CCW, PanelView PV800, any way to show time as a string, like 3:00 PM?

[MikeBriggs]

As the title says, I'm using CCW with a PV800 (and Micro850). I've made a scheduler in which a user can choose a month, day (1-31), hour (0-23), and minute (0-59) when they want the system to start up. I'd like to then display that time in a normal AM/PM format, like 3:00 PM. I tried cobbling together a way of doing it with separate fields for hour (decreased by 12 if greater than 12), a colon, then the minutes, followed by a Multistate indicator for displaying AM if hours is less than 13 and PM otherwise. But, if the minutes is less than 10 it shows up as a single digit. So instead of 3:00 PM I get 3 : 0 PM. Yuck. Is there any way to have CCW convert a time to a string that can be displayed how I want it? I can display the current time that way, using the tag $SysTimeString. I can calculate the scheduled time to a number of ms so I can convert it to a TIME variable, but then it just shows as something like 15h00m, which is ugly, and implies that the system will start 15 hours from now instead of at 3:00 PM.

I also tried downloading a UDFB from AB's webpage that is supposed to let you determine the day of the week based on an input month/day/year, but whenever I try to import it, I get a message saying it caused CCW to crash (oddly it doesn't actually crash, the message goes away when I click "ok" but it never imports the UDFB).

 

[joseph_e2]

I don't have that hardware but just created a new PV800 project in CCW. If you use a Numeric Display for the minutes, there's a setting under "Format" called "Fill With". If you set the Number of Digits to 2 and select Fill With Zeroes, will the minutes display be what you want?

 

[joseph_e2]

Another idea, use RTC_READ to get the PLC's system time and the Hours, minutes, etc. and then use DTOS and INSERT instructions to build a string for display on the HMI.

 

[Geoff White]

My condolences for using CCW

 

[MikeBriggs]

Joseph, two great suggestions, I'm giving the first one a try now, and if it doesn't work I'll try the second. Thank you!

 

[MikeBriggs]

My condolences for using CCW

Geoff, I've seen a lot of people say they don't like CCW, but it's really grown on me. To be fair, most of my prior programming experience has been with text languages unrelated to PLC programming (C++, C#, Python), and CCW is really my only exposure to PLC programming and ladder logic - but I've grown to like it more than text-based programming. Is CCW inferior to other systems for programming PLCs?

 

[drbitboy]

Geoff, I've seen a lot of people say they don't like CCW, but it's really grown on me. To be fair, most of my prior programming experience has been with text languages unrelated to PLC programming (C++, C#, Python), and CCW is really my only exposure to PLC programming and ladder logic - but I've grown to like it more than text-based programming. Is CCW inferior to other systems for programming PLCs?

Some of the CCW instructions are broken (e.g. both PIDs). And it just has a Fisher-Price look and feel. Many other PLC IDEs do as well, of course but CCW is from Allen-Bradley (and not from Allen-Bradley - I assume they acquired it), and the other A-B IDEs are so much better, so CCW becomes is ripe for jokes and being a punching bag. For example, the RSLogix 500 IDE, though (near?) obsolescence, is simply a quantum step better than anything else: it starts up quicker; it wastes less real estate (screen space); etc.; even though its memory model is file-based, I still prefer it to RSLogix/Studio 5000.

 

[MikeBriggs]

Some of the CCW instructions are broken (e.g. both PIDs). And it just has a Fisher-Price look and feel. Many other PLC IDEs do as well, of course but CCW is from Allen-Bradley (and not from Allen-Bradley - I assume they acquired it), and the other A-B IDEs are so much better, so CCW becomes is ripe for jokes and being a punching bag. For example, the RSLogix 500 IDE, though (near?) obsolescence, is simply a quantum step better than anything else: it starts up quicker; it wastes less real estate (screen space); etc.; even though its memory model is file-based, I still prefer it to RSLogix/Studio 5000.

Hm, maybe I should talk to my boss about shelling out the money for a perpetual license for Studio 5000. Is it possible to import an entire project that was written in CCW into Studio 5000? I've almost finished writing the program for the company's main product line (we're shifting from using National Instruments hardware with LabView and C# code for automation to instead using an AB PLC, currently programmed with CCW). If the whole thing would have to be re-written if we were to shift to something else, then that conversation is a non-starter.

