Data entry for Compactlogix, please help

[danileru]

Hello everyone.
I have a compactlogix controller that needs to operate about 40 solenoids in a water park to control the water jets.
The customer wants all the jets to be in a sequence so I set a timebase and I create a data table for each solenoid so that I can turn the solenoid on and off in a timed sequence.Now my problem is this: each solenoid has about 250 starts and 250 stops, all at varying times, depending on the sequence that the customer chooses. Up to now I have been creating data arrays in the compactlogix, but I would like to know if anyone knows of a way to design a user friendly interface to enter all this numbers? Maybe something the customer can use himself ( scada, hmi , spreadsheet)?
The time taken to write all this numbers is too long

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Jeev]

What sort of structures/system are you using? Have you got 40 BOOL arrays of length 250? Do you just clock through the 40 arrays to activate the solenoids?

Setting up DDE/OPC for Spreadsheet use is good for large data entry, but can be annoying if the person using it has no idea. I have a site that I provided a Spreadsheet for and to this day no one there knows how to use it (It's got 3 colums and 2 buttons!). You're better off buying a simple/inexpensive HMI and mounting it in a friendly spot. Stick a GUI on it to access your pattern structures and any other operation you want (Save/Load/New/Clear).

 

[OkiePC]

I would set this up with a scrolling list display so that the operator could choose the state of each valve in each step with a visual representation from an isometric perspective of the park of how that step will look. You could even give him a "play (fast)" button to preview it. Just map the source bits (or copy being edited) to the visual state of the HMI object dropped on a nice clear photo of the park.

Also, I would have a column so they could alter the dwell time for each step if desired, and I would think, some conditional backward jumping might be sweet. (think musical note sizes and repeat sections...)

That would be the ideal, but for the nuts and bolts of it you can use excel and a paid for licensed version of RSLinx (not Lite).

To map the data into an excel sheet, you can certainly use formulas and VBA buttons and indicators to make it pretty slick, and pretty quick.

I used to manage large and variable tire machine sequencers with excel, so they were formatted nicely for plotting on paper, and when viewed from MY desktop with my password, the VB buttons appeared that would upload or download to a PLC using RSLinx Pro and DDE links for reading, and simple VBA code for downloading binary data into INTs.

It also let me do live comparisons and use look-up tables in excel to debug sequences that used SQI arrays without a good existing view of the bits awaiting a change of state in realtime.

I like tinkering around with excel, but I would not consider it a replacement for machinery controls, but in your case, it should be plenty reliable enough for someone who is PC friendly enough to be taught how to recover from any errors that occur.

Doing this with a modern HMI software of your choice should be trivial, but I lean toward a scrolling list of steps, with the middle one highlighted, and about a dozen length list showing beneath the large image of the two state animated valves overlaid on a photo or photo-chopped photo. Then you can only map a limited number of tags for responsive display even if the total sequence is thousands of steps long. In most cases with a hardware based HMI, the logic to copy the window of steps being viewed will need to be in the PLC. Many HMI/SCADA that are PC based can do the indirect addressing themselves.

In either case (HMI Button or Excel VBA CommandButton click) will simply toggle the state of the bit address it references.