Odd PanelView Behavior

[PLC Pie Guy]

Folks.

I'm having a small problem that has me head scratching....

I have an L310ER Running V31.11

I have 2, 5310 PanelView, both V7. Both Part number 2713P-T12WD1.

Both PanelViews are Running the very same project.

In the project, I have a set of numerical display fields that show current time and historical Timestamps that are simply packed into an array of LINT tags in the PLC.

In the PLC, the Tag type is LINT and is being shown as Date/Time.

Here is the odd part......


In one panel view, the Date and Time tag shows perfectly and exactly as it does in the PLC in all applicable fields.

On the other PanelView, it shows the correct date, but the Time is 4 hours ahead in each field!!! I'm at a loss here. I'm not using the internal HMI clock at all...

Has anybody experienced issues displaying a date time tag on a 5310?

Thank you.

 

[plvlce]

Is it exactly four hours ahead? Anytime I hear 'X hours ahead/behind' in relation to a clock I suspect a timezone setting issue.

I've barely ever dealt with the PanelView series, but is it possible that because it's dealing with a date/time tag the PanelView is applying its own timezone settings before displaying it and the two are set to different timezones?

 

[PLC Pie Guy]

Is it exactly four hours ahead? Anytime I hear 'X hours ahead/behind' in relation to a clock I suspect a timezone setting issue.

I've barely ever dealt with the PanelView series, but is it possible that because it's dealing with a date/time tag the PanelView is applying its own timezone settings before displaying it and the two are set to different timezones?

Yes. Its 4 hours. It seems like a time zone setting, you are correct. I just did not expect it to modify tags for me that are coming directly from the processor without being directed to do so. I would have thought the time zone would only affect the internal PV System Clock...

 

[plvlce]

Yes. Its 4 hours. It seems like a time zone setting, you are correct. I just did not expect it to modify tags for me that are coming directly from the processor without being directed to do so. I would have thought the time zone would only affect the internal PV System Clock...

I agree that it is not the behaviour I would expect, but by comparison with the working-as-expected other PanelView we can say with certainty that the PLC logic and the HMI program are not the issue. That seems to me to just leave individual HMI settings that aren't part of the program as the possible culprit. Very strange indeed though.

 

[Ken Roach]

Timestamps that are simply packed into an array of LINT tags

I have not worked with the PanelView 5000 Time/Date display format using LINT data sources.

My *guess* is that the LINT is a timestamp according to a well established time epoch, like seconds since January 1, 1970 (the start of the UNIX Epoch).

I am not 100% sure that CompactLogix 5380 + PanelView 5000 uses the Unix Epoch, but it's likely. PanelView 5000 is reportedly running a Linux variation under the hood, and I know that ControlLogix has used the Unix epoch start since v12. Apparently before v12 they used 1972 instead.

To display any timestamp with an hour and day, you would need to also know the Time Zone, and I think the only place that exists is in the Terminal settings for the PanelView.

I would be very interested to see the hex or decimal value of one of those timestamps, and compare it to the Date/Time display on those terminals.