Crimson 3.0 Glitches

I am working on a G310 application and did something goofy to my CF card.

I created 4 data logs with names that were larger than 8 characters. I didn't notice the effect right away, but it looks like I got a new empty folder at each update interval rather than newly appended data in a single file. Crimson never complained, and all seemed to work okay. I did wonder why I wasn't seeing historical data in two of my trend viewers

Windows didn't know what to think when I tried to delete one of them...after about ten minutes, it finally popped up a progress bar and showed that it would take eleven minutes to delete that empty folder. When it finally got done, all of them with that name were gone. I was doing this with the card mounted through windows in a running G310 with 6 (now properly named) datalogs running on intervals as fast as 5 seconds, so the speed wasn't really all that bad. I don't know how many folders were on the drive, but I suspect at least two were created every five seconds since about 9:20 am yesterday.

I should probably format the card again before I put this new system into production.

Yesterday I had a weird one with the Security User Manager but it is fixed in the latest Build 278.
Anyone else had any new or odd Crimson 3.0 quirks we should share?

How did you blur the data on the left hand side of rge screen?

I am going to install (2) 6" inches this week in a plant that pumps seal coat for driveways. They will have FTP for data transfer. It should be fun. I haven't done this one yet. But I did quote 20 of them to another company.n

JeffKiper said:

How did you blur the data on the left hand side of rge screen?

Click to expand...

Paint.net

JeffKiper said:

I am going to install (2) 6" inches this week in a plant that pumps seal coat for driveways. They will have FTP for data transfer. It should be fun. I haven't done this one yet. But I did quote 20 of them to another company.n

Click to expand...

I have one G306 doing FTP and it was pretty easy, but if you are not using DHCP in your main network settings, then you can't specify the FTP server by name. It took me a while to figure that out since there was still some activity going on. Fixed IP address instead of server name took care of it.

Well, I am going to add one more for a total of three that I have dealt with:

Tag export/import.

I have a PB32 to Crimson 3.0 project with about 500 tags, so I wanted to import all of them with as little manual labor as possible, so I created four different tags in Crimson and exported to CSV just to get the structure down.

Using PB32, I opened the tag editor and selected all, then pasted on a 2nd sheet in my workbook, and did some formulae and references and autofill to move the data from one sheet to the other, eventually doing a copy, paste special, values, to get the resulting text only worksheet.

I save it as csv, close the excel sheet, and go back to Crimson 3 tag import.

I see a message in Crimson like 'reading from file' at the bottom of the main window, but nothing is happening. After a minute, I go ahead and contiue working on the application, that message still showing at the bottom, but obviously it bombed out on the import.

So, after opening my file with a text editor, I realize the problem is a bunch of extra commas for empty cells generated by MS_Excel (it's always MS fault, right?). The empty cells are created on the header lines in the Crimson export file when you import it into excel. I also noticed extra commas at the end of each line for numeric data types.

It took about an hour for me to get the wrinkles out of my process but this was certainly much better than manually entering 500 tags.

I found I could open the csv file in notepad or equiv. and search and replace certain scrings to quickly get rid of the exta field separators.

I still had one other issue.

My referencing and fomulas for creating the "Take Bit" column put leading zeroes in the single bit number items, so if it was supposed to be bit four, for example, my text would read "Bit 04". During the import, Crimson 3.0 stopped after seeing the 0, so all of those references ended up with 0 for the bit number. Again, this was an easy fix to my csv file, and another few minutes of work.

What I did notice, was that if there's success, a dialog pops up right away (i think there was a prompt/warning) and it pretty quickly goes through all the tags, showing progress. If you don't see that dialog, but only the message on the bottom border then you know it didn't work...

This is not really a bad glitch or bug, but the import tag GUI needs a timeout message and possibly some error type indications.

I have explored all of the basic Crimson features, and most of the functions now, and these are the only current quirks I can come up with...

Paul

OkiePC,

It is important not to exceed the 8.3 naming for any files in the system including log files. I will pass on your suggestion about the timeout warning.

