2 color pushbutton?

[Brandon_K]

If I've completely missed this, my apologies as I've just started with AHMI.  After a bunch of trial and error I was able to get it to talk to my Productivity 2000 tonight.

In every one of my HMI's I use a lot of two color push buttons.  Meaning, the color of the pushbutton is based off of "Tag A", where the function of the pushbutton (set, reset, latched) operates "Tag B".  I design escape games and use the HMI for over-rides of the games.  For the game operator, all of the buttons start out as yellow.  When the player completes a game, the button turns green.  If the player is having issues and the operator needs to bypass a game, they press the button, which over-rides the game and then the button turns green, just as if the player had completed it themselves.

In C-More, this is called an "indicator button".  Is there any such thing in AHMI?

[Archie]

The BasicButton has a property PLCAddressHighlight. When the value of this address is True (1), the button will turn the color specified in the Highlight color property, otherwise it will be BackColor.

In your case, you could use a BasicButton and set the properties as follows:

PLCAddressClick = TagB
PLCAddressHighlight TagA
BackColor = Yellow
HighlightColor = Green


The BasicIndicator has similar functionality, except that it offers round/rectangle options and can be up to 3 colors based on the PLCAddressSelectColor* properties.


As you mention the C-More..... I am in the middle of a big project right now in which I am replacing (4) C-More panels with the Panel PCs listed on the AdvancedHMI web site. I spent months trying to make the C-More fit the company's system specifications and everything was going ok until it came down to the response times. The C-Mores screen were refreshing way too slow. I thought it was all of the Ethernet traffic and spent several days cleaning up the traffic with very little gains. I finally put a Wireshark tap on the C-More and determined the data was updating about every 50ms, but yet the displays still lagged by several seconds.
I replicated the same screens in AdvancedHMI and showed a live side-by-side comparison of the C-More and the Panel PC with AdvancedHMI. At one point, the screen would change to show a scale weight. The C-More was taking 5-6 seconds to switch and begin updating the value. The panel with AdvancedHMI took a fraction of a second. Another page included links to about 50 tags. The C-More updated about every 3-4 seconds, the AdvancedHMI updated the values in a fraction of a second.

[Brandon_K]

Thanks Archie.  That'll get me by for now.  I suspect I could commission one of my programming buddies to make me a 3D style button like the C-More, that is more akin to the square illuminated button, with the different state colors that I need.

As far as your issues with the C-More, that's interesting. I would say something else is incorrect with that C-More or the system it's connecting to.  I've used quite a few of them (Micro's and EA9's) with my games without issue (outside of cost and display resolution, which is why I jumped into AHMI in the first place)  All of my games run a time clock in the PLC, which is displayed to the game master's HMI.  I've had no issues with delay on anything, even updating a constantly rolling display (the game clock is in mm:ss format)

[Archie]

Thanks Archie.  That'll get me by for now.  I suspect I could commission one of my programming buddies to make me a 3D style button like the C-More, that is more akin to the square illuminated button, with the different state colors that I need.

Yet another option is the GraphicIndicator. You can specify up to 3 images with GraphicAllOff and GraphicSelect*, then use PLCAddressValueSelect* to switch between them. This gives you the option to use a drawing program to draw buttons with the exact look you want. If the C-More has the exact look, you could even potentially do a screen capture then cut out the button and save it to a PNG file.

[Archie]

As far as your issues with the C-More, that's interesting. I would say something else is incorrect with that C-More or the system it's connecting to.  I've used quite a few of them (Micro's and EA9's) with my games without issue (outside of cost and display resolution, which is why I jumped into AHMI in the first place)  All of my games run a time clock in the PLC, which is displayed to the game master's HMI.  I've had no issues with delay on anything, even updating a constantly rolling display (the game clock is in mm:ss format)

As for the C-More problem, I suspected it was the page with so many tag references because the problem seemed to be when switching to and from that page. The page had a table with 9 rows and 5 columns. Each cell had a value, which made 45 tags. Then each cell referenced a bit for highlighting which added another 45. Overall I'm guessing the page referenced maybe about 125 tags.

My experience over the years with using Windows CE as a UI is that they have not been very responsive. It seems that no matter what runs, it is always slow. Several years ago I did a project with a simple 1 page VB program that ran on a CE panel, even that was very slow to start up. I think maybe since CE is real time capable, the UI runs at a low priority.

[Brandon_K]

All of my stuff on C-More has been pretty basic.  Single page, a ton of indicators, a dozen "indicator buttons", some diagnostic info, real-time timer, etc.  I've never used more than 100 tags in a single page I don't think.

But what I did just think about, I've never deployed a single one over ethernet.  They've all been RS485 over CAT5.  Maybe that has something to do with it.  Our customers are about as cheap as they come (it's a very, very low "bar of entry" business) and I can't ever get the budget to work with anything outside of the Micro's or non-ethernet EA9's.  Which is the exact reason why I'm playing with AHMI.  I'm going to build an interface and test it on a RPi Touchscreen system (which I rather like as they make a nice desktop case/stand for it), or a 2 in 1 tablet.  Have you tried to run these over wifi?  While I dread all things wireless, we have a customer requesting a wireless solution, preferably tablet.  Thankfully, it will be the only device on the AP.

I'm also awaiting one of the 10" Chinese HMI's.  I've been playing with their software and some of it is easy, but other parts are a little rough to figure out and of course, there isn't much in the way of help on them.

[Archie]

I'm going to build an interface and test it on a RPi Touchscreen system (which I rather like as they make a nice desktop case/stand for it), or a 2 in 1 tablet.  Have you tried to run these over wifi?  While I dread all things wireless, we have a customer requesting a wireless solution, preferably tablet.  Thankfully, it will be the only device on the AP.

Last year I setup a wireless access point and gave the maintenance guys one of the sub-$100 Windows 10 tablets to use so they could roam around this large machine changing settings. Its running the exact same AdvancedHMI application running on the machine mounted HMI. They really like it and have been asking when I will deploy it on the other 4 machines. The tablet I used is similar to one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/NuVision-Touchscreen-x5-Z8300-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B01MYZEPGP/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1485739854&sr=1-1&keywords=windows+10+tablet+1920

I've experimented with the Pi a little, but never deployed anything on one because all of my work is in industrial environments and generally has to be supported by maintenance after I'm gone. After you get a Pi and supporting components, you are only about $20 away from buying a Windows 10 PC that is ready to go. I prefer to stay with what everyone is familiar with, that way I won't be called on every time the power goes out or any other basic PC issue.

[Joe L]

What protocol are you using to communicate with productivity 2000?

[Waynew]

Thanks Archie.  That'll get me by for now.  I suspect I could commission one of my programming buddies to make me a 3D style button like the C-More, that is more akin to the square illuminated button, with the different state colors that I need.

As far as your issues with the C-More, that's interesting. I would say something else is incorrect with that C-More or the system it's connecting to.  I've used quite a few of them (Micro's and EA9's) with my games without issue (outside of cost and display resolution, which is why I jumped into AHMI in the first place)  All of my games run a time clock in the PLC, which is displayed to the game master's HMI.  I've had no issues with delay on anything, even updating a constantly rolling display (the game clock is in mm:ss format)

I used a BasicButton with no com properties set behind a BasicIndicator to give the "raised colored illuminated button" appearance.  Works well.

[Phrog30]

What protocol are you using to communicate with productivity 2000?

You would use the ModbusTCP driver.  Set the IP of the PLC in comcomponent and I believe you have to set the Modbus address in the PLC tag database, you would then use this Modbus address in the AHMI components.