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Check your wiring for an unpowered transducer ti should be like this. Keith

Joe, Your my hero. I did not know you could do that. Very Very cool. Thanks Keith

I am working with a V1210 and am trying to use the most favorable color palette possible to give the best viewability in bright sunlight. Yes, I know the screen is not made for sunlight visibility, but I am using it that way anyway. I use a very limited color palette that gives the highest contrasts between text and numbers and the backgrounds thery are on. In this case I am setting the marking view of certain objects to instantly inform users what boxes are available for access or not by marking the boxes as greeen when editing/access is allowed and some other color (usually white or light grey) when a box is not edditable. I use this same Idea for the V570 and the sunlight viewability of the V570 is just fine with the six colors available to a merking view, however the limited six color palette is not really very acceptable on either the V1040 or the V1210. I understand that the palette is limited due to the possible presence of buttons or other entry boxed with "pressed" and "unpressed" views. However, I went to flat for all of my variables expecting that if I did the entire color platte would become availabe to me (I should have just checked with a blank screenfirst, but sometimes I'm a little slow :-) ). The only green available in the six color choices is pretty poor in visibility no matter what color text I use where if it were avaialable in the very bright green I would be fine. Any possibility the the color palette could be opened up for marking, disable, and focus color (with a limitation that there can be no pressed or unpressed objects on te screen). It would really be helpful. Thank You Keith

Hi, I do not know if you will be able to read this post, but if possible can you restate your qustion in english. I fear that no one can respond to your question, bucause we have no Russian laguage readers here. Keith

Personally, I would use the V130 because it has the Micro SD card for data logging storage and more screen memory than the V130. They both use the Visilogic program and from what I can tell program the same way. The big differences are: Compared to the V120 the V130 has: 1) SD card Storage 2) 1024 screens (as compared to 255 on V120) 3) Full up/down/left/right keypad 4) Ability to add a Com port including ethernet (V120 has 2 232/485 ports only) Keith

Can you post your program? The most likely anser is that something in the program is forcing the value to zero when you do not want it to. Keith

I have done this in the past for wire crimping machines and what has worked is as folllows: 1) I know how many pulses there will be for one revolution of the gearset and that is preset in my program. If you will have different gearsets with different numbers of teeth then you will need a customer enteerable parameter to have this be correct all the time (in my case I used a rotary encoder instaed of a mag pickup so the teak count is unimportant). 2) I programmed in the ability to make a singe rotation feed of the wire material and then require the operator to measure the length of material that was pushed out. The operator then enters this data and I then make the calculation for (length/pulses per revolution) = length per pulse. 3) Then I correlate the length of product operator wants (that they enter in) to pulses and then make a compare that when Pulses are greater than or equal to required pulses to meet length stop feed. 4) After stop I cut material 5) After cut I reset pulse counter to 0 and start all over again 6) user can enter in how many pieces they want then I have a second count for that. Notes: We are talking about heavy material that will not stopinstantly so unless you have a cutting blade that will travel with material to make the cut you will most likely need an offset to of say (length in pulses needed - 3 pulses) = actual pulses wanted to end up at the correct length. Keith

Hi Nick, The way you asked your question I am not 100% sure I understand what you are asking. It sounds like you all ready have the ability to populate a memory location with either information from the barcode scanner or a user putting in a number. If you do not then it is just a mater of direct soring your barcode information into the same memory location as the referenced MI in your keypad entry. If however you were asking if you can make a keypad entry and disable it (or not) you can do this as well by making a disable bit for the number entry box an d whenever the bit was true the ability to make keypad entries would be turned off. Keith

I beleive the the way you want to do this is to use a single number box on the HMI screen and then direct store the several counters data there when the appropriate time comes. So for example you have process A and Process B process A takes 30 seconds and process B thake 50 seconds to complete. Make an increment or decrement block depending if you want your number to show increasing or decreasing values. One Dedicated to Process A and One to Process B. Lets save the values in MI1 and MI2 then whenever process A is active you will direct store the values of MI1 into MI3 and whenever process B is active you store the values of MI2 into MI3. You but a number box on the HMI screen so that it displays the values of MI3. In this way you are able to show however many different time countdowns for processes A, B, ........Z in a single number box. I hope that makes sense. Keith

Hi Emil, As I think you know, I have shown interest in this topic before (outside the forums). At this point I have done about 400 hours of work on doing this. You are looking at this issue from the wrong mindset. We do not need an integrated package incorporating a standard power meter that is sellable and mich more controllable. What you are missing in the discussion is that as controller designers we are not looking to make these calculations just for informational purposes but take useful action on the results. Also, the meter function is generally just one small part of an overall control system. The reason there is a sales potential is that the meters that are out there range from $199 - $799 with differing capabilities, but in all of these cases you are limited to a very meager number of actual IO to control something with. The most I have seen is 4 DI, 4DO, and 2 AO. Then even when the IO is actually there you still need the ability to take the correct action with timers and events that the power meters generally do not make avaialble to you in a way that you can program the way you need to do something useful with the data. I have investigated having my own modules made and it is possible, but for me as a single user the development costs are too high. The working answer (but not the most cost effective) is to take an existing power meter product with modbus capability and just read it into the PLC and take your actions. This is what we currently do, but for trade reasons Im sorry I can not give details on what those power products are. Keith

