E200 and E-Designer Programming Help

I need some help with E-designer. I can't seem to understand how to get a simpler timer to work. This timing block has me confused. I seem to have some registers in the timing block, but I can't seem to access them from anything I've tried. The manual is of little help.

I also can only find info that reference times can be done....but nowhere on HOW.

Example:

Low Speed Block
------------------------
| Low Speed 16:13| <--time of day. Works great!)
| Mix time: #### |
| Start time: #### |
| |
| Start |
-------------------------

I can't seem to get ANY timers to work. The mix time should be a timer on how long the mixer will run in low speed. The start time should be the time of day that the operator wants the mixing cycle to start.

I'm also having trouble just getting the LEDs to work. They work in the demo program. So, I know they are functional. I would like F2(D12) light to be red when accessing the Low Speed block. When start is pressed, I want the F2(d12) LED green while the mixer should start when the start time arrives and then for the alloted mix time.

Any and all help or pointing would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

PS. I am trying very hard on this thing. I've read that people are saying it's very easy. I got the menus down pat. I'm having trouble understanding the referenceing data and addresses.

I'm currently running the E200 w/ the demo driver. Is there a problem there? I will eventually run it on the Melsec FX. Other than testing functionality, is there any other disavantage for not being connected to the FX?

God, I have TONS of questions.

Just point the timer tag to a register, say D200 then use D200 as your preset like T1 D200

The LED's need a value. I have never used the demo driver, always tested and programmed connected to a real PLC

In the help section you will see what values do to the colours and blink rate of the LED's

like this

(Hex) (Dec) Blinkingfrequency Color

00 0 - None

01 1 - Green

02 2 - Red

11 17 5 Green

12 18 5 Red

21 33 2.5 Green

ETC ETC

With E designer,you have to nominate a register in the plc and in the plc program move a value into that register to make the led go RED,,,GREEN,,, BLINK etc

You problem is likely down to different types of number format. Numbers that we use in PLCs generally take one of three different formats, integer 16bit (word), integer 32bit (double word) and floating point (double word). In the days when memory was scarce and expensive you always used as little as possible, so why store a small numer using 32 bits when you could equally do it in 16 bits. Unfortunately the different number foramts are not compatible, so if you have a 16 bit number in the PLC and try to display it as a 32 bit number on the HMI you will probably end up with a wrong value or the #### marks on screen. I don't know the Mitsi range but very often the data registers are 8 bits (1 byte) long and then memory formats are made up by using blocks of bytes, so for a 16 bit number you would use 2 lots of 8 bits. So for the demo system if you wanted to put a value into an LED register you need a integer 16bit and that would use two bytes of memory. Say you chose to use D0, in fact in terms of memory you would use D0 and D1 and if you try to use D1 elsewhere it will mess things up.

So if that actually made things clearer you are looking for data types problems and using memory locations twice.

Trying to explain that reminded me why I am not a teacher.

Bryan