OkiePC
Lifetime Supporting Member
I am using a Red Lion G306A as the HMI to an in motion check weigher scale for cases of sausage.
I must be able to log the weight of each case that crosses the scale. We process about 10,000 cases per day, from about 6 am to midnight. The machine sits idle at night and powered up.
The weights are retrieved from a sorting SLC along with barcode string, and robot infeed lane assignment.
At first, I had written my own code to log the values, but then I realized I was committing 10,000 write cycles per day to the CF card (Sandisk Ultra 2Gig), and wanted to try to take advantage of the built in logger which buffers writes and only commits them to the card every two minutes.
After working with JeremyH, I got the trigger logic, and file creation settings worked out and seemed to be doing okay, although once every two days or so, I get a garbage entry in my csv file. I think that might actually be junk coming from bad barcodes on the packaging, but I am not 100% sure.
Last Friday, the system stopped logging data about 10 pm, and didn't log any data over the weekend. Monday, when I saw this, I checked the CF card status using the function CompactFlashStatus(); which returns a value of 5 which means mounted and ready for use. I have a screen for CF functions, and have a button for that, and several other things.
So, I made a quick change to the file and sent an update to the HMI, and it started logging right away.
This morning, the same thing happened. Normally, when I come in, there is already a log file created at midnight, and it might have data in it if the previous shift runs past midnight, but other times when they finish before midnight, the file is there, but empty. Today, there was no file, so I waited until production started to ensure that my Triggered log should have executed, and still no log file was created.
So, I went (remote view) to my CF functions screen on the HMI and pushed a button that will execute a LogSave() command, and that caused the HMI to create the file and begin logging again.
I don't know if this is a Friday Night Glitch, or if I have a bad CF card (haven't tried my spare yet), or if this is simply a weakness in Crimson. One of the promary reasons I chose the G3 was this logging capability, after hearing of so many issues with the PV+, so I must figure out what is wrong, and make it work 100% even if that means going back to my custom logging routine.
The very last successful entry in yesterday's file has strange characters for the barcode string. Looking at the file in notepad++, there is "&" followed by an ESC character, then the expected lane assignment integer and a CR, LF.
I think its possible my barcode reader occasionally chokes and reads junk (not its fault, the barcodes aren't perfect), and perhaps that junk makes the HMI do the Heimlich too, and then refuse to eat any more.
I am confident we can resolve this...I sure don't want to go through the agony of switching platforms. If I could detect the problem it would be easy to deal with, but the function to check status return normal values, so I don't really know what to do next.
Has anyone else had similar issues with the data logger using Crimson 3.0?
I must be able to log the weight of each case that crosses the scale. We process about 10,000 cases per day, from about 6 am to midnight. The machine sits idle at night and powered up.
The weights are retrieved from a sorting SLC along with barcode string, and robot infeed lane assignment.
At first, I had written my own code to log the values, but then I realized I was committing 10,000 write cycles per day to the CF card (Sandisk Ultra 2Gig), and wanted to try to take advantage of the built in logger which buffers writes and only commits them to the card every two minutes.
After working with JeremyH, I got the trigger logic, and file creation settings worked out and seemed to be doing okay, although once every two days or so, I get a garbage entry in my csv file. I think that might actually be junk coming from bad barcodes on the packaging, but I am not 100% sure.
Last Friday, the system stopped logging data about 10 pm, and didn't log any data over the weekend. Monday, when I saw this, I checked the CF card status using the function CompactFlashStatus(); which returns a value of 5 which means mounted and ready for use. I have a screen for CF functions, and have a button for that, and several other things.
So, I made a quick change to the file and sent an update to the HMI, and it started logging right away.
This morning, the same thing happened. Normally, when I come in, there is already a log file created at midnight, and it might have data in it if the previous shift runs past midnight, but other times when they finish before midnight, the file is there, but empty. Today, there was no file, so I waited until production started to ensure that my Triggered log should have executed, and still no log file was created.
So, I went (remote view) to my CF functions screen on the HMI and pushed a button that will execute a LogSave() command, and that caused the HMI to create the file and begin logging again.
I don't know if this is a Friday Night Glitch, or if I have a bad CF card (haven't tried my spare yet), or if this is simply a weakness in Crimson. One of the promary reasons I chose the G3 was this logging capability, after hearing of so many issues with the PV+, so I must figure out what is wrong, and make it work 100% even if that means going back to my custom logging routine.
The very last successful entry in yesterday's file has strange characters for the barcode string. Looking at the file in notepad++, there is "&" followed by an ESC character, then the expected lane assignment integer and a CR, LF.
I think its possible my barcode reader occasionally chokes and reads junk (not its fault, the barcodes aren't perfect), and perhaps that junk makes the HMI do the Heimlich too, and then refuse to eat any more.
I am confident we can resolve this...I sure don't want to go through the agony of switching platforms. If I could detect the problem it would be easy to deal with, but the function to check status return normal values, so I don't really know what to do next.
Has anyone else had similar issues with the data logger using Crimson 3.0?