Micro 820 to Weintek HMI

Hi Folks,

I took Baldone's suggestion and ordered a Weintek HMI to try them out. There's a bit of a wait here in Ontario(2-3 weeks) when ordering from the distributor in Quebec, but it's a great little feature packed HMI (MT8050IE) for the money.

I have only been able to import Global Variables, the Local Variables seem to be unavailable. I suspect this is normal behavior. Can anyone confirm?

My question deals with the necessity to change Timer Variables to Real or Integer values in order to import them to and from the HMI.

Is it necessary to do this or is there a way to move the timer variables from Connected Components Workbench directly to EasyBuilderPro that I'm not getting?

Converting the inputs and outputs is easy in ladder but leads to a ton of rungs like the attached.

I thought about creating an array for the panel variables and running that through the math function blocks but I didn't get very far. The basic math function blocks don't list arrays as an acceptable data type. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here...with the array at least?
Seems like a ST Function Block might be a good way to go for math functions like this but I'm fumbling with the syntax. More reading required.

Any one know if I'm approaching this in the right way...or am I chasing my tail?

Any input appreciated....

Thanks,

Mongoid

Your pretty much right on the money as far as having to convert Time variables into DINTs.

It's more a limitation of PLCOpen I think.

You are also correct about having to be Global variables as far as I know.

The Micro 800 and Weintek packages have some limitations but for those on a small budget or small OEMs it's worth the learning curve.

Hi Baldone,

Good to hear from you! Thanks for the recommendation on the Weintek HMI and confirming the conversion is necessary. I had mentioned I had a C-More on the way back in September but after reading your reply I ordered a couple of the Weinteks and I am very happy with the capability / price. We are looking at moving to some larger models for another application.

Have you used arrays in connected components before? Any hints about what I might be doing wrong as far as passing the array to a function block?

Thanks again,

Mongoid

Unlike Logix5K I do not think there are any FBs that operate on complete arrays.

You can still reference individual elements in an array in CCW but the only way to move multiple elements at a time is with the COP function.

On the Time issue I am working on encapsulating a timer into my own function block that uses DINTs for setpoints and accumulated values. It will still look and behave like a TON but have DINTs instead and millisecond timebase.

That's good to know. Using the MOV function instead of math blocks doesn't save any rungs either. I will look into the capabilities of the COP block. That's a great idea on the TON replacement. Let us know how it goes. That will replace the RTO as my favorite "afternarket" FB.

I'm thinking that putting the math functions into a structured text FB would at least save all the rungs as far as the I/O to the Weintek HMI goes. Maybe its possible to do an array in ST as well?

Thanks again for the info,

Mongoid

Mongoid said:

I have only been able to import Global Variables, the Local Variables seem to be unavailable. I suspect this is normal behavior. Can anyone confirm?

Click to expand...

This recently came up on the AdvancedHMI forum and I could only find out that global variables, but not locals were accessible by an HMI. I found one work around suggestion was to use global alias tags that reference the local variables.

Thanks Archie,

I have never tried cross referencing Global to local tags. I will look into it.

Thanks Baldone. The COP block does directly move timer values to DINTS in an array. The manual says we can do 2 dimensional arrays with up to 400 values in the array. This is encouraging.
I'll bet we could use the array in ST to do the math part. I'm going to check it out. It would be nice to have what is (in my current case) 50+ rungs of simple repetitive math reproduced on 1 rung contained in a ST function block

I totally agree with your earlier assessment of these Micro 800's when used as intended. Great capability for the price.A nice match with the Weintek.
I'm still learning everything it's capable of (PWM and the HSC circuits are unusual) but for half the price of a Micrologix and the standalone machine control we use it for, I'm spending the time to learn. I've yet to really explore the flexibility of having structured text and FBD available but I can definitely see how handy they could be. I'm building a PID block in a FBD for a different application and it is extremely easy to visualize in FBD vs Ladder.