Its been a long time since we released a new version of the PowerVision Software Platform and I am pleased to announce that we will soon be ready to release the next version...PowerVision 2.6. In the next week we will open up a beta group to allow access to the software and documentation. Below you will find a brief overview of PowerVision 2.6 as well as information to consider before joining the beta. Most of the features have come from you as requests which we track and work on with each release. If you wish to be a part of the 2.6 Beta Group please send me a PM and I will make sure you are included in the group when its launched.

PowerVision 2.6

PowerVision 2.6 is the next public version of the PowerVision Platform and is the direct upgrade from PowerVision 2.3. What happened to 2.4 and 2.5? Don't worry, you didn't miss anything. These releases were completed, tested and in use internally at Murphy but as they contained very few improvements for our customers they were not publicly released. Instead we chose to keep our users on a stable 2.3 release and put any bugs we found into patches which you have seen since the initial release. Here are just some of the features in PowerVision 2.6. More details will be included in the beta and final releases.

• Support for Grouping of Screen Objects. You can now group objects. This makes showing and hiding as well as programming much easier as you can operate on the group.
• Support for File Extensions. You can now directly launch PowerVision by clicking a .murphyConfig File.
• Support for Primitives. This allows you to create complex graphics without using images. Combine Rectangles, Circles and Ellipses to generate User Interface elements without the need to get out your graphics and drawing tools.
• Improved Programming tools. The Programming Tools have been streamlined and improved with numerous tweaks throughout. Also included is a new Variable Grid for editing large numbers of variables without having to edit each one separately.
• Support for the latest hardware. This release adds support for the new PV780 display which replaces the PV750. It also introduces our new platform hardware supporting the PV350 and PV380. Please note that this version of the tool does not directly support the 750 however that all current PV750 configurations will be upgraded to PV780 when they are opened in PowerVision 2.6

Beta Considerations

• PowerVision 2.6 Beta is for testing purposes only. It has been fully tested internally but small changes are ongoing. As such there may be small problems that you will encounter. Please let us know when you see them and we will correct them as quickly as we can.
• We will make every attempt to ensure that configurations built with the Beta upgrade to the final release. In rare events there may be an issue that prevents this but its very unlikely.
• We ask that you test the release and submit any issues you see in the beta forum. We will respond and fix things as quickly as we can.

I look forward to getting PowerVision 2.6 into the hands of our users and hope you will be pleased to see the changes that you helped us build.