How To Setup & Use a Thermocouple Module in a CLICK PLC from AutomationDirect

In this video I'll be showing you how to read the temperature using a CLICK PLC and a thermocouple module. The first thing you need to do is make sure you have the latest version of the CLICK Programming software. You can check which version you have by going to help and then About CLICK Programming Software. The latest version at the time of recording is version 1.40; if you have an earlier version of the software it won't recognize the thermocouple module that I we are using. So once, you have updated to the latest software you need to configure the PLC. To do that you go to setup and then system configuration. Go ahead and choose the power supply you are using if it isn't already selected. I'm using the 01AC so I'll go ahead and select that. So now under the I/O module 1 you want to click on the configuration button. The thermocouple module that we are using supports up to 4 thermocouple sensors. For this demo we will only be using one. So I'll set the Channels to Use to 1. Now you'll select the type of thermocouple sensor you are using. I'm using a Type K so I'll go ahead and select that. The data register is where you'll be storing the temperature. You can choose whatever you'd like, I'm just going to go ahead and choose DF1. Hit ok when you are done, and ok one more time. So this dialog box is just asking you whether you want to use the automatically created nicknames or the ones that you create. I'll use the automatically ones. So now we'll drag a compare contact onto the first rung. We'll type in DF1 into Data 1, choose the greater than symbol, and then type in 85 into Data B. And now in the output coils area, we'll drag in an out coil and type in Y1. So DF1, which is where we're storing the temperature, if it's ever greater than 85 the rung will energize and then Y1 will energize. So to read the temperature let's open up a data view window and then lets add the DF1 tag by double clicking and then typing in DF1.Hit close when you're done. Don't forget to add your end statement and then download the program to your PLC. Alright we're going to go ahead and switch our PLC into run mode. And then to see our temperature we can open up a data view window. And then sure enough we can see our temperature stored right here. Which is currently 84.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And then if we turn status monitoring on by double clicking. We can see our temperature is 84.7 degrees and it is not greater than 85 so this rung isn't energized and Y1 is not out. So if we go down and hold our thermocouple sensor the temperature should begin to rise and it'll rise above 85 degrees and sure enough the rung energizes and then Y1 has energized as well. So now that you know how to connect a thermocouple module to a CLICK PLC and read the temperature, you can now use this temperature data in your ladder logic program. You can find the thermocouple module I'm using on Automation Direct's website using part number C0-04THM.