New communications protocol...

Today we released a new version of our HMI that supports Fatek PLCs using the native Facon-PLC protocol. The HMI supports RS-232/485, TCP/IP and UDP/IP.

New graphic element...

Yesterday we released a new graphic element that provides for viewing, editing and printing of Microsoft Excel XLS files during runtime operation. One nice feature is Excel is not required to be installed on the computer running the HMI. XLS is the file extension for Microsoft Excel 97-2003. Newer versions of Excel can save to the XLS format.

This release also included several more features/changes.

·        A runtime window to allow masked string entry, like entering a password, the actual characters are not displayed, under project control.

·        A two button window for Boolean runtime operations. (three and four button already exist)

·        The ability to configure a user name and settings and then use a 'force log on' command, to always have a user logged in. The user must be configured for 'forced log on' for the command to succeed.

·        A change of the ODBC logging thread for better performance.

·        A reduced 'watchdog' timer logging selection for the MODBUS RS-485 port. This prevents slave devices that are off-line, on purpose, from filling the event log with timeouts.

·        Additional event logging.

4/18/2012 update...

We have had a few releases since the last entry.

We added additional logging to the LogixOPC server program to help customers creating OPC clients track OPC calls to the server. We also added some additional testing for data in the connected PLC.

For the HMI, we added more support for importing data from an RSLogix L5k file. The HMI now imports UDTs (user defined data types). We added a new feature/command to print the currently selected window when a 'print screen' command is received. Full screen printing is still supported. An attribute to open the Omni flow report viewer after the collection of a report was added. One fix to the graphic editor so the 'window in a window'  element will correctly display the source window at design time.

X/Y Chart...

We had a release a few days ago for the HMI. We added an X/Y plot to the graphics engine. The X and Y axis are defined by files as well as up to 16 static data series.

The axis configuration and static series data are stored in comma separated text files to allow external programs to set the data values and the HMI to render the plot.

The axis can be any values as long as each tick is an increase to the previous tick. In other words, the data points for the axis can be linear or not. The plot uses an "F(X)" function to determine the correct point on the plot.

Up to 16 dynamic data points can be configured for each plot. One axis can be fixed if desired.

We made a short video, the link is on the web site, that covers the graphic element.

HMI update...

We had a new release today.  A few new minor additions and a few enhancements to thread management for ODBC connections. We also added the ability to use an ODBC DSN (data source name) configuration in the ODBC ports.

The major reason for the release was we discovered the update feature was not always closing the HMI program when the user selected to run the automatic updater. This has been corrected.

Excel to device....

For quite some time PeakHMI has provided a method to read data from an Excel spreadsheet and transfer the data to an external device, like a PLC, either in a continuous mode or at the command of a person or script. This required marshalling the data from Excel into the HMI for storage in tags and transmitted via out tags.

After talking with a customer we realized for some applications (e.g. recipe), the need to read the data to 'in' tags and then transmit via 'out' tags was overly complicated.

We designed a new feature that reads all the data from an Excel spreadsheet and stores it internally. At the command of a person or script  the data, via tags (the tags contain the destination address), is transmitted to the device.

For example each column is a recipe and each row is an ingredient. The HMI is commanded to transmit a column (a recipe) to the device. All the configured rows (ingredients) are transmitted to the device.

An example project, including the spreadsheet, has been created and placed on the website. The PLC used for the example project is a Micrologix 1400 but, any protocol we support can be utilized.

Excel is not required to be installed on the computer for the HMI to read the values from the file.

Window in a window...

We released a new HMI version today that contains a new graphic element. The new element allows for one window to be displayed in another window.

For example, the project requires a collection of 16 LED indicators to be at the top of all windows and to display the same information. Placing all the LEDs in one window, setting the animations and then referring to the window in all other windows would be a better solution than re-creating the LED 'panel' in each window.