Custom View including:

• FC Filtering
• Column Filtering
• Column Visibility
• Set Operations

See the IED Custom View for mode information on how to use these functions.

The Network Panel contains network related IED functions, including:

• Access Control
• Network Control
• Association Control

The Access Control View is used to filter incoming connections based on the following criteria when in the "Validate All" mode:

• Source IP address
• Source address URI
• Auth params

The  default "Accept All" or "Reject All" modes are self explanatory.

When in "Validate All" mode, the rules are validated from the top down so the first matching rule will be applied.

The Network Control View is used to view the status of the configured network interfaces for the IED as well as to configure or control any configurable parameters of the Access Point.

The main network control window to Start and Stop the network interface for the IED's Access Points.

Access Point Detail

Click on the "Detail" button to see the Access Point detailed information. When the interface is UP, you can configure the Logical Status and Physical Status of the Access Point as well as start and stop the Access Point's network interface.

After stopping the Access Point's network interface, the IP and OSI stack parameters can be modified as well.

The Association Control View is used to view and control the associations with the IED's access point(s). This view allows you to "Release" or "Abort" and association.

The Control Panel provides a set of buttons for activating views for different Control Blocks in the IED. If an IED has no control blocks of a specific type, then the button for that type will be disabled. These control blocks include:

• GOOSE Control
• SV Control
• Report Control

• Setting Control
• Log Control
• Operation Control

The GOOSE Control View provides configuration and control capability for the GOOSE control blocks in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

GOOSE List View

The GOOSE List View contains a table of all available GOOSE control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Start, Stop, Enable and Disable Goose control blocks.

GOOSE Detail View

The GOOSE Control View provides configuration and control capability for the GOOSE control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Configure, Start, Stop, Enable and Disable GOOSE control blocks.

From the detail view you can perform these functions:

• Start: Start the communication processing for the GOOSE control
• Stop: stop the communication processing for the GOOSE control
• Enabled/Disabled: Toggle button for changing the enabled state.
• Simulated: Set the simulated flag in outgoing GOOSE messages
• Reset StNum: Reset the StNum field in the outgoing messages

The SV Control View provides configuration and control capability for the SV control blocks in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

SV List View

The SV List View contains a table of all available SV control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Configure, Start, Stop, Enable and Disable SV control blocks.

SV Detail View

The SV Control View provides configuration and control capability for the SV control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Start, Stop, Enable and Disable SV control blocks.

From the detail view you can perform these functions:

• Start: Start the communication processing for the SV control
• Stop: stop the communication processing for the SV control
• Enabled/Disabled: Toggle button for changing the enabled state.
• Simulated: Set the simulated flag in outgoing SV messages

The Report Control View provides configuration and control capability for the Report control blocks in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

Report List View

The Report List View contains a table of all available Report control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Enable and Disable Report control blocks

Report Detail View

The Report Detail View provides a form to view and configure the Report Control parameters. From this view, you can  Configure, Enable and Disable Report control blocks as well as force a General Interrogation (GI) operation.

From the detail view you can perform these functions:

• Enabled/Disabled: Toggle button for changing the enabled state.
• Simulated: Set the simulated flag in outgoing Report messages
• General Interrogation (GI): Force a GI report to be sent.
• Purge: Force a Purge buffer operation.

The Setting Group Control View provides configuration and control capability for the Setting Group control block in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

Setting Group List View

The Setting Group List View contains a table showing the IED's setting group. You can then view the details of the setting group.

Setting Group Detail View

The Setting Group Detail View provides a form to view and configure the Setting Group Control parameters.

From the detail view you can perform these functions:

• ActSG:Change the Active Setting Group.
• EditSG: Change the Edit Setting Group

The Log Control View provides configuration and control capability for the Log control blocks in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

Log List View

The Log List View contains a table of all available Log control blocks in the IED. From this view, you can  Enable and Disable Log control blocks

Log Detail View

The Log Detail View provides a form to view and configure the Log Control parameters. From this view, you can  Configure, Enable and Disable Log control blocks.

From the detail view you can perform these functions:

• Enabled/Disabled: Toggle button for changing the enabled state.

The Operation Control View provides configuration and control capability for controllable Data Objects in the IED. There is a List View and a Detail View available as shown below:

Operation Control List View

The Control List View contains a table of all available Controllable Data objects in the IED.

Operation Control Detail View

The Operation Control Detail View provides a form to view and configure the Control parameters. The control attributes and current control state are reflected on this form. There is also Control Behavior Simulation supported through this view.

Control Behavior Simulation

Control behavior may be simulated by providing the following:

• Select GenErr to generate an Operate error
• Select a State Wait time in milliseconds
• Specify a Value Regex match for an incoming  ctlVal to trigger the error
• Select an Error Action defining the state in which to generate the error
• Select an Appl Error value for the generated error
• Select an Additional Cause for the generated error

The Command Panel contains the utility operations for accessing, modifying and exporting data from the simulator. The following utility functions are supported.

• Message Viewer
• Script Interface
• Exporter

The MMS Message Monitor allows the user to log and view MMS and ACSE messages sent and received by the IED simulator. In order to use the message Monitor you just need to click the "Start" button. See the Message Monitor window below:

The available toolbar buttons are as follows:

• Start: start logging and displaying messages
• Stop: stop message logging
• Pretty: pretty-print format the message detail pane
• Download: download the selected message (not all messages)
• Max Messages Slider: specifies the max number of messages in log.
• Clear: clear the message list.

The Script Console is a javascript command tool that allows programatic access to IED data through javascript. There are 2 static objects available to the javascript:

• API
• IED

The API object provides high level functions for printing, getting the list of available IEDs, etc.

The IED object refers to the IED instance. It has methods for getting named lists of objects, accessing data values and setting data values. See the script console below:

NOTE: There is a separate guide for the scripting interfacing coming soon.

The Export tool is used to export the current IED state either as an ICD (SCL) file or as a JSON values file. See the Export Tool window below:

• Filtering: When exporting an SCL or JSON file, the tool provides data value filtering based on Function Constraints(FC). Note that for SCL, the full structure is still exported however the instance data will be filtered by the provide FC filters.