CLICK PID Tutorial Videos Bonus 3A - C-more PID Templates from AutomationDirect

In all of the videos in this series we have been using the CLICK PID Monitor to see what our PID loop was doing. And while you COULD create a trend graph or a bar graph on a C-more HMI to show the same thing, there is a much easier way to do it. The C-more HMI has a built-in PID trend graph and PID bar graph ready for you to use! Before we see how to do that, we need to get our system set up. I have a computer at this network address connected to an ethernet switch. You can use any ethernet switch you want; this one happens to be one of the AutomationDirect Industrial Stride switches. I have this CLICK PLC at this ethernet address connected to the switch via port 1 and this C-more HMI at this network address also connected to the switch. I also have a USB to Serial Adapter here, so I can setup the CLICK PLC’s IP Address before the network is ready. This video assumes you know how to set up all the IP addressing and just want to learn about the C-more HMI’s PID templates. But, if you need a refresher on how to setup the networking, then check out part B where we show you step by step how to do that. OK, assuming we have the networking set up and we have exported the Nicknames from the CLICK PLC, then all we have left to do is create a C-more project, import the nicknames and build out the PID Faceplate. Let’s do it. I’ll bring up the C-more app, make a new project, give it a name. I’ll select the panel we are using in this demo. And select the CLICK PLC Ethernet protocol since that is what we will be using. Click on Protocol Setup and enter the IP address of the CLICK PLC that we had on the block diagram. That’s not the C-more HMI’s IP address. It’s the CLICK PLC’s address. And hit OK a couple times to exit. Next, we import the Nicknames from the CLICK PLC. File, Import Tag Name Database. Find the file you exported from the CLICK PLC and open it. Make sure CLICK is selected, select the port the device is on and hit Import. I’m going to scrunch the app up a little bit, so we can see the full HMI screen on our display. Now we just scroll down to the PID Bar Graph and drop it on the screen. Our process variable is this guy. Our setpoint is this guy. And I’m going to make the process variable green and the setpoint red, so they match the PID monitor we have been using. We know our process variable will be between room temperature and around 170 degrees, so I’ll put 60 to 180 in here with 12 divisions to give us evenly spaced tick marks on the bar graph. We only need three digits and no fractional digits for the tick mark labels. Our output is this guy and his range is 0 to 100%. Auto Manual Mode indicator is selected with this guy and we can put any alarm bit we want here. And of course, you have all the usual formatting options. Ok, that one is done. I’ll resize it to fill the screen. Bring up the PID Trend Graph and fill out all the same stuff. The process variable nickname and the setpoint nickname. The output nickname is this and it’s range. Select the mode status bit and an alarm bit. The rest of this is just formatting. I am going to change the background to black with black tick marks because it is easier for the video camera to record and it will also look more like the PID monitor we have been looking at. I love that I can see a preview of what I am about to get. Move over to the Data tab. This is key – you need to choose a sample rate that is appropriate for your process. I’ll put 4 seconds in for ours. Or, better yet, you could have the sample rate controlled by the PLC. I’ll leave that for you to play with. And let’s store 1000 points and max out the number of samples shown on the display. The key is to play with these guys until you get the display you want. Let’s make the X-Axis 10 divisions, again to make it look more like the PID monitor we have been using. And let’s force the Y-Axis to cover just the range we will be operating in with an appropriate number of tick marks. Under the options tab you can change the visibility of the trend graph, enable the start and stop button, clear button, and the arrow keys. Most importantly, you can log all of this data. Watch this video to learn how to do that. OK, we’re done! I’ll re-size that guy, and send it to the C-more HMI. Make sure Ethernet is selected and hit transfer. I’ll fast forward through our usual setpoints by manually entering the values in the PID monitor and we see the result on both the bar graph and trend graph just like we would on the PID monitor that we have been using. On the trend graph we can even clear the screen, stop the graph, and scroll backwards and forwards through the data. Well, that oughta be enough to get you started. Now it’s time to play with all of those options and get it to look the way you want. Join me in Part B of this video to get a refresher on how to set up the network and export the nicknames from the CLICK PLC. Click here to see all of the videos in this series. Click here to learn about AutomationDirect’s FREE technical support options and click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you will be notified when we publish new videos.