C-More Micro HMI - How To Read Project From Panel for PLC touch screen display from AutomationDirect

When you transfer a project to a panel, you have the option to store the source code on the panel too. This is a great way to save your project – you always know you have the exact source code that created the panel in the first place. See the video on transferring project to the panel for information on how to do that. For this video we want to retrieve a project from the panel. We’re going to retrieve the project from that panel and bring it into the project we are working on here. To do that, we just select File >> Read From Panel. You can see the “Read From Panel” button is selected. You specify the com port your cable is connected to here … if you are not sure, click on Detail – this will list all the comports in use and what they will being used for … we’re using this Prolific USB to Serial com port, com 4, and we specified com 4 so we are in good shape. While there is no warning here, you do need to make sure the panel is on the Setup Screen before trying to read it. I’m going to reach over and hold down F1 and F5 for a couple seconds, and that brought up the setup menu on the panel on my desk, which looks like this If it doesn’t come up see the video on How to enable the setup screen, or the video on How to prevent access to setup screen. Either one will show you how to work around that. Once the panel is in that Setup Mode, just press Read Project As you can see – the last project that was loaded into this panel is now loaded into my C-More Micro software ready for me to edit. Note that the project name changed to EARun.mgp so it doesn’t overwrite any existing project you may have. Be sure to change that name to something that means something to you. Let’s do one more example – this time let’s try to download from a panel that does NOT have the source files stored on it … So let’s force that issue. I’m going to send this project to the panel, EXCEPT I am going to turn off saving the project to panel option. Its warning me – are you SURE you want to do that? And yes, for this example we are … I’m putting the panel into setup screen mode by holding down the F1 and F5 keys for a few seconds … Hit Transfer, and now it is only going to send the executable file – no project files. Normally it would have said downloading project files right now but we didn’t see that. So now we have a panel that has a fully functional project in it, but none of the source files were stored. Let’s try and retrieve those. Go back to File >> Read Project From Panel >> Read From Panel >> Com 4 >> Make sure the Panel is in setup screen mode – I’m holding down the F1 and F5 keys – setup screen popped up … and we say Read Project. And we get an error – “No Project File In Panel” It’s telling us that whoever stored this project on this panel, didn’t think to put the source files there for us to retrieve later. So it is really important that you include the source files with your project so if you ever need to refer to them in the future, you have them handy. That’s all there is to reading a project from a panel – be sure to check out 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