Ascii counter

Not sure if this will make sense, i spend a whole day playing with a UTICOR MARQUE. The unit has a devicenet connection and I am able to 'pump' ascii characters and controlls into the device.

I am trying to read a DINT inside a Controllogix L35E and move this into ASCII (Length counter).

So far I am able to control the characters reasonably well (Double height, 4" tall no blinking etc. I am able to count one digit upwards on the unit and I would like to count at least to 1000 meters maybe 3000 meters.

I bought this unit as I did not want to use a Red lion Counter that was pulsed on and off. I figured that this unit could evolve into a fault display or perhaps a totalizer and a current counter.

The words EZ is not so easy, poor documentation, errors abound and no working examples has me holding two boat anchors.

To make matters worse the unit is expecting 16 bit registers and the 1769-SDN is in 32 bits, I have this already resolved with a bit shifter 16 left and 16 right.

All I need is a counter converter for a Controllogix DINT to ASCII

Thank you for any assistance..

Ron

Is there any reason you can't just send the display a string?
ControlLogix has the DTOS instruction (DINT to String) and RTOS (Real to String) available.

Hi. Do you want to send a string such as "1234" to the unit or the ascii representation of 1234.

If it is just a string then the DTOS instruction will do the job.
If you require to send the ascii characters for 1234 ie "48" "49" "50" 51" (ignoring the quotes) then there are a few ways to do this.

One method.
Try breaking the number down into into individual characters ie 1, 2, 3, 4
Use DTOS on the 1234 then use some MID instructions to get 4 strings of "1" "2" "3" and "4".
Then use an STOD to convert each individual string character back to a dint.
Then add 48 to each dint character to get the ascii representation.

Regards Alan Case

Ronny do you need to use DeviceNet? If not can you use serial? I have used Real Time Automation gateways several times. If you need more info I can help provide details.

The issue is that the display recieves control characters as a string, that looks like this: ^L1^C1^B0^K1^B0^dC11946
NOTE: 1946 would be the count, ^K1 = Character size 1equals 4", ^C1 = Centering Mode, ^B0 = Blink mode off, L1 = use two lines for display, dC1 = use RED Led for color.

Serial comms will not work due to the distance the units are installed.
If I used serial comms the string would become larger (^A010001 would be added).

Alan Case said:

Hi. Do you want to send a string such as "1234" to the unit or the ascii representation of 1234.

If it is just a string then the DTOS instruction will do the job.
If you require to send the ascii characters for 1234 ie "48" "49" "50" 51" (ignoring the quotes) then there are a few ways to do this.

One method.
Try breaking the number down into into individual characters ie 1, 2, 3, 4
Use DTOS on the 1234 then use some MID instructions to get 4 strings of "1" "2" "3" and "4".
Then use an STOD to convert each individual string character back to a dint.
Then add 48 to each dint character to get the ascii representation.

Regards Alan Case

Click to expand...

I need the ASCII representation of the number 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943. I have one of the digits broken apart already, it is the re-combining of the digits that is giving me grief.

Sorry I wanted to say a serial to Ethernet bridge. I use dumb serial ASCII marquees all the time. I put them on an Ethernet system. In 15 minutes you can have one up and running without all the byte swapping and parsing that you have to do with other protocols.

Set up the string in the 35E the way You want it Ans the gateway passes that string out to the serial port. You can have the serial display miles and miles away from your PLC. You can also look into Banner wireless. I have a few systems using wireless modbus over a mile with no line on sight.

Hi Ronny.

Make good use of Hyperterminal for testing.

Regards