M5, the new interrogation software from PTAGIS, is now available for download. M5 is a replacement for both M4 (which has primarily been used at PTAGIS-maintained interrogation sites) and MiniMon (which is still in use at some smaller interrogation sites managed by other organizations). It is intended to run continuously on a computer at an interrogation site to collect data from connected transceivers or controllers and submit the collected data to PTAGIS.
It consists of two main components: the M5 Monitor Service and the M5 Control Panel. The Monitor Service can be installed on 64-bit Windows or ARM64 Debian Linux and runs in the background to communicate with the devices and submit data files to PTAGIS. The Control Panel can only be installed on Windows and provides a user interface to configure and interact with the Monitor Service. It can communicate with a Monitor Service running on the same machine or a different machine, providing it can connect to that machine through a network address. A third component, called the M5 Terminal Utility, is also provided primarily to assist with troubleshooting device connections.
The M5 page provides links to download installers for the Windows and Linux versions of the M5 Monitor Service, along with the Windows installers for the M5 Control panel and the M5 Terminal Utility. The M5 help file provides extensive documentation on how to install, configure, and monitor M5.
M5 has been running in production on Windows IPCs at most PTAGIS-maintained sites since fall of 2021. The Linux version of the M5 Monitor Service has been tested extensively on a Raspberry Pi running a standard version of Raspberry Pi OS (previously called Raspbian) in the Kennewick lab, but has not been tested on any other versions of Linux. Please contact us if you have any questions about installing and running any of the M5 components on Windows or Linux.