MP270B/Protool Help

Hi,
My experience to date with protool has been with Text panels, Finally i get to try something new with a touchscreen, but alot of what i'm trying to achieve is either not possible or more likely my lack of experience

Ok here goes:

I would like to have a boxed manual function control (two buttons -Advance+Retract,state view & possibly a textlist) wrapped neatly within a box. The best i can come up with is using a rectangle and setting it to transparent, but i would like the back ground solid and a different colour to the screen colour, If i try to put buttons etc on top they are hidden.

Can this be done?

Also similar to above, i have a Picture of the fixture which i would like to show sensor status on top of the picture randomly ?

Is it possible to have text vertical as well as horizontal?

Alarm/Event Buffers: is it possible to assign them to a screen instead of firing them from a button? i think it looks messy like this,i have put the alarm messages within a screen,but i cant see an option to dedicate it to the buffer?

If anyone can help, i would greatly apprieciate it

Thanks
STL

I managed to sort out the screen questions! dont know why it didnt work before?

still no luck yet with the message Buffers!

to add more detail, i have a message view setup in a screen accessed from a menu, i have resized and edited the columns till i was happy with how it looks. Now the alarm buffer, i only seem to be able to access it through a button trigger function and it just pops up. The thing i'm unhappy with is the back colour, text size and general position. Hopefully its something i've missed and i can access this through a key to a seperate screen and edit it.

Likewise with the event message buffer i need to have it displayed similar to a simple message view on the main operator screen permenantly.

i'm beginning to hate protool

Help files + Manuals are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard

Not sure I can make out exactly what you want to achieve.
Sounds like you are not happy with the default pop-up window for alarm messages, and that you prefer to have a message view on a separate screen in stead. That is certainly doable.
Put a message view on the desired view, and then specify what has to be displayed by means of its properties. You should at least select "alarms to be acknowledged".
There are many other possibilities. Specify excatly what you want.

And no, you cannot have vertical texts in Protool.

Hi Jesper,
apologies if i was unclear, here's what i've got:

an Alarm screen, although to enter you press the key its not function activated ie "show alarm buffer" its just layed out on top of a blank screen and shows active errors only - this i'm happy with.

I want to have another screen setup like above but showing the alarm buffer, basically to show personnel a history of the fault before they arrived. Currently i can only show the buffer by assigning "show alarm buffer" to a key, which fires a pop up screen with the contents of the buffer. By default it looks horrid (white background, text to big etc) and the X to close it is to small.

i cant see anything in the properties to display the buffer like my active message screen.

EVENT MESSAGE SCREEN

again i need to show a history of actions to the Maintenance personnel ie "machine switched to manual" "robot switched to automatic" to help with the history of a problem and who had been messing around with it prior.

again same as the Alarm buffer i can only fire it from button function.

Hope this is a bit clearer

Thanks STL

Hi STL.

Yes the default pop-up view looks awful.
You can tweak a custom message view enough to make it look prettier.

In order to get historic alarm messages you have to do the following:
1. Create an Archive ("AlarmLog" f.ex). Set Data source to "Messages". Behavior on restart to "append to existing file".
NOTICE: For an MP panel you need a flashcard installed for the archive file !
2. go to System .. Settings .. Messages .. Archives and specify that Alarm messages to be stored in the archive you have created.
3. Create an alarm view where the source is "MessageArchive" in stead of "Messages".
Done. You can do the same for event messages.
(I am sure I have described this somewhere on the forum allready).

Hi Jesper,
Ill give it a try this evening (working nights!!) and let you know how i get on.

I did try to search to see if someone else has had a similar problem, but i didnt use the right key words

Thanks again

Hi Jesper,
Thanks for your help,everything is working well with the Event/Alarm buffer screens.

I have a few questions though if you dont mind:

I have a pushbutton on the console to reset alarms in the PLC, However i still have to press "ACK" on the message screen to clear the message from the screen, Some of the messages are set and others locked on by logic, Is it possible to clear the old messages just from the pushbutton and remove the ACK key?

