I want to take the value of this tag and add a number of minutes to it storing it in a new tag - I then want to display it in proper "dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss" format - is there a way of doing this without having to resort to VBA and using DateAdd & Format etc ???
FactoryTalk - DateAndTimeInteger
- Thread starter rtgibson
- Start date
So what you're trying to do is display what the time will be a couple of minutes from now? Can I ask why, just for curiosity?
The only ways I know of to do the adding part are to use VBA or a PLC. Use VBA (or the PLC to add however many minutes to the minutes tag and store it back in a different tag (e.g. modified_minutes_tag). Then just create some text. You can add tag values to your text caption, so just set your text up to read "[day_tag]/[month_tag]/[year_tag] [hour_tag]:[modified_minute_tag]:[second_tag]" In the editor it'll look much longer than that because when you put a tag in it inserts the path, and decimal point parameters, etc etc. But you get the idea.
The only ways I know of to do the adding part are to use VBA or a PLC. Use VBA (or the PLC to add however many minutes to the minutes tag and store it back in a different tag (e.g. modified_minutes_tag). Then just create some text. You can add tag values to your text caption, so just set your text up to read "[day_tag]/[month_tag]/[year_tag] [hour_tag]:[modified_minute_tag]:[second_tag]" In the editor it'll look much longer than that because when you put a tag in it inserts the path, and decimal point parameters, etc etc. But you get the idea.
Although now that I think about it, you would also have to check that your minutes tag didn't get to 60, and if it did then subtract 60 and add 1 to the hours. And then likewise with hours-days, days-months, and months-years. And then you run into trouble because not every month has the same amount of days.
So at the very least, you'll probably have to allow for a modified_hours_tag and a modified_days_tag as well. I think you may be better sticking with VBA after all...
I think at this point I'd once again be stepping back and asking what you're trying to achieve here, maybe there's an easier way
So at the very least, you'll probably have to allow for a modified_hours_tag and a modified_days_tag as well. I think you may be better sticking with VBA after all...
I think at this point I'd once again be stepping back and asking what you're trying to achieve here, maybe there's an easier way
Hi and thanks for your reply. Basically we have a machine that does a 'cycle' that will last for a time decided by the user x hours, x minutes and x seconds when the cycle starts we want to estimate and display to the user the date and time that the cycle will end. You are correct in that it becomes a pain in adding things together such as running over 60 secs we have to increment the minutes which opens up a world of pain for spanning into the next hour possibly day, possibly month - not all months have the same amount of days etc etc Lord forbid a leap year should play a part. So in Wonderwares Intouch there's a similar function where you can add a number of seconds to the UTC value (which starts sometime in 1970) there is then a function to convert that back to 'dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss' - that's what I want to do in FactoryTalk.
That makes sense. Clearly, the people who designed our Roman calendar didn't take into account the difficulty they were creating for future programmers! :angr:
I've not come across a similar function to the one you describe in FTView. But somebody else here may well have
I've not come across a similar function to the one you describe in FTView. But somebody else here may well have
dcooper33
Lifetime Supporting Member + Moderator
The UTC you are referring to is the # of seconds elapsed since midnight 1/1/1970 to be exact. Crimson 3.0 (Red Lion HMIs) use this value to set their clocks by. I made an AOI that converts a Controllogix date and time into UTC so the Red Lion can sync to it. Works well enough. If you had a similar value in your PLC, you could add the estimated task time in seconds and extrapolate the new value back into a time date string for your panel view to display. I would do the calculation and string manipulation in the controllogix. The panel view is much too stupid for this kind of work lol. If interested, shoot me a pm and I can send over the AOI over to you when I'm back in the office.
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