Thanks
Jeremy

JeremyH said:

OkiePC,

It is important not to exceed the 8.3 naming for any files in the system including log files. I will pass on your suggestion about the timeout warning.

Click to expand...

Yes, I found that out after reading the manual, but shouldn't Crimson prevent me from violating that naming rule, or does it need to be left "open" for other purposes?

One more:

When you configure an event for a tag, the ballon help says that if you leave the event name blank, a name will be generated based on the tag label and on/off labels. I find that this doesn't always work. The event name becomes "UNTITLED EVENT"

The upside for me when playing with this was I discovered I could put a really neat expression there to get some really cool effects. I could not just drag and drop a function once I already had one in there without replacing it...I wanted to insert two functions, but once one of them was in the field I could manually type in the rest of the expression with the keyboard.

My Event Name:
=GetCurrentUserRealName()+" pressed HMI PB "+OFF.Label

EDIT: I still haven't figured out how to get only one event entry per button press of this momentary PB.
EDIT: Okay I got the double entries sovled by using Active On and Edge Triggered Event. I thought I had already tried that but now it's working...

The Event viewer after a quick download and a few button presses:

And another, nit-pick:

I have an indicator that is just a Data Box dragged and dropped from the Tag resource pane. I have the tag set up so all I had to do was make the data box filled.

In the original PB32 app, the multi-state indicator flashes in one state, so I drill into the data box figure tab and set the Fill format to Solid, and Color 1: to Flashing, clicked the edit button next to it and chose the same Tag for the Enable portion. The problem was that I want the thing to flash when the bit is off. No big deal, just change the tag to complex, and change it to "return !Tag_X;", but it didn't work. I tried several different complex code snippets to invert the bit, if then else, you name it and I always got an error. It appears that complex code may not be allowed at this particular spot, or was there some error in my data type (flag) and what was expected to be returned?

A plain tag reference works so my solution was to create another flag tag, internal, which referenced and inverted the original tag (there in the tag data definition, the complex code "return !Tag_x;" is all it took), and I just used that for my flasher enable.

EDIT: A better workaround, choose General instead of Tag or Complex and put "!Tag_x".

Doh!!!

Yeah, it's a tiny detail, and the workaround was easy, but somebody's gotta flesh out these things, right?

I feel a bit guilty for picking out some of these things, but maybe documenting these quirks will help others, and they will perhaps help the folks at Red Lion further polish their product.

keep them coming OkiePC.

I'll try, but I am not sure I will find any more quirks any time soon. Everything else I have done with Crimson 3.0 (even some weird experimental stuff) has worked better than expected.

Now their manuals...I could write quite a few extra paragraphs to stick in them I think.

OkiePC said:

And another, nit-pick:

I have an indicator that is just a Data Box dragged and dropped from the Tag resource pane. I have the tag set up so all I had to do was make the data box filled.

In the original PB32 app, the multi-state indicator flashes in one state, so I drill into the data box figure tab and set the Fill format to Solid, and Color 1: to Flashing, clicked the edit button next to it and chose the same Tag for the Enable portion. The problem was that I want the thing to flash when the bit is off. No big deal, just change the tag to complex, and change it to "return !Tag_X;", but it didn't work. I tried several different complex code snippets to invert the bit, if then else, you name it and I always got an error. It appears that complex code may not be allowed at this particular spot, or was there some error in my data type (flag) and what was expected to be returned?

A plain tag reference works so my solution was to create another flag tag, internal, which referenced and inverted the original tag (there in the tag data definition, the complex code "return !Tag_x;" is all it took), and I just used that for my flasher enable.

EDIT: A better workaround, choose General instead of Tag or Complex and put "!Tag_x".

Doh!!!

Yeah, it's a tiny detail, and the workaround was easy, but somebody's gotta flesh out these things, right?

I feel a bit guilty for picking out some of these things, but maybe documenting these quirks will help others, and they will perhaps help the folks at Red Lion further polish their product.

