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Table of Contents > QUARC > Release Notes

QUARC 2021

These release notes describe the new features and changes introduced in QUARC 2021. They are divided into the sections enumerated below.

New Software Compatibility

QUARC 2021 has introduced compatibility with the following third-party software.

MATLAB R2021a

Compatibility with MATLAB, Simulink, and Simulink Coder R2021a has been added.

New Features

The new features introduced in QUARC 2021 are mentioned below.

Custom toolchains for QUARC targets

Toolchains support for all QUARC targets have been added. Toolchains provide better support for building generated code from MATLAB/Simulink toolboxes. It also support MATLAB Coder to build generated code from MATLAB scripts that can be run on QUARC targets.

Note that the use of toolchains would make the Simulink model to be incompatible with previous QUARC versions. Therefore for backward compatibility, a new QUARC menu entry is added to convert the model back to using non-toolchain build process.

New Devices Supported

QUARC 2021 may now interface to the devices listed below.

YDLIDAR

Support for the YDLIDAR X4 has been added to the Ranging Sensor block.

New Blocks

New blocks have been added to the QUARC Targets library in QUARC 2021. The new blocks are listed below.

Devices Blocks

Force Torque Sensor

The Force Torque Sensor block reads a force/torque sensor.

Sources Blocks

File Read

The File Read block reads a file from the local file system.

New Functions

New MATLAB functions have been added to the QUARC MATLAB functions in QUARC 2021. The new functions are listed below.

Script Functions

New script functions allow MATLAB scripts to be built to run on QUARC targets.

qc_build_script

The new qc_build_script MATLAB function builds a MATLAB script for a target.

qc_run_script

The new qc_run_script MATLAB function downloads and runs a script executable on a target.

qc_script_console

The new qc_script_console MATLAB function opens a console to monitor a script executable's standard input and output.

Improved Features

Some of the features improved in QUARC 2021 are enumerated below. There are a great many miscellaneous improvements that have not been listed. Only some of the highlights are listed below.

Quanser QArm

The Quanser QArm card now supports all expandable I/O features found on the end-effector DAQ! With this latest firmware release, users can now take full advantage of the end-effector’s functionality, providing access to plenty of digital I/O and analog inputs. All of the expandable I/O features are listed below:

The QArm also now supports watchdog timers for resetting Digital, PWM and Other output channels on watchdog expiry.

Please visit the QArm Help Page for more information.

Multimedia API

The video_capture_open and video_capture_read functions (for the Multimedia C API) and the VideoCapture.open and VideoCapture.read methods (for the Multimedia Python API) have been updated so that the image buffer does not need to be passed in to the open function, but instead is passed in to the read function.

MATLAB Coder support

Improved MATLAB Coder support for HIL.

Computation Time block

Fixed the issue in the Computation Time block where it was not always computing the correct time when there was more than one subrate task.

Sleep block

The accuracy of the Sleep block has been improved by taking into account inaccuracies in Windows timing, particularly with more recent Windows updates.

Miscellaneous

The following shows the miscellaneous changes in QUARC 2021.

QLabs

The Quanser Interactive Labs (QLabs) can now be installed as part of QUARC. QLabs provides collections of virtual hardware to that can be interfaced with QUARC.

 

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