C-more Micro HMI Dynamic Text from AutomationDirect

The Dynamic Text object displays text located at a string on a PLC – but it only does it when a trigger value is active. . at starting at a TAG. So whatever text a PLC places at that address will appear in this Dynamic Text Box when the trigger tag is active. For example: This Dynamic Text Object is watching this string TAG. Let’s put a string in here. And even though we entered the string it hasn’t appeared in the box. That’s because it only does it when the trigger tag is active. We specified that this TRIGGER tag is only active when it is a “1.” When it becomes a “1’ the text appears in the box. Any other number – the string doesn’t appear. Let’s see how to set this up. Double click or drag the Dynamic Text object onto the screen. OR, if you see something you like down here in the parts list, you can just drag that onto the screen to help you save time setting things up. You have all the formatting features that were covered in the How To Use Common Object Features Video, so we’re not going to cover those here. You just add a TAG for the trigger – we’ve created on called the trigger tag - and a tag for where the string is located. You can also choose to swap bytes depending on your PLCs format. We don’t need that in this example, BUT, we DO want to add this scroll text feature. That way if the text is too long for the box, it will automatically scroll through the box. This is a big help when you don’t really know how long each PLC message will be. Looks like we are all setup here, so let’s say “OK”, Simulate it, save the project, and up pops our simulator with our new dynamic text object. So let’s put some text in here - and again, it does not appear until the trigger meets the condition we set. Our trigger was set to be active when it was a 1… and there comes our text. And because the text is too long to fit in the window .. it automatically scrolls because we enabled that option. The great thing about this is this object allows the PLC to change the text to whatever it wants without you having to create the messages ahead of time. Now the PLC program can add message later without having to worry about updating the C-More Micro code. That’s it for this video – be sure to check out all of the other videos in this series. And as always, please send us any topics you would like to see covered – or - any other comments for that matter – we appreciate the feedback!