AB PICO GFX ---- Bar Graph from 0-10 VDC

Dear List.

A few days ago I purchased the GFX pico, Picosoft 6.10 software and a Allen Bradly Ultrasonic Senosr that has a range of 15'.
Yes I am a novice, but I have been around electrical industry for thrity years. That does not make me a programmer I know.

What I was going to do was install the sensor to read the depth of a tank full of stones as they were discharged out of a shoot.

I have gotten the scaling done to read the footage I need and displayed on the GFX LCD. I also need to get a Bar Graph that matches the Footage of the tank to display. I have been trying to program and read up on this for over 10 hours without anything that looks or works at all.
I finally found a German version of the Moeller equal and have tried to break out the code to understand how they do the bargraph increments. It was very helpful, but, I cannot find an example that I could use either a function block or analog in data to turn on my bit graphics as the footage number increases or decreases. The best I have been able to do is use AR function block that sets a marker bit. If that bit is on, then turn on part one of the bar graph. the next series of AR blocks would also turn on a marker bit and overlay the first in a larger bar fashion. All of my graphs just flicker even though the voltage signal input is solid and not drifting. (set up is in my office and no noise, short cable) I know I probably have several variables incorrect. What is the best way to read the data into the Visulation Blocks?

Can any body direct me to a book somewhere that I can physically see an application running that reads the analog signal and adjust a GFX bar graph accordingly?

THANK ALOT........

Regards
Rix

Rix,
I feel your pain brother. I too, am fighting the bar graph problem, except I needed three. Here's how I did it:

First, I created a single segment image in windows paint; basically a long box, filled it black, and saved it to my documents folder as a .bmp.

Second, In Picosoft, I went to my screen editor and dragged the bitmap to the screen. By clicking and dragging the blue bitmap box to your screen, a window pops up, asking you to locate the bitmap you just created. Select it, and hit OPEN. Your box will appear on the screen, and you can size it accordingly with the handles. Some experimentation with bitmap sizes will be needed here, because the PICO screen resolution sucks. Don't expect a high res bar graph. I've tried and can't get one that's perfect, however, it will work.

Three. Once you get all your bar graph elements dragged on to the screen and sized, you have to set up an association for each one. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we have to go to our ladder logic and set some threshholds. For the PICO, a 0-10v input results in an input value range of 2~1018. Let's say you want a 10 segment bar graph, and you dragged 10 bars onto your screen; for this to work, you'll wind up creating 10 rungs in your logic; one for each segment.

Rung #1; start by dragging an Analog comparator/threshold value switch to the first position in the rung. Under the parameters tab, Set the operand for I1 at AI-1, or analog input 1. Set the operand for I2 at NU, or Numerical Constant. Next to that box, enter a value of 100, or 1/10 of your total value range.

In the mode selection box under parameters, click the drop down and select "greater than" mode.

Now, drag a marker to the end of the rung, which will complete your rung. What you've created is a threshold swith that will activate your marker when the analog input has exceeded an input of 100.

Repeat this procedure for each segment; i.e. Rung 2 will have a threshold setting of 200, activating marker 2; rung 3 will have a threshold setting of 300, activating marker 3, etc.

Forthly, go back to your visualization tab and screen editor. Highlight your first bar graph segment, and select the "visibility" tab. Select associate via: "boolean operands". Select operand "marker", and number "1". Under bit logic, select "break". Repeat this for all of your remaining bitmaps/bar sements.

It's a long drawn out thing, but ultimately you're gonna have a bar graph with 10 segments that are associated with the level of your analog input.

This can also be achieved by using the Block Comparitor function in your ladder logic. No matter which function block type you choose, just remember that you only have 32 of each to play with, so don't get too crazy. You want to leave some unused for other requirements in the logic (if any).

Hope this helped,

Mark

GREAT INFO!! I used this information to help me understand some of the analog functions of the PICO...

Great reading!!