ViewMarq LED Message Display Quick Start from AutomationDirect

A Side note: These guys are used for inserting variables which we will discuss in a separate video. And this is the ID number of the display you want the message to go to. By the way, if you put a 0 here ? that?s a broadcast message ? that will go to all ViewMarqs on the network. These guys format an entire line. For example, let?s have this first line scroll to the left at a slow speed. And let?s center the Automation and the Direct. Note that I can?t center AND scroll the text at the same time. But that?s easy enough to take care of. Suppose I want to center and scroll up the Automation. Well, if I do scroll up, the Automation moves back to the left. Well, that?s easy enough to fix, I just center it myself. Same thing with the Direct. Let?s say he wants to scroll down. In order to center it, I just add a couple spaces. Easy. So again, as you can see, you can really go crazy with all of these formatting options. Just keep in mind ? these format characters, these format entire lines. Once you have the message the way you like it here in the simulator, send it to the display by hitting this button right here. And there it is. Easy. Remember ? The Viewmarq is not a programmed device ? it is simply a slave that does what it is told so you need a PLC or some other kind of controller to tell it what to do. So to have a ViewMarq generate this kind of display from a PLC, you would need to send this formatted string from the PLC to the ViewMarq. To do that, you just hit this button to copy it to the clipboard, go over to your PLC project, and drop it in. If you don?t see the formatted string down here ? sometimes this window is closed ? just go on up to view, command string window and there it is. Exactly how you transfer the String from the PLC to the ViewMarq, will depend on your PLC and your protocol, of course. But it usually comes down to issuing a Modbus Write or an ASCII stream out or something like that. The user manual has several step-by-step examples and there are also a number of How To Videos showing you step-by-step how to implement this using the AutomationDirect Productivity 3000 and DoMore PLCs, so check those out for some good hands on examples. Well, now that we have been through all of that, the bottom line is really quite simple. All you do is: Setup a link between your PC and your ViewMarq. You type your test here. You test it by sending it to the display here. And then you copy this string and paste it into your PLC project and away you go. Well, that ought to be enough to get you going. Be sure to check out the other videos in this series for more ways to get the most out of your Viewmarq Messaging display. Please let us know if you have any questions. Automation Direct?s tech support is always free and only a phone call or e-mail away. Viewmarq ? Cost effective Industrial Messaging made simple By Automation Direct.