Vision Client Launcher

Launching a Client

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The Vision Client Launcher opens Vision Clients from an Ignition Gateway. Once your Vision projects are added to the Vision Client Launcher, they will be displayed under My Applications and organized by Gateway.

The Vision Client Launcher is available on the Home tab of the Gateway Webpage. More information on installing any of the Launchers can be found on the Launchers and Workstation page. This page describes the unique Vision Client Launcher settings, deploying the launcher and Command Line Arguments.

Vision Client Application Settings

This section details settings for applications in the Vision Client Launcher. To access the settings, click on the "three menu dots" on the My Applications window and select the Manage option. The General tab will open. The table below shows the General settings that can be applied to each designer.

Vision Client Launcher Application Settings

Setting Name	Description
Application Name	The descriptive name of the application. This is independent of the project name that corresponds to a project on the gateway. Instead, this is the name of the application as it is defined in the Launcher.
Gateway Address	The address to the Gateway in the format http[s]://host:port
Description	An optional description for the application that will be listed on the Application in the launcher. Defaults to the Project's description.
Vision Client Project	The name of the project containing Vision resources that the Application will attempt to launch. New in 8.1.5 As of 8.1.5 the Vision Client Project field is required.
Fallback Application	The name of the application (configured in the same launcher) to use if the number of retries has been exceeded. The fallback is only utilized if the Retries setting is greater than 0.
Image Path	This will allow the icon of the application to be set within the designer and it will be downloaded and displayed as the icon for the application as well as the shortcuts. If no path is set, the default icon is used. If this is set to a different icon path, that icon will be used. The image path notation is a filepath on the local system. New in 8.1.5 Supported image formats now include PNG, SVG, GIF, and JPEG files.
Window Mode	Controls the client mode. Available options are: window: Launches the client in Windowed Mode fullscreen: Launches the client in Fullscreen Mode
Screen Index	The screen index indicates which monitor to use.
Timeout	The maximum number of seconds to allow for any gateway communication. Any communication that exceeds this amount will cause the Vision client launcher to abort the communication and try again if configured.
Retries	How many times to attempt to contact a gateway again if an error occurred during communication. Available values are: -1 : Retry indefinitely, or until the launcher is manually closed. 0 : Zero retries, or abort after the first failure. 1 (or more): Determines the number of retries: i.e., a value of "5" means five retries. If the number of retries is exceeded, then the launcher will attempt to launch the Fallback Application. If the number of retries is exceeded, then the Launcher will attempt to launch the Fallback Application.
Init Heap	The initial heap memory size for the Client.
Max Heap	The maximum heap memory size for the Client.
JVM Arguments	Arguments to append to client startup. These should start with a '-D' and be separated by semi-colons.

Vision Client Tag Override Settings

Click on the Client Tag Overrides tab to create or update any Tags. The table below shows the Client Tag Override setting that can be applied to each designer.

Setting Name

Description

Client Tag Overrides

Allows client tags to be overridden on the Vision Client. These are set using the table on the application configuration screen by adding rows with the names of the tags and the corresponding values. When applying the overrides from command line, the Tags must first be defined as launch parameters, then a value can be set on the parameters. Vision Client Tag overrides within folders and passing client tag overrides are supported by using a '+' icon as an escape character. This happens automatically if you are configuring overrides in the Client Launcher. To learn more about how to configure Client Tag Overrides, refer to Overriding Vision Client Tags.

For additional application settings, refer to the Launchers and Workstation page.

Redundancy

The Vision Client Launcher can take advantage of a redundant Gateway setup. Whenever a connection is established with a master Gateway, the backup Gateway IP address is automatically stored in the client launcher configuration file. If the master Gateway cannot be contacted the next time the client launcher is run, an attempt is made to contact the backup Gateway. If the backup cannot be contacted, the client launcher switches between contacting the primary Gateway and the backup Gateway until one responds or the user closes the launcher.

Command Line/Terminal

Clients can be launched from the Client Launcher via command/terminal. When called in this way, many of the application properties may be overridden for the one call. The overrides use the same property names as noted in the Application Property Reference Table, under the "JSON name" column.

Windows: 
"C:\ClientLauncher\visionclientlauncher.exe" application=myproject window.mode=window
   
Linux: 
./visionclientlauncher.sh application=myterminal window.mode=fullscreen screen=0

The Vision Client Launcher must be installed and have an application added for the Command Line/Terminal commands to work.There are a few important notes when using the Command Line/Terminal to launch a project from the Vision Client Launcher.

• The application argument requires the application name in the Launcher, not the project name. You can open the launcher to determine what the application name is. Adding new applications in the launcher uses the Project title by default.
• Applications may contain spaces in their name. However, when launching from command/terminal, spaces should be escaped with%20. For example, if our application was named my project, then we could all it with the following:

"C:\ClientLauncher\visionclientlauncher.exe" application=my%20project

Command Line Arguments

Argument	Description
application	The name of the application to launch.
window.mode	Controls the client mode. Available options are: window: Launches the client in Windowed Mode fullscreen: Launches the client in Fullscreen Mode
screen	The screen index indicates which monitor to use.
fallback.application	The name of the application to use if the number of retries has been exceeded. The fallback is only utilized if the Retries setting is greater than 0.
timeout	The maximum number of seconds to allow for any gateway communication. Any communication that exceeds this amount will cause the Vision client launcher to abort the communication and try again if configured.
retries	How many times to attempt to contact a gateway again if an error occurred during communication. Available values are: -1 : Retry indefinitely, or until the launcher is manually closed. 0 : Zero retries, or abort after the first failure. 1 (or more): Determines the number of retries: i.e., a value of "5" means five retries. If the number of retries is exceeded, then the launcher will attempt to launch the Fallback Application. If the number of retries is exceeded, then the Launcher will attempt to launch the Fallback Application
init.heap	The initial heap size (memory) for the client.
max.heap	The maximum heap size (memory) for the client
-Djavaws.launchparams	Defines client tags that can be overwritten upon launch. The use of this argument alone only defines the client tags that will be overwritten. Setting a value on the tags can be done by an additional argument that utilizes the tag names delimited by a semicolon: // Establishes the tag names -Djavaws.launchparams="Tag1;Tag2" // Sets values on the tags -Djavaws.launchparams.Tag1=10 -Djavaws.launchparams.Tag2=20 //An actual call would look like: "C:\ClientLauncher\visionclientlauncher.exe" application=myproject -Djavaws.launchparams="Tag1;Tag2" -Djavaws.launchparam.Tag1=10 -Djavaws.launchparam.Tag2=20
config.json	Allows you to point the launcher to a launcher configuration file from command line. Doing so will start running an instance of the launcher using the configurations in the file as temporary overrides. The argument expects a path to a JSON export file, specifically the same file that's created by the Export Launcher Config button under the launcher's Settings menu. "C:\ClientLauncher\visionclientlauncher.exe" config.json="C:\Users\MyUser\Desktop\vision-client-launcher.json"