Also i have a message view(Event Buffer) trimmed down on a screen which is active most of the time, It seems to me it only updates on entry to the screen. Is it possible to set the archive to update continously to the screen?

Thanks

STL

Hi STL.

1. I think you are asking for if you can assign the acknowledge function to a custom key, in stead of the standard ACK key.
That is certainly doable.
The secret handshake is to specify the correct screen object name to the function Message_Display_Acknowledge_Message. If you check the properties of the alarm view that you have created, you will notice that Protool has assigned a name to the message view.
A tip is also to change the name of the alarm view from "Object_xx" to something meaningful i.e. "My_alarm_view". That makes the configuration of the custom ack button easier.

2. I only use alarm message myself, not event messages. They should work almost the same though.
On my alarm message screen new alarms update automatically.
So I cannot recreate the behaviour you describe.

Hi Jesper,

The secret handshake is to specify the correct screen object name to the function Message_Display_Acknowledge_Message. If you check the properties of the alarm view that you have created, you will notice that Protool has assigned a name to the message view.
A tip is also to change the name of the alarm view from "Object_xx" to something meaningful i.e. "My_alarm_view". That makes the configuration of the custom ack button easier.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is how i have it set up at the moment but with the addition of "set bit" Function to reset the PLC Side.

My ideal solution would be to use an external pushbutton on the enclosure itself and no acknowledge at all on the HMI, I tried to assign the "Message_Display_acknowledge" Function to a tag but it isnt available! I can see no way of assigning a PLC Input to this function.

2. I only use alarm message myself, not event messages. They should work almost the same though.
On my alarm message screen new alarms update automatically.
So I cannot recreate the behaviour you describe.

Click to expand...

Its the Event Buffer i'm trying to read with the screen on view.

I set up a few messages and triggered them from a VAT table, They only show up if i leave the screen and then re-enter. Visually you can see a clock showing, which i assume is reading the log file and then the message is there.

Is there no way the buffer can update each event without exiting and re-entering the screen?

Thanks for the tip on Object renaming, Makes life so much easier

STL

paintbrush mode

JesperMP said:

And no, you cannot have vertical texts in Protool.

Click to expand...

if you really need some 'eye candy'... you have to do it using bitmap... two-color bitmap with vertical text wouldn't eat much memory... i'm using these things often to "replace" axis around trends and similar jobs...

Hi STL.

I guess you want to acknowledge the currently displayed alarm in the alarm banner with a regular pushbutton. Like you have found out yourself this cannot be done.
You can acknowledge a single or several alarms with the "Alarm Ack. PLC" area pointer. The problem is, you cannot know which particular alarm that is currently displayed in the alarm banner, or selected in the alarm message view.

Hi Jesper,
Reading through other Protool/WinCC Flexible threads, I noticed you had commented with respect to WinCC Flexible. I have the option to update a second machine with a lot less demanding timescale to the same specification.

I have WinCC Flexible advanced, So this could be an opportunity to try it out.

I was wondering if it was much of an improvement on Protool? I believe there is support for Arrays and better support for Tag Import, but is it worth the learning curve.

Marius - Paint has been my savour on this project!!


Thanks again
STL

Hi again STL.

I have switched to WinCC Flex allready.
The initial going was quite rough, as the first versions was both unstable and slow.
Now it is quite stable, and if the PC is reasonable performant it is also acceptable fast (well not exactly fast, but you can work with it).
What it needs is a reasonable fast CPU (a slow laptop is handicapped), 1 GB RAM or better, and a reasonably fast HD (again a laptop is handicapped).

I think it is not a question if the trouble is worth the benefits. If you dont want to find an alternative to the Siemens platform then you HAVE to switch. Better sooner than later. The last generation of panels that were supported by Protool are being phased out at this very moment.

There are advantages with Flex over Protool:
Better graphics handling.
Reusable graphics objects.
Multiple protocols at the same time (also on the panels).
Editing is sometimes more clever.
"Report system error" should bring powerful diagnostics to your application (havent gotten aroun to trying it yet thogh).
Array tags.
And more.

There are also disadvantages and issues, but not enough to justify staying with Protool.