Created Date: May 03,2018

Created by: darin

Hi all,

I'm fairly (really) new to the PLC world and am flailing with an architecture/implementation issue.

I have a plant growing system that I want to feed a recipe consisting of durations and setpoints for various inputs to the plant grow-house. For example, 8hr lights at 50%, 8hr lights at 75%, 8hr light at 0%. I want to wrap these up inside of 'stages ' (i.e. do the previous three steps 25 time). Follow that with another 'stage ' with different settings for the lights. You get the picture.

If I were writing a MCU or embedded PC program, I would model the above with a set of data types in arrays, and index/increment through them.

Is there some similar capability to load this sort of thing into a C-More and have it push to the PLCs it talks to?

From what I 've read, it seems the recipes are meant for discrete 'tags ' that get pushed to PLC memory by the C-more.

Any pointers as to how to structure this with a C-more and some BRX PLCs / Do-more would be welcome.

Thanks

Created Date: May 04,2018

Created by: franji1

I know how to do it from the PLC. See UDT User Data Types to define your own structure (call it RecipeStruct). Populate the fields of the structure with good names, proper data types (sadly, you cannot nest structures, only simple bit/numeric fields). Then create a data block of RecipeStruct's called MyRecipes (say 100). Then you can use a V register as an array index to your MyRecipes block.

So set V42 equal to 99, then reference MyRecipes .DurationA will reference MyRecipes99.DurationA.

UDTs are configured from PLC->System Configuration... Memory Configuration Entry, UDT tab.

If you need a "name " field, best to create a corresponding block of MyNames of STRINGs that is 100 long (same length as your MyRecipes block of RecipeStruct), and have the index correspond to the same one in MyRecipes. For example, MyNames23 string corresponds to recipe MyRecipes23, likewise MyNames string would correspond to MyRecipes .

I know an HMI can also do this, but I don't know HMI details. I know Do-more PLCs can do User Data Types and Arrays/Blocks.

Created Date: May 05,2018

Created by: darin

Franji1,

Yeah I got that far in my Do-more stuff (the UDTs and array), but I'm blocked on the HMI. The issue is I need a way to push sequences from an external database (on an on-site PC), and the easiest way for the database/web folks is to use the FTP capabilities on the C-more. Plus it's nice to have a screen on the process machine showing you what's going on ;-)