Click to expand...

Or use general and Tag_X==0

Thanks MATT!

So, anyone got widgets mastered yet? I didn't get far and opted to copy paste/edit (the editing features in Crimson are so fast and easy!) to finish my HVAC system early...I have another thread on the subject, so reply there and leave this one for quirks, workarounds, and related explorations:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=414287#post414287

Trends and Scales

Trends and Scales
I went through the exercise of attaching separate graphic scales to the 9 trends running on my 4 unit HVAC interface.

Is there a trend widget out there that handles this?

Surely we can at least see a ghost image of the rendered trend during edit mode. That would be good enough...if it were reliable.

I found that when I switched pages after changing the zoom or pan level on a trend, sometimes the number of tags displayed in the Legend would change from three to two, and the trend would automatically adjust and get out of line with the scale. Also, many data points caused the legend to disappear, probably because my resolution of the trend was finer than that in the csv file. Can we throw some point to point interpolation in there, and be able to lock the legend visible or not?

I love the intuitive trend buttons. They are great and super responsive.
Wish One:
*A GUI for pen control and built-on scales would be nice.

One day, when I am in the right zone, I am going to build up an RS500 Emulate project at home and link to the Red Lion G3.0 Emulator. for the sole purpose of shifting paradigms and exploring widgetry (<-right click, add to Dictionary).

Opinion: Red Lion should license Crimson 3.0 compiled to run on the iPad for $300/copy, $3000/site license...

There's going to be a boatload of under $500 COTS touchscreens (reliable portable HMI) up on ebay when #2 comes out (or did it already)?

Wish Two:
*Also I am trending two digital tags per unit and it'd be nice if I could offset the trend, like the pixel offset for text...then I could see both lines while the Burner Control Relay was active and while the Liquid Ammonia Valve was energized, for example, but without altering the data itself with a derived tag and expression.

A simple pixel offset for flag tag trends, and it would be real sweet to be able to link multiple trends to the same set of control buttons...optional of course so as not to remove existing versatility, but expand on it...they'd be durn near 3-D charts.

Crimson 3.0 Build 280 has been released and one potentially significant bug fix is in it. Same quick easy download and install. Get your copy today.

And while I am fantasizing, lets throw in some page flipping EDIT: I meant more control of the video display pointers so that panning (side scrolling) and programmatic ISO-3D (think Zaxxon) type animations are possible. The page folder structure would make this a cakewalk in Crimson.

Question on 8.3 naming: Does this apply to tag folders too? I think all mine are very short...

Page flipping already works well for me if I turn off comms for the animation pages (19,2k DF1 Master PCCC/EIC over Digi through multiple switches and fiber converters to a nightmare of a swithc/router/server rack).

Roll Yer Own - Fly out menus are remarkably smooth.

How do a I make a Widget Folder? Is that allowed yet? Don't make me start "Who wants ____ feature added to C3.0?"

"Shell Application has encountered a problem" error occurs after I use Emulator

Arghhh. Crimson Build 280 is crashing every time I run the emulator, even if I close the emulator before touching the project.

I get what you see below. This happened rarely with pre-271 builds, and usually the recovery worked fine. This is on a Windows XP Home machine running Pentium D920 with latest patches.

I think a reboot will clear it up but after a few edits, it will come back.

I will try some other files and try to check for corruption.

FYI: This was after editing the app with my widget attempt, but I had already deleted it, since I still don't understand how to structure tags and definitions to match up yet. I need a picture with checkboxes and arrows to understand folder binding . I made a simple widget of the beginnings of an isometric view of the animated fan symbols as seen below, with the 2nd one overlaid on the first one and tagged to flash visibility.

The emulator keeps running, but task manager has to get involved to get Crimson editor to close. This time, 15 minutes later, the emulator is still running.

I can still operate my emulator change screens (no comms so nothing is there to respond to the Emulator driver which I believe is DF1 master over ethernet to a slc)