Touchscreen Issues

There is some HMI or SCADA application running on the PC that is communicating with the PLC. It could be a Wonderware application, could be RS View, could be Citect, could be Cimplicity, could be Intellutions, or any of a host of others. Whatever the application, that's where you need to look to figure out what the button on the touch screen is supposed to control.

I agree, ELO touchscreens normally work with some form of SCADA/HMI or specific app software...(I havent seen or known of one being used in any other fashion nor does their documentation show working directly with plc's.) I have several ELO screens used with a vision system that uses its own software, as Steve stated look for the program that is using the screen then determine what devices/adapters are used between it and the PLC.

I doubt this will be a 5 minute diagnostic. Good luck.

I agree that it is probably running an HMI on the PC. I don't think you should be worrying about the touch screen monitor. I think if you replaced the monitor with a normal monitor you would find it would work the same only instead of being touchscreen it would be "mouse click".

Okay more info.....
I have been digging throught the program and am having a hard time trying to figure out what is talking to what. Here is a layout of what I have:


Cabinet 1 Cabinet 2 Cabinet 3
slc 5/01 slc 5/03 slc 5/01
1747-DCM-1/2 1747-SN RIO scanner 1747-DCM-1/2


Cabinet 4
PC with Touchscreen
running back to Cabinet2


By looking on the 5/03, can I see things that are happening in the other slc's by looking into the scanner file?


Steve

Something is strange here...

Have you taken over this problem/project from somebody else ?
I ask, because somebody has made a HMI program or at least set it up on the PC. That person or company should be contacted in order to maintain or troubleshoot the system.

If the company has gone bottoms-up or the person has been fired or something like that, and you have to make it work with no knowledge about the HMI, then proceed:

1. If possible, find any software documentation for the system.

Find out what HMI package or other software is set up on the PC to display the on-screen button.
2. Search the Windows start-menu, maybe you can find an installed HMI package there.
or 3. Open the Windows task-manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and find the active applications, one of them should be the HMI software.

If you find out what software it is, you can proceed from there, but it can be a very hard trip before you get that button to work

Okay, well did some digging today and I can already see the worms crawling out of the cabinet it is located in. I have got to checking the autoexec.bat and config.sys files since it never does load Windows NT, but runs in DOS. I ran out of time today but tomorrow I am going to see if it will boot to NT so I can snoop around there some more. I know there are two interface cards one near the PLC and one in the computer cabinet and that they are 12v. There is also a, what I believe to be, serial card or the port off of the card in the PC that runs to the SLC also. I will do some more investigating tomorrow and post my findings. Thanks so far guys.


Steve

Yeah forgot to mention that I have shouldered this beast from someone else / company simply cause their "engineer" was supposed to have been here to look at it 4 weeks ago and never hear anything back, so I am point man on it now.......




Great



Steve

Steve,

you should try to locate the documentation for the system, in particular the SOFTWARE documentation. The hardware you can investigate yourself, but the software can be difficult or impossible to sort out.
The supplier should ALWAYS provide so much documentation that the situation that you are in can be avoided. If they do not have 24h support then the should also supply program source code for all systems involved.

If the software is a standard HMI or SCADA package then you might be able to dig into it.
But if the software is proprietary, then only the original supplier can maintain it.

If there is nothing special about what the PC does, only displaying some buttons and settings and such, then I would consider using a standard operator panel (like a Panelview for AB PLC's) rather than a PC with HMI software.