Percent fill...

The HMI has provided a “percent fill” with directions of left, right, top and bottom since the first release and the MA (Manual/Automatic) complex object has provided up, down and middle fills.

“Middle” (vertical) selection provides for fill from the middle of the object towards the top if the value is 51% of full scale or greater and towards the bottom if the value is 49% of full scale or less. 50% has no fill.

For example; a temperature is maintained +- 10 degrees. The range is -10 to 10 degrees. The percent fill using “middle” is a better visual indication of the temperature in relation to the desired value.

Today we extended the “Middle” direction to all graphic elements that support “percent fill” and also added “Middle (Horizontal)".

 

PDF...

Yesterday we released a new version of the HMI that added support for PDF output.

Reports, screen captures, window captures, DMCP plots and trend plots now all support PDF as an output option.

CFR 21 Part 11...

Yesterday we released a new version of the HMI to support CFR 21 Part 11 user/password control. The HMI has always provided a user/password system to control and monitor access to the HMI. The HMI now provides more options for passwords.

New protocol added...

Today a new version of the HMI was released that supports the Saia-Burgess Serial-S-Bus (RS232/485) and Ether-S-Bus protocols.

Registers, counters, timers, flags, inputs, outputs and data blocks are supported.

Boolean, integer, float and string data types are supported.

 

Graphics addition...

From the release of the HMI the option to set a graphic element to transparent or opaque has been present. This allowed the selected brush style to be applied to the graphic element and the “background” (whatever is behind) to show thru the graphic element.

Yesterday we released the latest version with an “Opacity” setting. This allows for the background to show through graphic elements with a “blend” of the foreground and background. A setting of 0 (zero) is totally transparent and a setting of 255 is totally opaque.

Here is a sample.

HMI update 12/28/2013

In the last HMI update for 2013, we realigned the alarm ‘blocking’ logic to maintain continuity between configuration settings and runtime actions.

The SetAlarmEnables function is still present but, will be removed in a future release. See SetAlarmBlocks.

Alarms are enabled / disabled, at runtime start, as determined by project configuration.

Alarm logic can be blocked / unblocked at runtime to temporarily disable and then enable the alarm logic processing for a point.

Alarm blocks are designed to be a temporary solution, when for example, a transmitter fails and the configured alarm needs to be 'blocked' so as not to provide false information.

The alarm configuration should be altered if the 'block' is used as a permanent or long term solution.

Also the SetAlarmSetpoints has a new flag to disable the alarm check when the function is called. This really should only be called with ‘false’ at runtime start, via the runtime start script, when the data from external devices has not yet been collected.

Happy New Year

HMI update 12/1/2013

Yesterday, a new version of the HMI was released that includes three new script functions.

ODBCDataLoggerDelete

This function is used to delete all the records of the table. The data logger appends a record to the table when the preset timer expires or a “log” command is called. The table can become very large. This allows the table to be emptied on command.

AcknowledgePointAlarm

The HMI has a global “Acknowledge” command. Also, the alarm panel graphic has a “Page Acknowledge” button. Now a single point alarm can be acknowledged via scripting. When an alarm row is selected, via the alarm panel, the point tagname and alarm type are now available to the scripting engine, allowing actions to be programmed based on the point tagname and/or the alarm type.

SetAlarmPoints

This function provides for “set points” of the analog point alarms, to be altered at runtime. Two methods are provided to alter a "setpoint". The HMI can be instructed to use the value of another point or via a value defined by the user.


Earlier this month we released an 800+ page manual for the HMI. The link to download the manual is on our website.