Toshiba computer link protocol...

Today we released a new version of the HMI adding the Toshiba computer link protocol.

·        RS-232/485

·        X, Y, R, S, T, C, D, L registers

·        Bit, Word, Longword, Float, String

HMI web server update... (Part 2)

Yesterday we released a new version of the HMI to expand the built in web server features.

The web server can now parse a page request from a web browser for "tags". The tags point to internal HMI data. For example, values collected from a PLC. The tag is replaced with the value and the web page is sent to the web browser. The remaining text in the page is unmodified.

Also, values can be written to the server using a URL with the correct parameters.

This new feature allows for the development of web pages in the programming language required with data collected from the HMI.

MODOPC & LogixOPC...

For each program we released a new demonstration project.

The project demonstrates how to read/write data from/to the OPC server using Excel as the OPC client. Excel 2007 was used.

Each project includes an Excel spreadsheet, with VBA scripting, a program project and a short video covering the parts of the demonstration.

HMI web server update...

Today we released a new version of the HMI to expand the built in web server features. The web server has several new features.

·        The  server now tracks who is logged on and if the user is inactive for a configured length of time, the user will be logged off.

·        The server now allows to define a target page for the first time a user logs on.

·        HTML pages created outside the HMI can now be used.

HMI release...

Yesterday we had an HMI release containing two new features.

The first is a method to view trend histories. Before this release a user had to use a window with a trend graphic element and a command to instruct the trend graphic which date to use for display. With the new feature a supplied window has a calendar on the left side and a trend display on the right side. The calendar indicates the days containing data for the trend and by using the mouse and clicking on a date the trend data is displayed. It is a fast and easy way to view trend histories.

The second feature is a new 'Alarm panel'. The HMI has an 'Active Alarm' window and graphic elements that can be used in user created windows to view alarm information. This new graphic element is very configurable and includes buttons for all the normal operations regarding alarms. Each button can be visible/invisible, the alarms displayed can be limited to an alarm group (or all groups), configurable colors for each field or by alarm type and many more options.

Graphics...

Today we release a new version of our HMI that contains several changes and a new graphic element.

The new graphic element is a radio button list. Much like the checkbox list it controls one analog point and uses the bit number to read/write each radio button value.

While using the graphic editor we discovered an anomaly with 'arcs'. It manifested when the start and end angle of an arc had certain characteristics. After additional testing we found the cause and implemented a solution.

We also changed the way grouped elements are stretched. Now, when using the selection rectangles to stretch a grouped element the group is scaled. This maintains the size of the elements and the position of the elements to each other at the same ratio as before stretching.

Two new graphic objects...

The HMI has buttons, sliders, drop down list, indicating pushbuttons, etc. and today we added a simple checkbox and a checkbox list. The checkbox uses a single digital point and the checkbox list uses a single analog point. The 16 individual bits in the analog point are used for indication and control in the checkbox list.