To create a data source, click on “Data source” in the Project Explorer under Communication and then on the button for “Add data source” (marked in red).

The data source input screen opens.

General settings for all data source types

• Active You can activate or deactivate the data source via the checkbox. Deactivation is useful to prevent data sources that are not accessible from constantly trying to reconnect, causing error messages and thus filling up the log unnecessarily. All controls that then want to use this data source receive a one-off message that the data source is deactivated. During the start process (loading window), a corresponding symbol indicates the deactivation of the data source. The data source is always activated by default.
• Name Assign a name for the data source.
• Type In QuickHMI, you have the option of creating different data source types. You can choose from the following data source types:

– S7

– OPC UA

– TWINCAT

– MODBUS Master / MODBUS Slave

– KNX

– DataBase

– File system

– MQTT

– Allen-Bradley

– InfluxDB

– Web service

– Java_API

• Simulation If you do not have access to the data source, you have the option of simulating it.
  To do this, select the “True” property under “Simulation“. In this case, when you start the runtime, you have the option of manually filling the variables you created later with values in order to check the correctness of your functionalities. (Created data sources can also be released for the simulation by activating them in the simulation settings for the runtime mode).
• Text encoding Here you can select the text encoding selected in some data sources. This is set to “Western European (Windows)” by default and therefore does not usually need to be adjusted.
• Refresh rate (ms) The refresh rate specifies the interval at which you receive variable changes from the data source in the visualization.
• Force read The standard behavior of data sources is that only variables that are also used in the project are read. So if you create variables or import variables and then only use some of these variables, only the variables that are in use are retrieved from the data source. All variables that are affected by external logging are also retrieved.
  
  By activating this option, you overwrite this default behavior and all variables, regardless of their use, are read.
  
  This option can also only be activated for individual variables in the variable settings .

In addition, depending on the data source type selection, data source-specific setting options open. You can find out which specific setting options you have for the various data sources below.

---