adccommunitymod (AutomationDirect) asked a question.
Created Date: January 07,2010
Created By: DetroitSound
**** This post has been imported from our legacy forum. Information in this post may be outdated and links contained in the post may no longer work.****
This is not really a problem for me , but more of a curiousity... My system is working fine. But as time goes on I'm learning more about the features :) and limitations :( involved. I'm happy with how this works and I am met with looks of amazement from my co-workers, and more importantly, management. I'm not going to monkey with this further. However... The last change I made was to operate the alarm when the predetermining count is reached (as well as my previous change to change the color of the display). Note rung 20 in the attached program... When the count is reached, I am using SC5 to toggle DS13 at 100 ms intervals. But the beeping is somewhat irregular. The normal operating screen on the Micro Touch is screen 1, and the reset button for the predetermining counter is on screen 3 (intentional - to help avoid resetting the counter by mistake. As a machine operator I realized this was a good idea). So the counter counts out, the display turns red and it beeps. Hit the previous screen / next screen buttons (F4 / F5 respectively), it beeps faster and more irregular. Reset the counter, the screen color changes back and the beeping stops. Originally I wanted to use SC4 to toggle it, but the result was that it sounded like Morse code, it was extremely irregular. SC6 is too slow. I'm not sure whether it is an issue with communication speed, the internal speed of the Click or the internal speed of the C-More Micro Touch. Again, it's not a problem, it's great to get the alarm at all and I expect that if I needed a more even beep I could connect a Sonalert or similar device to a contact. I'm just curious to why this is.
Created Date: January 07,2010
Created by: machua
Sounds like the c-more cannot process and update the program as quickly as the Click can. unfortunately the system control relays (sc4, sc5,sc6..) are fixed and you can't change the cycle duration. I have successfully used the drum to make my own custom flasher bit for an alarm project i did. Check out the attached example. 319 If you still are having synchronization issues even after you make your own custom flasher bit, you might have to consider connecting a physical buzzer out of the PLC output as you suggested.
Created Date: January 08,2010
Created by: DetroitSound
Sounds like the c-more cannot process and update the program as quickly as the Click can. unfortunately the system control relays (sc4, sc5,sc6..) are fixed and you can't change the cycle duration. I have successfully used the drum to make my own custom flasher bit for an alarm project i did. Check out the attached example. If you still are having synchronization issues even after you make your own custom flasher bit, you might have to consider connecting a physical buzzer out of the PLC output as you suggested.
If it was important, that's what I would do. Actually there is an advantage to the way it is working - these days, almost every piece of equipment, cell phones, etc, has a piezo alarm of some sort - but none have one that sounds like this. Once all the quirks are worked out this machine will be in the office and having a unique alarm is a benefit.
Like I said, it is working fine and sometimes it's best to avoid "feature creep ", I'm going to leave it as-is, although I added some 22 mm square buttons for start and stop. In running this machine I found the F1 & F2 buttons to start and stop the machine were inconvenient to use.
Now if I could just get it to run as good mechanically as it does electrically, I'd be a happy man.
Created Date: January 08,2010
Created by: Do-more PE
That isn't quite what causes the beep to be irregular.
To calculate the total time a HMI takes to get all of the PLC registers read/written is a bit complicated.
Basically you have to take all of the registers that the HMI is requesting including the background tasks such as alarms, trends, events, etc and figure out how many groups the HMI must make to request all of the data. The more spread out the registers are, the more requests it will take. Then you multiply the # of requests * the PLC scan time since for serial comms the PLC can only process one request per scan.
This will give you a rough idea of the total request time. There are more things that add into this, but this is a lowball estimate of how long the "round robin " will take. If the tims is longer than your timer for the buzzer, then you will get irregular beeps.
Hopefully this makes some sort of sense. If not let me know and I will try to expound on it as much as I am capable of.
Created Date: January 08,2010
Created by: Tubecut
As mentioned by ADC App Assist, the turn on time(s) for the beep , from PLC to HMI can be rather erratic. This can also apply to controlling the Function Key LED's (Cmore Micro) as well. A customer need a certain LED pattern when the PLC was at a certain state. Getting the patterns to be able to repeat the cycle was a real chore. Experimentation over a period of time and I was able to find the timing that seemed to be consistent.
As for as the alarm beep, we finally had to use an external sonar alert at the expense of precious outputs.
If these sorts of things are going to work, then they need to be a function internal to the HMI. The PLC-HMI comms are just too variable....
Created Date: January 08,2010
Created by: machua
As mentioned by ADC App Assist, the turn on time(s) for the beep , from PLC to HMI can be rather erratic...If these sorts of things are going to work, then they need to be a function internal to the HMI. The PLC-HMI comms are just too variable....
I second that. I haven't played with the C-More but I intend to in the future. Does it have a way to execute it's own buzzer program upon getting an alarm bit from the CLICK? It seems this would be more ideal and ensure predictability of its actions. I realize this is not a big deal to Detroitsound as he mentioned, but I'm just thinking of a situation where it could be critical.
Created Date: January 08,2010
Created by: Tubecut
Well, there is the alarm setup on the Cmore Micro. It turned out that we did not like the built in alarm on the HMI so we went to the external beep. The original complaint was they wanted a louder alert.
The project required PLC controlled beep and there was a conflict with writing to the HMI beep when the alarm was used. I think a more recent version of the Cmore Micro was to have resolved that. But, we moved on and at the moment not that concerned with the HMI beep.
Created Date: January 07,2010
Created by: DetroitSound
This is not really a problem for me , but more of a curiousity...
My system is working fine. But as time goes on I'm learning more about the features :) and limitations :( involved.
I'm happy with how this works and I am met with looks of amazement from my co-workers, and more importantly, management. I'm not going to monkey with this further. However...
The last change I made was to operate the alarm when the predetermining count is reached (as well as my previous change to change the color of the display). Note rung 20 in the attached program...
When the count is reached, I am using SC5 to toggle DS13 at 100 ms intervals. But the beeping is somewhat irregular. The normal operating screen on the Micro Touch is screen 1, and the reset button for the predetermining counter is on screen 3 (intentional - to help avoid resetting the counter by mistake. As a machine operator I realized this was a good idea). So the counter counts out, the display turns red and it beeps. Hit the previous screen / next screen buttons (F4 / F5 respectively), it beeps faster and more irregular. Reset the counter, the screen color changes back and the beeping stops.
Originally I wanted to use SC4 to toggle it, but the result was that it sounded like Morse code, it was extremely irregular. SC6 is too slow.
I'm not sure whether it is an issue with communication speed, the internal speed of the Click or the internal speed of the C-More Micro Touch.
Again, it's not a problem, it's great to get the alarm at all and I expect that if I needed a more even beep I could connect a Sonalert or similar device to a contact. I'm just curious to why this is.