String information on HMI

[HJTRBO]

Hi all,

I am looking for a bit of a hand here. I have a turnkey project for a client coming up.

I was thinking of putting a scrolling banner type status screen that displays a string of data from the PLC.

What I would like to display is; current step number (1-10), operation mode (3 states), temperature (deg C), and PLC RTC time & date (HH:MM DD/MM/YY).

So there are 4 data areas of the PLC that numeric charchters are to be read from, and hopefully combined into one string that the HMI can display.

I have never worked with strings in my life, nor do I know much about the fundamentals of a string construction, so go easy on me here.

I am using a ML 1100 and a PVC 600.

Is this a little to advanced for a newbie. I can achieve what I wish to with data displays, but I thought a scrolling banner would be pretty sweet, and save a tonne of space.

First off, can I intergrate separate data areas into 1 string (I think I have a 255 character limit on the PVC) with a copy to or something like that?

If so, is it easy to manipulate the string to display useable information?

Sorry for been so clueless.

Cheers Nathan

[robertmee]

You might be SOL, or at least not be able to obtain a straightforward solution. The SLCs, ML1200 and some ML1500s support ASCII instructions which would make your string construction a snap. There are instructions to convert integers to strings and instructions to concatenate those strings. I use them all the time for date/time construction in a SLC. With a ML1100, I'm not sure how to tell you to proceed. I'm not even sure that a ML1100 supports string types, so anything you did would have to be on the PV600 side, and I'm not sure that's possible.

Sorry couldn't be of more help, but maybe a ML1100 guru can confirm.