Point of View Productivity Series Part 2: Tag Integration from AutomationDirect

In this video we’ll use the tag integration method to bring productivity 2000 tags into a point of view project so we can control and monitor the productivity series controller. Let’s start a new project. Point of View button, New. I have a folder on My C drive I’m using for these demo projects – but you can put yours anywhere you want. Looks like I have two licenses available, we’ll use the smaller one for this project. We’re going to use a small screen so it is easy for us to see in this video. You would want to choose the screen size that works best for you – which is normally the size of the PC screen this app will be running on. BEWARE, you need to pick this wisely – it is NOT easy to change later … Great we have a new empty project that we can setup to talk to a Productivity series controller. Let’s flip over to a Productivity project. Here’s a simple little project that will allow Point of View to control this output coil by writing to this Motor_Enable tag, set a numeric value to drive this coil, read a numeric input value from this timer, and display the status of this oven coil as an indicator. All of the basic kinds of operations you would normally want to do. All we do is export those tags to a file. We DO want to include the I/O tags. And WHERE we save this file is really important. You can put it where ever you want, but you will save yourself some major headaches if you put it in your project folder. That’s because every time you start the development software, Point of View re-loads the tags from this file. If you develop the app on your computer and let’s say you put the tag file in your documents folder. Then you send the app to someone else to work on. Well, Point of View won’t be able to find the tags on his PC because it will be trying to find YOUR documents folder on your PC. And when it doesn’t find the tags, it DELETES THEM and now you have to start over. So we’re going to avoid those headaches and drop this tag database into the point of view project folder, and we’ll call it P2000_Tags. Click Export and we are done. If you look in that folder you will see that the export create two files, basic and extended. Point of view needs the basic file. Back in Point of View under the Project tab we want to communicate with a PLC so we click the communication button. And in this Tag Integration section click on ADD. This is for a Productivity Series controller so I’ll select that one. This Name field will be the name of the folder the tags are stored under in Point of View so let’s call this P2000 for the productivity 2000 controller that these came from. You might want to give it a more descriptive name like Pump Controller or Turbine Controller – whatever makes sense to you. Click ADD and enter the address of the PLC. If you have a driver for a controller that supports serial Modbus you would put the node number here. The Productivity series driver only supports Ethernet so we’ll use its IP address as the PLC Station. We need to select the exported tag file which we put in our project folder. Remember – Point of View needs the BASIC file. And hit OK. Hit OK again and we’re done! So all we’ve done so far is export the tags from the Productivity 2000 and then tell Point of View where to find them using this Communications Dialog. That’s all there is to it. Let’s build a simple app to test it. Right click on screens to insert a new screen into the project. Give it a name and hit ok. Let’s use a switch to enable this conveyor motor. Under the graphics tab, symbols, system symbols, Switches – let’s grab this on off switch and click to drop it on the screen. Double click to bring up it’s properties. Let’s change this pre-assigned system tag to the Motor Control tag from the Productivity 2000. Double click on the command tag – that’s the one that will be written to the Productivity 2000. The Productivity 2000 tags will be listed under DEVICES in that folder we named back when we setup the import in the communications dialog. I know the tag is named motor something so I start typing that here and the list gets real short real quick. There it is. Double click on that to select it. I want the same tag to control the look of the switch so I’ll just copy and paste that here. Let’s try what we have so far. Before we do that, let’s modify the viewer so it doesn’t take up the whole screen. Project Tab, Viewer, let’s select the title bar so we can drag the window around, the usual controls and we DON’T want to start maximized and we do want to be able to resize the window. Great. Save the screen, give it a name. Run it. Let’s re-size that so we can see it. Toggle the Switch and sure enough the output on the Controller responds. Perfect. Let’s control and display the Productivity 2000 timer. Grab a pushbutton. Click to drop it on the screen. Double click on that, find the timer enable tag, and copy and paste that to control the look of the pushbutton. Let’s display the numeric value of the timer se we can see it got enabled. Grab a text box, drop it on the screen. Double click. Browse. I’ll start typing the tag name to filter the list down and there it is. This is just a display text box so turn off the input enable. Let’s try that. Save. Run. And sure enough we can control and view the timer. Perfect. Now let’s control the oven. In a real app this would be an analog temperature reading or something like that but for our demo we’re just going to manually enter a value from point of view just so we can see how to do a numeric input. Grab a text box. Double click on it to bring up the properties, click on browse. And we know we want the Temperature Tag so I’ll start typing that and there it is. Double click to use it. This IS a numeric input box so we’ll leave this check box enabled. Let’s add an indicator to tell us if the oven is enabled. Symbols, Pilot lights, grab one and drop it on the screen. Double click to bring up the properties, then double click on the tag to change it. start typing the tag name, and select it. Let’s try that. Save the screen. Run the project. And sure enough if we enter a value larger than 1234 then the oven turs on. Perfect. Well, You get the idea. To connect Point of View to a Productivity series controller, just export the tags, tell Point of view where to find them using that communications dialog and then use them just like any other tag. There are a couple things you need to be aware of when using Tag Integration, so be sure to check out part 3 of this series before using Tag Integration. It’ll save you a lot of time and frustration. If you need any help, please call AutomationDirect’s Free, Award winning tech support during regular business hours – they will be happy to help. And don’t forget the forums – there are lots of folks there that love to share their years of experience. Just don’t post any questions directed at AutomationDirect’s support team there, they don’t monitor the forums on a regular basis.