FactoryTalk View Studio vs. Crimson 3.0

jrsnydley

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Join Date
Dec 2014
Location
Minnesota
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155
Hello all, I am a FactoryTalk View Studio user who needs some help with Crimson 3.0. We have an existing PanelView Plus 700 that we are swapping out for a Red Lion G3 Kadet 7" Touchscreen. We are doing this as a trial to try to reduce boot up time after the machine is powered up. Anyway, there are many things I am not sure how to do. For starters, the PanelView app uses a multistate indicator for a message banner. The banner text changes with the tag value as well as the background color. I see there are indicators in the Crimson software but most of them just look like two-state, on/off indicators. Anybody have any ideas how I can accomplish this in Crimson?
 
Congratulations on your decision. I think your boot times will be in the 6 to 10 second range with Red Lion gear. In some cases, I have to add a 5 second delay for my communications alarm tags in Red Lion gear because it boots up faster than the associated PLCs!

The thing about the Red Lion is that some of the things that are done for you, you need to build yourself in Crimson. The upside is that you can do almost anything and it is easy to re-use.

For multi-state indicators, I like to set them up at the tag level. Make the tag format type "Multi-state" and then select how many states you want for it. You can change the quantity at any time. Assign text to each state that you want to be displayed in correspondence with each value. Note the "Match Type". This option lets you choose Ranged or Discrete. If you choose Ranged, you can skip values that may be duplicates. If you assign all possible values to text, then the choice won't matter.

Do the same for the color type. Make it Multi-state and assign colors you want for each state to go with your text.

Now when you drop that tag onto a screen, it will be a Data Box by default and will show the text corresponding to the value just as you assigned it in the tag setup. To view what it will look like, on the tag Data Source tab next to Data Simulation, you can assign a value there and the editor will use that value when rendering the page editor views of the tag.

Note that by default, the colors of the Data Box are not tied to the tag. On the Data Box properties, there is a section called "Get from tag". If you tick the box marked colors, your colors assigned at the tag level will be called upon. The background color will only be sized to cover the font. I often want to have a slightly larger colored rectangle surrounding my indicators, so I will do one of two things: a) on the Figure tab of the Data Box, I will set the Fill Format to Tag Background and popluate the field with the same tag as the data source. With that done I can adjust the size of the rectangle enclosing the Data Box and the whole thing will be colored. b) use a Panel from the core primitives and add my tag as Data to it (right click menu). This method also requires me to tie the panel color to the tag color and then deal with the edges and highlights if I want it to be perfect.
 
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Our PanelView application uses the bit level of a DINT tag for pushbuttons on the display. For example, PB_DINT[0].4 is one pushbutton. I have the tags mapped from the .L5K file. Is it possible to select an individual bit in the tag database?
 
Our PanelView application uses the bit level of a DINT tag for pushbuttons on the display. For example, PB_DINT[0].4 is one pushbutton. I have the tags mapped from the .L5K file. Is it possible to select an individual bit in the tag database?

Yup, create a new boolean tag (flag) and set the source as another tag (the dint). Then you can set the "treat as" section to "bit array little-endian", and select which bit on the next line.

6fTcQpn.png
 
How would I do a numeric input? I see there is an option under the Operation drop down list for an Action to Change Value but it looks like that would be a fixed value that it writes to the tag whenever the button is pressed. I want the operator to be able to input a value using a keyboard like the Numeric Input Enable in FactoryTalk View Studio.
 
How would I do a numeric input? I see there is an option under the Operation drop down list for an Action to Change Value but it looks like that would be a fixed value that it writes to the tag whenever the button is pressed. I want the operator to be able to input a value using a keyboard like the Numeric Input Enable in FactoryTalk View Studio.

When you make a "data box" on an HMI page, it has the option for data entry:

MNlioCi.png
 
Well, with the help of the forum, I have gotten most of it figured out! However, the PanelView uses the RecipePlus editor with the recipe saved to an SD card. Any good ideas how I should set this up?
 
Well, with the help of the forum, I have gotten most of it figured out! However, the PanelView uses the RecipePlus editor with the recipe saved to an SD card. Any good ideas how I should set this up?

Whoa. That's more difficult. And it depends on what you need (ie. what does the PVP recipe setup look like? tag sets, data sets, recipe tables, recipe buttons, etc.)

You'll need to make a new post for Red Lion Crimson Recipe save to SD card, or something. Otherwise, you won't get the attention you need to find an answer.
 
I have done similar things with just memory tags marked as retentive. I let the HMI keep track of the values and on command with a program I would copy the appropriate memory tags to corresponding PLC tags. I bet it would not take much more work to get the HMI to save and retrieve the data to and from the memory card.

Ideally, you will be able to make your plan based on how the recipe file is shaped and sized, as to how best set up the tags in Crimson. Array tags in Crimson are quite powerful and will give you the ability to create scrolling lists, or pages that you can flip through to view the recipe files so that you only need to create one page for any number of recipe files. Arlen is right that we could give better input by knowing what the data set look like.
 
I'll give my standard disclaimer here with retentive tags and Red Lion/Crimson.

One issue that you may run into is when the Red Lion display actually copies its retentive tag values into non-volatile memory. In an attempt to reduce the write-cycles to the memory, the display only writes to the non-volatile memory one minute after power-up, and every seven minutes thereafter (these may not be the exact times - it's been a few years - but they'll be ballpark). This means that if you update a retentive tag at two minutes, and shut off the display at three minutes, your tag value won't be retained (and it won't give you any feedback that it failed).

You should be able to test it fairly easily on your desk.
 
I do not have any idea how the recipes are set up as far as what tags they write to or anything. The recipe file is located on the SD card. I will try to get a copy of it but the line is currently running.
 
Sorry, it's been a while since I got back on. I ended up opening the recipe file on the SD card with the FactoryTalk file viewer and found there were two recipes referencing 4 tags. I made a UDT in the CompactLogix so that everything is internal in the PLC.

On a different note, does anyone know if you can do a remote write to the G3 Kadet like you can to the PanelView for display navigation?
 

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