C-More Micro HMI: Animating Scrolling Banner from AutomationDirect

Here’s a simple animation of a scrolling banner using a multistate bitmap object. The PLC simply increments a TAG like this “ANIMATION INDEX” right here. We have F1 setup to increment that index in this example since we don’t have a PLC connected – each time I press F1 it increments that TAG and the multistate bitmap shows us the corresponding image. As you can see - each graphic is just a shifted copy of the previous graphic so we get the impression of motion. When the sequence is finished, the PLC sets the index to zero (we have F2 setup to do that here) and simply starts incrementing the index again. This gives us the look of a continuous scrolling banner. Let’s see how to set that up. Here we have an increment object setup to increment that “ANIMAION INDEX” TAG – again this is just for our convenience – normally the PLC would do that. We have F1 assigned to this object to make it simple for us to increment this index. Each time this recipe button is pressed it changes the animation index to zero. Up here we have our multistate bitmap object. Here we tell it to use the TAG as an image index – we can also use the TAG as a shift register and use the bit location to tell us which image to use – it just depends on how you have your PLC setup. Just be sure to select this BEFORE you go to the next TAB – once you start adding images you can’t go back and change it. Here is the TAG we want the multistate bitmap to watch – again, normally this would be on the PLC. Finally, we enter our images on this Image TAB. We already have our images entered here, see the video on the multistate bitmap to learn a few tricks on how to do that ... just remember that you are limited to 17 images shown by this number right here. We are using all 17 of these 17 available slots. We can preview the animation using the mini simulator here and it will also show up on the main screen. As I increment that index, we can see each individual image appear on the screen. Note that this banner is too long to fit on the screen – that is not a problem – in fact it just shows that you are not limited to the screen width of the panel. You can have as long a message as you want, just make sure you can scroll all of it across the screen with the 17 images. Back to the simulator one more time and now we can see it all come together… Again, we had F1 tied to that increment object, and it increments this animation index. Each time we increment the index, the multistate bitmap sees that change and displays the corresponding image. B doing it in rapid succession, it makes it look like we have a scrolling banner. We also have that recipe button setup to reset the animation index back to zero so we can repeat the process. That’s all there is to setting up a scrolling banner. 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