Hi Emil, This request is not application specific. If anything it is universal accross all possible programs. You seem to to be making the assumption that as the unitronics programmer we will have contact with the SCADA developer or whoever may be making a master. Nothing could be further from the actual chain of events. When we make a program that allows for master control it is most of the time (for me) for eventual sale to an OEM manufacturer that will in turn sell that to their customer who may or may not be the end customer so we may be 2 - 3 levels removed from who is going to be trying to implement a SCADA system. OEMs generally want to hide as best possible who the manufacturer of their parts are (to protect from their customers coming direct to us) so it is entirely likely that the end customer may not even know who we are as the actual programmer. Without write protection like I have said before and Nikolas has said here, the people writing the master can easily make a typing mistake and change the value of MI243 and not MI234 like they were supposed to, or they will have a multi write function that they make too long, or they just think they need to know something use a Modbus data sniffer to try and map out locations that we as the programmer never told them about (we do this with variable speed drives all the time so that we can do our jobs directly when the manufacturer did not make a complete modbus table 15 years ago and that person has quit,retired, or died and no one there knows what to do anymore). While we or others do not do this to maliciously hurt the operation of the equipment we are polling, mistakes can and will happen. I will only hear about it when I get the angry phone call that my equipment is trash and does not work and I need to fly out to wherever the PLC might be tomorrow morning to fix it "or else!!". Why did the equipment not work..........because some guy I have never talked to changed a memory location I would have wanted to block but could not. It is not a question of if, but when, this event will happen. To answer the question what makes sense is to have the ability to either dynamicaly block MBs, MIs, MLs, and DWs or to assign a block (for example MI2000 - MI4000 read only) so that I can segreagate my program in read/write and read only locations to protect myself. Thank You Keith

I asked this question recently and never got an actual answer, but I have found the answer to be no that there is no way to block a masters ability to write to a location. Your only protection is misdirection and hoping and praying that the master reading/writing your data does not accidentally mess up something important. What I am doing is the following: 1) If a location is being written to by my program then you will be ok because whatever a custer tries to write over will just be rewritten again by your program. 2) If it is a screen enterable variable that you only want local personel to be able to change and not some unknown entity in a far away land then you can take the MI the local user would write to and copy that value to a secondd MI then put that second MI on your address list so a remote master can read it but it will not be writable for the same reason it is not in my first point. While not a good solution it is better than nothing. The inability to block memory locations from being written to is something that should be changed. I do not know how hard it would be to do this, but it should still be done anyway. Keith

I am unsure how well this will really work in the PLC since the scan times may (may not) create issues on your ability to catch peak data that you need. Now I have used the PLCs as simple panel meters without the power factor and efficiency calculations and that works just fine as you expect it would. The Unitronics does not give us a way to read amperage directly off of a CT since the raw values from a CT are generally ???:5 which means that on the side you want to measure it could be between 0-5 amps. So you are relegated to another level of isolation and need a CT with either a 4-20ma or 0-10Vdc output signal degrading the accuracy of your information just a bit. The lowest cost 4-20ma CT I have gotten from Dwer Instruments (about $30). If you have the ability to buy from Setra as an OEM they have a decent product for reasonable money. PTs are harder than Cts to get into the PLC. No one makes a PT with a signal the PLC can just pick up (generally 120VAC is what you have on the other side of a PT) You will have to make a dedicated circuit to convert the signal from AC to DC and reduce the voltage (but not degrade the accuracy) to a 0-10V signal. Keith

This is more simple than you think. When I first looked at this I was going down the hard road too till the EE accross the hall set me straight. As long as you bar code reads are always the same general positions just multiply the numbers by there relative position then add them together to come up with the final number. So for your example of: 5 6 9 9 6 0 is (0*1) + (6*10) +(9*100) + (9*1000) + ....... Ect. However, in this example it will not fit in an MI. I have asked the question about using a standard MI without reserving the negative sign so that you can show the number you have in your example. The answer was that you can not, you can only show MIs as -32768 to 32767. So in your example even if you are able to functionally do what you want you will have to save the value in an ML and not an MI. A general question to anyone else is there an SB82 long integer function like there is for M90/91 and JAZZ models to act on the the next two MIs as a pair? (or some other way to not use MLs since there just are not that many MLs available). Thanks Keith

Sorry I am not much help to you on what is the better, easier to use or lower cost SCADA packages that you would use to build a PC screen structure. I believe that there are some people on here that fall under the system integrator category of the business, but my plate has always been full just getting the PLC programs and data conversion bridges put together. This falls under the Clint Eastwood quote "Man's got to know his limitations" and I have just never had the time or demand to learn the BAS side of the business :-) Keith

