Utilities

ZeROSMQ contains several utilities that help development and data visualization:

  • By default, the master runs its control service on port TCP 5555. If you don’t want to use it (maybe it’s already taken, or maybe it’s blocked) you can change it: in the master, find the call to init(), at the end, and override the default port (init(12345), for example). This will start the master on your custom port. After that, on all nodes, you need to also override the port in the zerosmq.init('TAG') call, by changing it to zerosmq.init('TAG', 12345).
  • There is a logging function that uses the tag that you passed to zerosmq.init(). To use it, call zerosmq.log('some message') from anywhere in your code, after zerosmq.init(). This will print the message that you passed, plus a tag at the beginning to help you distinguish it from other nodes’ messages.
  • There are zerosmq.unsubscribe('topic') and zerosmq.stop_publishing('topic') functions, which stop a subscription and publications in a given topic, respectively.

Warning

These functions are not tested. Use at your own risk.

  • There is a graphing utility which creates an image showing all nodes and their communications. It is described here.
  • There is also a plotting utility which can show a graph of any topic or set of topics, in real time. It is described here.
  • ZeROSMQ can record all data published to it, and replay it later. This allows for simpler debugging, and also aids with data processing, since it can be done after the data is collected. This functionality is described here.

Utilities