Panelview Disappearing Screen Mystery

Hey all...have a good one for you this morning.

I'm using a CompactLogix to talk through ethernet I/P to a Panelview +600. I have a screen setup with a single line information message display. That display looks at the value of a DINT tag in the PLC to determine which message to display.

Everything works well; when I turn on a bit in the DINT on the PLC side, the appropriate message is displayed. However, when I turn off the bit, so that no message should be displayed (DINT value of 0), the entire screen disappears! All I see is a grey background and a mouse pointer.

The odd (er) thing is that the current display value tag in the PLC shows the correct screen number - but nothing is shown. If I switch (from the PLC, because I have no buttons) to another screen and then back again, everything is fine except the information message display, which shows a line of "????????"

Any thoughts on this?

Mark

Can you post the hmi source file? (apa)

I can't, due to size restrictions. Can I email you a copy?

PM sent

I suspect that somehow you're Closing the display, rather than Replacing it with another one. Are you using the "Close Popup" or "Close All Popups" Global Connection as well as the Remote Display Global Connection ?

Another possibility is that you have accidentally performed a Visibility Animation on all the objects on the Display.

The active Display value is a red herring; the PV+ writes a value to the associated controller tag when it opens a display but not when it closes, and there's no value for "all Displays closed".

I doubt you're experiencing an inexplicable bug, so let's chase down the screen control issues first.

Thanks Ken, I appreciate your insights.

I am not using any features in the global connections other than the remote display number and the replace display number. (Screenshot attached). I already checked the visibility animations, nothing is active.

What you said about the displayed number makes sense. It does appear that there is no screen at all being displayed.

Any other thoughts?

Mark

Ok NOW the screenshot is attached.

Mark, got the file. Everything looks okay to me including what Ken pointed out.

Your problem aside, you stated that if none of the bits are set you wanted the message display to disappear? The help section doesn't indicate it works that way (it doesn't address it at all). Could you try setting your visibilty attribute to test your trigger word for zero to disappear?

Thanks for looking at it! If there is no message to display, I just want the message display to remain blank, it doesn't need to disappear.

For what it's worth, I contacted Rockwell about the issue, and the tech support agent I spoke to said (very tentatively) "yeah, I talked to our people and they said 'that CAN happen', just select a different screen from the PLC and then go back to it". Seriously? That's the solution?

Or try adding a empty text line with the trigger value of zero to your status messages.

You're using the trigger value in a bit mode (no problem) but I believe information displays may prefer value mode.

Yeah, tried that. It won't accept a value of zero.

As for the trigger value, I am using it in a value mode - that's the only option. Perhaps I sent you the wrong backup, the current program triggers the messages on a value of 1,2,4 or 8.

okay, got you, that didn't work.

You could use the visibility attribute and put a rectangle object with the same color properties behind it, that would make it looked like it went blank. Hopefully it would "bypass" the real problem.

Yeah, the problem is that I have no screen displayed at all. This is what show's up when I set the value of that DINT to zero. I have confirmed that there is no screen displayed by manually resetting the value of the "replace display number" word to zero; it is not being overwritten in this condition.

I would switch to a multi-state indicator and skip the message display entirely. You've got just a few messages, would be pretty easy.

I have seen most malfunctions that a PanelView Plus can have, but I've never seen a Display spontaneously close.

For troubleshooting, I would create a new Replace type display with nothing but some button navigation and a big FactoryTalk Diagnostic Log object.

When your application goes through the disappearing act, use the Remote Display connection to bring up that Diagnostic Log display and see what the local FT Diagnostics log says happened. It might not say anything useful, and it might lead us directly to the problem.