C-More Micro HMI -- How To Use Numeric Entry for touch screen display for PLC at AutomationDirect

Use the Numeric Entry Object to enter data. On the touch screen version of the c-more micro, you can touch the numeric entry button, up pops a virtual keypad, you enter data and say enter. That data was just sent down here to the associated TAG - which would normally be located on a PLC. This object is very similar to the Numeric Display object, so this video will only cover the three additional features: Function Key assignment, Range Selection, and Panel style. Check out the How To Use The Numeric Display video for tips on how to use all of the data display formatting options. Before we get started though, note that in the simulator you can specify which bezel you are using with the C-More Micro. I’m going to reduce the size of this to make room … and you click on this button right here to select the panel setup you have. This is the C-More Micro by itself, or if I click on the button, we add in the arrow key bezel or if we click on the button again we have the numeric keypad bezel or if we click on it one more time we get just the LCD display all by itself. I’m gonna click on it one more time to bring up the generic panel. These bezels are all optional add-ons you can get for your c-more micro depending on your application. The reason this is important is that data entry depends on the type of panel setup you have. This is best understood with a few examples, so let’s take a look. Double click or drag the numeric entry object onto the screen – note that if you see one formatted the way you like down here on the parts list you can also drag that directly onto the screen too. Choose the bezel type here in the Object Style box. Object Style #1 is primarily for Touch screens: Touching the Numeric Entry or the function key you assign activates the numeric entry box and brings up a virtual keypad to enter the data on the screen – like the one you saw a few moments ago. This is only good for touch screens, of course. Let’s try it real quick: Assign a Function key - how about F1 – we need to assign a TAG to tell the C-More Micro where to put the data – we’ll use this SETPOINT TAG here and we need to select Object Style – so we got object style 1. That looks good – let’s hit OK, Simulate it, save project - And up pops our simulator with our numeric entry object. Now if we click on the screen we get our virtual keypad. We can enter the data. Now that data has been sent down to the TAG which is usually located on a PLC Because we also assigned F1 to this Numeric Entry Object the F1 key will also bring up the numeric keypad. Clear the display, put different data in … and say go for it. Even though we have a touch screen here, this Numeric Entry method also works with the other keypad bezels. You would use the arrows to select the object … enter to bring up the keypad … and now you can use the virtual keypad or the numeric keypad to enter data. If you don’t have a touch screen, then Object Style #2 is going to be a better choice. Let’s say OK, Simulate it, save the project,. With object style 2, you can still use the touch screen, but when you click on the object instead of a virtual keypad, it brings up the function keys for entering data. Likewise we could also have brought that up with F1 because that was still assigned. Using the Function Keys, you can use F2 to shift to the digit you want to modify, use F3 to increment it, F4 to decrement it, and 5 to accept it. This method also works with both the optional arrow bezel and keypad bezels – same ting – use the arrows to select the object, ENTER to bring up the method and now you can use either the function keys or the numeric keypad to enter the data. Let’s look at the last object style: Object Style #3. This one assumes you have a keypad bezel installed. Let’s see what happens. Say OK. Simulate. Save the project and now we try it. If you have a touch screen – it will still get the focus, but there is no way to enter the data except suing the keypad bezel. Likewise, F1 is still assigned to this object so that would get it’s focus, but still you have to use the keypad bezel to enter the data. So we have lots of ways to enter the data – mostly it just depends on your personal preference. The last unique feature of the Numeric Entry is the Range. Here you can set and upper and lower bounds on the data you want to allow the user to enter. Let’s try it. We enable the Range option, and for our example let’s set a min of 10 and a max of 90. Let’s also go back to object style #1 so we can use the touch screen entry. Hit OK. Simulate, save the project and here’s our simulator. So lets try a couple examples … How about 99? Since we had an upper limit of 90, let’s see how the C-More Micro Handles that. Oh, it gave us an error message – we entered a value that is above the high limit. Let’s clear that. Lets see, our lower limit was 10, so lets put a 9 in. Say ENTER. Now we get a lower limit error. Let’s clear that and we’ll put in a 50 – we know that’s in the middle, and say ENTER. And we finally got an acceptable value. This is great way for preventing users from accidentally entering out of range data. Note that when we bring up the numeric entry dialog we have to CLEAR the data before entering new data. You can change that behavior to auto clear the numeric entry – check out the video on “How To Auto Clear Numeric Entry” to learn more about that. 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!