Re: Octave-Scilab co-simulation toolbox

[Nicholas Jankowski]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 5:38 AM, Romanov Alexey <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,
I've finished sci_cosim toolbox. The main idea of this toolbox is to add the Simulink functionality into Octave.  From the point of view of a researcher Simulink is an external application for MATLAB, that just shares common variable workspace. As you now the most featured open source Simulink alternative is xcos from Scilab. I tried to use Scilab as my main tool, but its quite different from Octave. Also there is no working debugger in Scilab. So I've decided to use xcos as an alternative for Simulink and Octave as an alternative for MATLAB, and write toolbox for variable exchange between those programs workspaces.

To use sci_cosim you will need octave 4.0.0 with sockets toolbox, and Scilab 5.5.2 with Toolbox Backdoor (could be added by ATOMS package manager from Technical category).

sci_cosim toolbox has few functions and very simple to use.

First you should manually run both Octave and Scilab. Also check that Toolbox Backdoor was correctly loaded in SciLab. It should write "BackDoor: listening to connections on TCP port 28020" in Scilab console during startup.

Once per session you should run  sci_connect  function in Octave to connect to Scilab. In the end of session you should disconnect from Scilab using sci_disconnect

After that you can transfer any variables to Scilab workspace using  sci_setvar function, and back from Scilab to Octave workspace using  sci_getvar function;
Also you can set variables and even  execute commands in Scilab with sci_cmd function.

And of course you can start xcos simulation from Octave using  sci_sim  function, same as Simulink simulation could be started using sim command.

With sci_cosim toolbox you can use only xcos without using Scilab scripting for your simulations.

sci_sim_example.m contains simple example of sci_cosim toolbox usage. To run it correct, sci_sim_example.m and sci_ap_model.xcos should be in Octave's current directory.

On my PC there wasn't any critical perfomance changes between running xcos simulation from Octave and Scilab scripts.

Toolboxs prepared package and source code can be found on https://github.com/amromanov/sci_cosim

Do not hesitate to contact me in case of any questions or bugs found.

Alexey Romanov

Since it's locally handshaking via TCP ports, anticipate any firewall issues on Windows machines?  I recall it being a repeated issue on older versions of Maxima that used sockets to connect the gui to the executable.  Not really a huge issue, just 'one more thing' to possibly look out for.

As Simulink is a 'critical app' used to justify the need for Matlab over FOSS alternatives, I think this is definitely positive progress.

Nick J.