C-more Micro HMI Bottling Plant 2: Main Screen from AutomationDirect

On this first screen we can RUN the process – once we hit that button it can’t be used for anything else, we can STOP the process or we can momentarily run the process with a JOG button. As long as we hold the button down the process runs. There is also a status message over here which shows the current state of the system: running, or stopped. Clearly all 4 of these are related somehow – let’s see how that works. If we go to screen 1, all the things we are interested in are dimmed out and we can’t access them. That’s because they are actually on a background screen. We’ll discuss why that is in the video on using the shift keys, but for now just know that all of those objects are actually down here on screen 15. If we double click on the RUN button, we can see it is a bitmap button – this is so the user could use his own graphics for the button. This button is controlling the RUN TAG and is using that same TAG to drive the graphic indicator of the button. This is how you get a Pushbutton action, but with a graphical indicator – by using the same TAG for both. Here is the key – it is using the SET ON action. That way, once the RUN button is pressed it can’t be un pressed – something else has to change the TAG back to off. Now Look at the JOG button – exact same thing, BUT different graphics, and it is set to be a Momentary button so when it is released, it sets the TAG back to off. The STOP button is exactly the same as he RUN button, but it has its own graphic and it employs the SET OFF action, so once it is set to OFF, it can’t be unset – the TAG has to be modified by something else – like the RUN button - to Set it back to ON. And this is a Dynamic Bitmap which changes states between these two graphics as a function of the RUN tag. So now we can see how these 4 objects work together: When we press RUN, it modifies this RUN tag to ON, this Dynamic bitmap is watching that TAG, and it changes accordingly. When we hit STOP, it changes that TAG back to OFF. This Dynamic Bitmap sees that and changes the bitmap. Down here we have a speed control where we can adjust the speed of the process. Let’s see how that works. Looks like we have a static bitmap here for the numbers, an outline, a white box, a graphic, and an increment decrement operator – set to increment only – instead of an increment decrement – it chooses one operation, an INCREMETN operation and it is going to increment this SPEED TAG. Let’s hit control-Z to put all of those things back where we found them. Down at the other end we have another bitmap – arrows – sitting on top of another increment decrement operator, which we set to the decrement operation. Note that these increment decrement operators are set to increment and decrement by 10’s. So this is important to note – graphics like this one can be placed on top of objects, but the objects still operate as expected. If we go back to our simulator … even though this graphic is sitting on top of an increment decrement operator, the decrement and increment operators still function. That’s great because it really opens up your options on what you can display on the screen. We use that feature again down here on the function keys. These are just screen-change buttons with graphics sitting on top of them. We’ll discuss those more in a later video on the shift key, but you can see back here on screen 1, these are just graphics sitting on top of screen change push buttons. In the next video we’ll cover the Fans and Lights Screens behind this button. That’s it for this video – be sure to check out the other videos in this series. And as always, please send us any topics you would like to see covered – or - any other comments for that matter – we appreciate the feedback