CLICK PLUS PLC: Data logging from AutomationDirect

CLICK PLUS has now added data logging to the CLICK PLC platform. This feature will allow logging for up to 16 data points which then is stored in a CSV file format, on a micro SD card. This does require software version 3.00 and above. To set up data logging, go to the Function tab of the navigation pane. Select Data Logging setup. Select Here to enable the logging. Now that you have the logging enabled, you can now select to have a bit to trigger the logging. This can be done with a bit that is triggered from your ladder code, or you can use a system bit. For this example, I am going to make it simple and use a 1-second system bit SC7. Typically, you won’t need to log at this speed, but I want to make sure we have plenty of data to show when we look at the file later. Now that I have the trigger selected you can select the trigger action; you can select is want rising or falling. Here is a list of the system registers that are associated with data logging. These are straight forward but I would like to quickly mention how the SD card eject works. Once you enable logging in your project, then load that project to your CPU. The SD card is present in the CPU and the CPU is placed in Run. The logging will write your data to the micro SD card. When this SD card eject is triggered, logging will be disabled until the Micro SD card is removed from the CPU and then when the card is returned to the CPU the logging will automatically begin again. When this bit is triggered both the Error Log and Password Entry Log is then copied to the micro SD card. Now, here by default, the data logging will write to one log file. As you can see here the file name will be Log.CSV, or you can select to create a new file based upon triggering a bit. When you select this option, the log file will be named Log and then the following based upon the system time of when the file was created. You can store up to 999 files on the micro SD card. When you go above 999 files, the first file will then be deleted. Basically, first created, first deleted. For this example, I am going to select the one file option. Here is the header format for both Time and Date - has three data ways to display the data. I will show how this looks when we get to the created file later. Here is where we define the up to 16 data points for logging. For each point, you can define an individual header and file formatting. I am going to set this up to log the System Scan counter so we can see some data later. Once we set the register, we can define the format option for this point. The format defaults to variable digits or set a fixed number of digits and suppress the zeros. From here, you can simulate a value and see how it will display like in the eventual log file. I will set it back to the default of variable digits. Now that we have all of this setup, I am just going to send this project to the CPU. Once the project is loaded, the CPU is in run mode and the micro SD card is present, logging will begin. I am going to let this run for a little while and set up a data view so we can trigger the SD eject bit. Now, I will pull that data out, load my micro SD card into my laptop here and this is the way the folder structure will look. Here is our file. I am going to open this up. As you can see, here are your file headers, your individual data registers header, everything quick, easy and simple to set up. Once again, CLICK makes advanced simple. If you have any questions on this or any other features of the CLICK PlUS PLC, please feel free to comment below or call into our technical support department. Select here to see more videos on the CLICK PLUS platform and select here to subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of our many products and solutions.