Well......................... You can have more than one curve inside one trend box (provided you are ok with the same sample rate and history portion), but a trend box has a minimum height requirement of 200 Pixels and a V570 is only 320 pixels tall so no not on a V570. You would have to upgrade to either the 10.4" or 12.1" models to get a high enough pixel count to allow two trends on a single screen. With the two larger screen PLC models you can fit 4 trends on a single screen. (At least from a pixel requirement anyway. If there is another reason why you would not be able to do this I am unaware of it.) Keith

I have used this product before instead of the ultra expensive Field server equipment. http://www.csimn.com/CSI_pages/GatewaysBN.html?gclid=CN_dpbLK664CFQmMtgodxFMkLA I have not tried interfacing to a Unitronics but I don't see why you would not be able to. There is always the fieldserver product option, but last time I used them it was 4 times the money. http://www.fieldserver.com/products/drivers/BACnet.php Keith

Hi Bob, You may have allready done this but, when you do the calibration I have found that if you use a thin object like a pen to make the calibration touch popints instead of a human finder you will get a better result. Keith

I do not beleive that any of us are understanding what it is you are trying to do exactly, and you generally don't get much in the way of answers when asking people in the forum to write programs here. There is a section of the forum for help with programming and this should really be there. However, what you have said in your post is exacly what you should write. You have some sort of sensor that tells you if a cylindar is loaded in the number 2 position. Feed the input of whatever this sensor is into an input of the PLC. Whenever the turet rotates one notch you check to see if position 2 is filled (PLC input is true) if yes activate pneunatic cylinder at position 10 otherwise do nothing. Keith

Well I downloaded a demo version of ClearSCADA and trying to figure anything out from that was like trying to read Chinese for me. I believe that the correct tactic to take here is to contact Schnieder and just ask the question of them. This can not be the first time in their programs history that a hex value has been needed to aquire a piece of data. For some programs you have to use a code starting point for example: 7X01 is how a KEP HMI screen would allow you to pull a 7000 series hexadecimal object 1. So you would assign the data a structure 7X and ask for location 1, but I was unable to find any usefull data in the ClearSCADA program's help files about structure and realistically I do not have the time to look any further. I imagine that there is something very much like this in the ClearSCADA program, but I could not find it. Sorry Keith

If your system worked before the changes and does not work after the changes I would hazzard a guess that resettting the controller will probably do nothing to improve your situation. I would try reverting back to the program before your last changes and see if everything works again. If the Jazz does not work even after going back before the last revision the help file tells the ability to reset or put the PLC in bootstrap mode. See attached: Keith

Hi Dan, I do not think that there is a way to make this not happen. I use hide all the time to hide switches or notices but I have never stacked items on top of each other. I do not beleive that the system will allow you to stack items an I am always careful to make certain that I never oveloap items on the screen. If someone else can tell us how to do this (if it is possible) I could use to know also. Keith

I am unfamilliar with the program you mention, but byasking for an ML you are asking for a 32 bit memory read. Is your master asking for/expecting a 32 bit response? Also the location for ML0 in an enhanced vision product is hexadecimal location 7000 or decimal location 28672. If you go into Visilogic and in the in program help files search for Modbus you will get a section for slave addressing to come up. All of the information you need is right there. Thank You Keith

I am writing a modbus slave and it is not something I usually do where I am not also writing the master. In this case it is a V570. I do not see any blocks available to me to only make certain MIs, MBs, Etc. available for read only or write only. I figure to prevent writes I can just store any MI values into secondary MI locations so the user won't have a valid address for a write, but it seems I am missing something here and it should not be so memory inefficient to get this done. There are also locations I do not want a user to ever be able to see what is in those locations. Can one of you more experience minds out there give me some pointers so I do not do this stupidly. Thank You Keith

Hello all, I have been working with the Unitronics PLCs for while now and there are a few things that I would like to put up for consideration. I am using the Unitronics more and more for generic OEM applications where every unit that goes out may have the same program but need different specific configuration choices. This forces me to have many many programs stored for the exact same program with the different hardware needs. 1) Make thermocouple choices available outside of hardware configuration (Ive spoken about this one before) so that my customers can use alternate types of sensors and not have me store a program for every thermocouple type. 2) For those modules that have no jumper change requirements for inputs or outputs make these net selectable and not just hardware configuration. 3) Make the com port initialization avaialble to indirect addressing so that users can have different com speeds, start, stop, and parity choices. I have to write in multiple nets to fool the PLC into using alterable com speeds and I force just one possibility for start, stop, and parity to make it easier on myself (which I almost never know what speed will work best given other hardware and local noise issues up front, and shackeling the systems to only 9600 baud is not a viable option). 4) Do not force all PID configuration functions to indirect addressing. There are several items that on a program to program basis I do not ever see changing so let me decide if I want those values to be variable or fixed . If i'm wrong thats my fault. I am sure that there are real and valid reasons why things are the way they are, but revisiting old decisions is a healthy and necessary job task in our ever changing world. Thank you for reading Keith