Log Reader Stage

The log reader stage allows you to playback data from a log into the system, as if that data was being generated live.

It is the primary driver of the system when executing log-based simulations.

Configuration

Pass in a standard LogReaderConfiguration to the stage when you are constructing it. This allows you to specify the URL to the log you wish to play back.

Time Range

There are a few methods to determine the time range you want to play back. You can either set to minimum_time and maximum_time values directly, which will clip your time range to those values, or you can set maximum_playback_duration, which will limit playback to that duration.

Setting the duration configuration is a shortcut for saying “I want to playback 30 seconds of this log and I don’t want to calculate the time ranges myself”.

Shutdown Behavior

You can also determine if you want to shutdown the pipeline at the end of the log by setting shutdown_on_playback_complete. This is the default for most log-based simulations.

Channel Playback

By default, channels are only loaded and played from the log in two conditions:

  • if at least one stage in your pipeline subscribed to that channel
  • if no stages in your pipeline publish concrete types on that channel

This boosts overall log reading performance, and reduces confusion in having multiple publishers of the same data. However, you may want to playback everything (possibly for debugging).

Set force_playback_all_messages to true in that case.

Interacting

The log reader stage immediately begins playing back on startup. You can control this with a few messages, which are defined in the log_reader_controls.rbuf file, and received over the controls channel.

The LogReaderCommand message allows you to specify seeking commands (either absolute or relative), along with a duration that you wish to play for. See the file for more comments on how to set those fields.

Metrics

The log reader stage periodically publishes two statistics structures:

  • LogReaderStageLogMetadata, at 1Hz, on metadata
  • LogReaderStageStatistics, at 50Hz, on statistics

The metadata structure contains information about the loaded log, including GUID, name, and time information.

The higher rate statistics structure contains the current time and an indication if you are playing or not. This higher rate message is used to send a minimal amount of data at a high frequency, to allow GUIs to update smoothly.