 

[drbitboy]

Hm, maybe I should talk to my boss about shelling out the money for a perpetual license for Studio 5000. Is it possible to import an entire project that was written in CCW into Studio 5000? I've almost finished writing the program for the company's main product line (we're shifting from using National Instruments hardware with LabView and C# code for automation to instead using an AB PLC, currently programmed with CCW). If the whole thing would have to be re-written if we were to shift to something else, then that conversation is a non-starter.

There is a MicroLogix=>CCW converter, but I dont think there is a CCW=>Studio5k converter

If this is a one-shot for a product that sells many copies, then CCW and a Micro8xx are fine. Once you get it working, test, validated, and verified, the IDE is moot, as the pain of using CCW was spread across each copy. We were only expressing sympathy that CCW is the IDE you are working in; if it's only once, then you are much better off than someone who does CCW for an entire career.

And anyway, you thought it was fine until we said something, so I apologize for that!

 

[joseph_e2]

Software requirements will depend entirely on hardware platform. What PLC will you be using in real life? If it's going to be the Micro 8xx and PV8xx, then CCW is your only option. If it's going to end up in a CompactLogix or ControlLogix, then Studio 5000 is your only option.

 

[MikeBriggs]

Ahhhh, thanks drbitboy and joseph. Yes, we're planning on sticking with the Micro850 and PV800, and this is the company's main product. Well, there are two main products I guess, and the other one I already completely programmed in CCW (it was my first big CCW project). Based on the success of that one, we decided to migrate the other product away from National Instruments & LabView (which I personally hate) to Allen Bradley hardware with CCW. If I were to want to build on my skillbase, how different is programming in Studio 5000 and some of the other IDEs? I figure the overall ladder logic structure is probably the same, likely just with different (and perhaps more) built in functions.

Thank you again!

 

[Geoff White]

The type of programming/languages available in CCW is very similar to that of most other PLC environments. It is just the experience of using the IDE that sucks. The CCW offering is targeted at the low cost standard machine market. Rockwell have tried very hard to make sure that the CCW does not cannibalise sales from their core products by making the user experience less than appealing. It's almost like it is deliberately crippled.

National Instruments and Labview must truly be spartan programming experience for you to prefer CCW

 

[GaryS]

First make sure that you select a Micro 800 series processor that can support the Realtime Clock module you will need it
Some processors don't
Create a string data type
Then select the time to string converter to display the time
You will also need to compare the RTC value with your setpoint to trigger the event
I would have to set it up do some testing to get the trigger working but it can be done
Just a heads up I only use PVs when the customer requires it I prefer Net Studio

 

[MikeBriggs]

The type of programming/languages available in CCW is very similar to that of most other PLC environments. It is just the experience of using the IDE that sucks. The CCW offering is targeted at the low cost standard machine market. Rockwell have tried very hard to make sure that the CCW does not cannibalise sales from their core products by making the user experience less than appealing. It's almost like it is deliberately crippled.

National Instruments and Labview must truly be spartan programming experience for you to prefer CCW

LabView is just a very non-intuitive language in my view. I started programming in Basic when I was 10 years old, and have lots of experience with text-based langauges. Coming from that, ladder logic was fairly easy to pick up. From the beginning it wasn't that hard to look at a program and figure out what it was doing. But LabView is just plain awful. I wasn't the one who did the original LabView programming on the legacy systems here, and looking at a piece of LabView code it is very difficult to tell what is going on. It doesn't help that the LabView codes refer to programs written in C#, with those references being hard to spot and track down. To make matters worse, the people who did the original programming seemed to have a severe aversion to writing comments of any kind. Not commenting your code should be a crime.

 

[MikeBriggs]

First make sure that you select a Micro 800 series processor that can support the Realtime Clock module you will need it
Some processors don't
Create a string data type
Then select the time to string converter to display the time
You will also need to compare the RTC value with your setpoint to trigger the event
I would have to set it up do some testing to get the trigger working but it can be done
Just a heads up I only use PVs when the customer requires it I prefer Net Studio

Thanks Gary, that's basically what I'm doing now, except using the RTC in the PV.

I actually really like the PanelViews, and that aspect of CCW seems to be pretty well done, with the exception of some things being a little bit more complicated than they should - such as this issue of displaying a time (it would be really nice if on numeric entries you could set it to have to show two digits, like you can with numeric displays).