Sysquake
Sysquake is innovative, powerful and flexible
software for understanding systems, solving problems, and designing products. What
makes it special is its unparalleled graphical interactivity.
The four figures presented here show four different ways to represent a
controlled system. Theory tells that the system is stabilized by the digital
controller if the closed-loop poles are inside the unit circle, or if the point
-1 in the complex plane is on the left of the Nyquist curve. Robustness margins
give a numerical indication about how far the stability limit is. When you drag
one of the closed-loop poles with the mouse (shown as crosses in the upper left
figure), a new controller is computed and all the figures are updated nearly
instantaneously. This aids in understanding how quantities are related to each
other and designing better controllers extremely quickly. The animation
shows several distinct values of the controller; but in Sysquake, you feel
how the system responds to your manipulations and can observe, for instance, how
the frequency of the step response is related to the position of the poles.
And of course, you can enter the model of your own system, be it the electrical
drive which sets the position of the head of a hard disk, the hydraulic systems
which positions the flaps of the next supersonic jet, or the laboratory experiment
of your tutorial.
Other screen snapshots of
Sysquake for Windows,
Sysquake for Mac OS X,
and Sysquake for Linux are available.
They can be used freely provided they are not modified.
Sysquake can be used in many areas, including:
Simulation of dynamic systems can benefit greatly from Sysquake's
interactivity. Parameters have often long-term effects which are difficult to
deduce intuitively from the model or from a few static simulation graphics. With
Sysquake, their manipulation will make apparent their role and which compromise
may be obtained.
Features
- Powerful
- With a built-in language including more than 630
native functions, operators and commands easily extensible with your own, Sysquake
can be used in a broad range of areas. Most functions accept arrays as well as scalar arguments.
Native data types include real and complex numbers, integer numbers, boolean values,
character strings, quaternions, lists, cell arrays, and structures. They can be
extended with objects. Graphic functions include ones
specific to dynamic systems (such as time and frequency responses) as
well as general ones for displaying any kind of data.
- Fast
- What would be slow in a script written in a high-level interpreted
mathematical language has been implemented very efficiently in native machine
code. The mathematical interpreter itself is very fast.
- Ready to use
- Sysquake comes with a rich set of applications for a broad range of areas,
such as classical control, robust control and digital filters.
- Easy to use
- The graphic user interface is very simple and intuitive. Multiple level Undo
permits the user to experiment without the fear of losing performances obtained
so far.
- Easy to extend
- Sysquake is based on LME, an interpreter specialized for numerical
computation. Only the code necessary for displaying the figures and processing
manipulations from the user is required. The management of graphics, zoom, saving
and loading data, undo, etc. is provided by Sysquake. This results in small scripts, developed quickly and easy to maintain.
Full access to the file system enables the exchange of data with other
applications. The programs which come with Sysquake as text files can be studied
to help you learn how to program Sysquake, modified if you have special needs,
and reused in your own programs.
- Two means are available to extend LME, Sysquake's Matlab-compatible programming
language:
- Libraries, which are collections of related functions, are written
in LME and can be tested easily with Sysquake's command-line interface and built-in
debugger and profiler. Object-oriented programming extends the kind of data which can be used
directly by LME and contribute to make your code easier to develop and reuse.
- Extensions are developped with your standard compiler, such
as C or Fortran; they offer high performance and permit the access to any
hardware connected to your computer.
- Easy to integrate
- Sysquake uses text files for its programs and its data. You can create them
by hand with any text editor and exchange data with other applications. Figures
can be copied to other applications or saved as high-quality EPS files.
- To make easier the exchange of data between Sysquake applications or
with other software, Sysquake supports an advanced mechanism based on the
Copy/Paste paradigm. Data conversion is performed when necessary in a
transparent way.
- Sysquake can also act as a server and accept requests from other applications
to exchange data and notify them about user actions. The protocol is OLE Automation
on Windows and XML-RPC on other platforms. For Java applications, SysquakeLink
offers a high-level interface, common to all platforms.
- Application builder
- Sysquake Application Builder, provided with Sysquake, allows the
creation of stand-alone applications which can be redistributed freely.
For instance, you can back up a technical report with the software
illustration of the performance of an audio filter, or give to your students
the simulator of an economic system to be modeled without letting
them see the source code. Sysquake Application Builder supports most
Sysquake functions, with neither extensions nor the command line interface.
Supported Platforms
Sysquake runs on the following platforms:
- PC Pentium or compatible with Windows XP or Vista;
- Macintosh PowerPC or Intel with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) or higher;
- PC Pentium or compatible with Linux, X Window and GTK+ 2.
Sysquake is available in three versions: Sysquake, with interactive graphics,
advanced user interface and powerful programming language; Sysquake Pro, with
bundled extensions (I/O, databases, etc.) and support for your own,
remote procedure calls, and Sysquake Application Builder; and Sysquake LE, a
free edition useful for basic interactive applications and to discover the
power of interactivity. Before version 4.1, Sysquake Pro was named Sysquake,
and what is distributed now as "Sysquake" didn't exist.
Sysquake LE is the free basic version of Sysquake.
Download it now!
Sysquake is the professional version with these additional features:
- Integrated development environment
- Sysquake has a built-in editor which makes easier the development of new applications.
- Low-level file access
- Functions such as fopen, fclose, etc. can be
used in Sysquake programs. This enables the integration of Sysquake with
other applications.
- Extension files
- Extensions add new commands to the language of Sysquake. Amongst the
extensions provided with Sysquake is Lapack, which adds high-quality linear algebra functions
such as null for getting a basis for the null space of a set
of vectors, and logm for calculating the logarithm of a
square matrix; SerialPort, for communicating with devices using an RS-232 connection;
and ODBC (Windows), MyExt and MySQL, for accessing relational databases. Sysquake also accepts extensions
you develop yourself in C, for instance to connect to real-time acquisition hardware.
- Sysquake Application Builder
- Stand-alone applications can be created and distributed to colleagues, students,
or on the Web without requiring your users to install anything.
- EPS and PDF output
- Sysquake can save figures directly as EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) and PDF
(Portable Document Format) files, ready to be imported in your scientific publications.
- Technical support
- In addition to our Google group
everybody may subscribe to, Calerga is committed to providing personal technical
support and help to Sysquake clients.
A table summarizes the differences between the
three versions. You can also browse its User Manual.
Purchase
Sysquake is distributed by our resellers or directly by
Calerga.
Sysquake LE can be downloaded from the Download page.
Release notes describing recent changes are also
available.
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