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CRIMSON 3 USER MANUAL

1. PEN Em ar as Here folder has been crete to representa PID loop and tags have been created to refer ta the loop s process value and setpoint The tags are referred to in code as 1oop 3V and So using the standard Crimson rules for using nested items Folder binding allows you to create a widget that mirrors that object and property structure that you have created in your tags Consider following data definition Mere we have ereated data items whose names match the names of the tags that make up a PID loop We have provided human readable names for them and we have flagged both daa items as being tags We have also defined the setpoint to be writable Note at this time that a mew property called Hind To has appeared for cach data em ve shall return to this during a discussion of advanced folder binding In the binding section we have enabled folder binding This indicates that we want Crimson to support the automatic binding of all the data items to tags from a single source folder After Wwe save these changes and select the widgets context menu we will notice a new command called Bind Widget that allows the binding operation to be performed m Selecting the command or pressing Cr displays the following dialog box If we drag the Loop folder from the Resource Pane and drop it on the target the widgets data items will be automatically bound to the corresponding tags in the folder
2. PROPERTIES Display pages also have certain properties that can be accessed in the same way Prora DescniPrion DATE The pages Label prope Sene The pages Description proper Sens Comms REFERENCES References to registers in master communications devices can be entered into an expression means of a syntax comprising an opening square bracket the register name and a closing square bracket An optional device name may be prefixed to the register name and separated by a period The device name is not needed when referring to the only device in a database Examples ofthis syntax are shown below Banos 15100 Register D100 a int device 701 Register w770 in device AB 1 5100 Register pr00 in device SIMPLE MATH As mentioned above expressions often contain more than one data value with their values being combined mathematically The simplest of these expressions may add a of values while a more complex expression might obtain the average of thre values These operations are performed using the familiar syntax you will have seen in applications such as Excel The examples below show the basie operations that can be performed Prony Bane pm Sacs rz Tai T Tesi Tas Division Groups Tesi Tat p Tei i asi Although the
3. INDEXING ARRAYS 223 INDEXING STRINGS 224 ADDING STRINGS 224 CALLING PROGRAMS 224 sivc FUNCTIONS 224 PRIORITY SUMMARY 224 WRITING ACTIONS CHANGING PAGE i CHANGING NUMERIC VALUES 227 CHANGING Brr Values 27 RUNNING PROGRANS USING FUNCTIONS OPERATOR PRIORITY CRIMSON 3 USER MANUAL cere sare d GETTING STARTED Welcome to Crimson 3 the latest version of Red Lion s widely acclaimed operator interface configuration software If you have used an earlier version of Crimson you will soon notice that Crimson 3 provides a huge number of improvements while retaining all of the power that you have grown used o If you are new to Crimson be to read atleast the first few chapters of this manual to get an introduction to how the software works Either way you will soon find out how Crimson 3 makes it easier and quicker for you to design powerful and attractive operator interface solutions SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Crimson 3 is designed to run on any version of Microsoft Windows from Windows 2000 onwards Memory requirements are modest and any system that meets the minimum system requirements for its operating system will be capable of running Crimson without any problems About 150MB of free disk space will be needed for installation and you should ideally have a display with sufficient resolution to allow the citing of display pages without having to seroll too much For a VG
4. The Domain Name property specifies the domain name that will be passed tothe SMTP server in the HELO or EHLO command The vast majority of SMTP servers ignore this string In the unlikely event that your SMTP server attempts to do a DNS lookup to confirm the identity of its client you may need to enter something appropriate to your DNS configuration The Reverse Path property specifies the email address that will be supplied as he originator of the messages sent by the target device The property comprises a display name and an email address Since Crimson is not capable of receiving messages the email address will often be set to something that will return an message ifa reply is sent Tipe rein meas The Initial Timeout property specifies how many seconds the mail client wil wait for the SMTP server to send its welcome banner Some Microsoft servers attempt to negotiate Microsof spcific authentication with mail clients thereby delaying the point at which the banner appears You may want to extend this time period to 2 minutes or more when working with such servers The Recond Log File property can be enabled io a log of all SMTP interactions in the root directory of the CompactFlash card This fle can be useful when debugging SMTP operations but enabling it all the time wi degrade performance slightly tend to SMTP AUTHENTICATION The Method property indicates the type of authentication to be atte
5. om Formar TYPE The Format Type property selects the format for this tag The various types of formats are discussed in detail in a following chapter as are the other properties that might appear according to the format type that you have selected Dara Lmrrs The Limit Source property defines how the tag s data entry limits are defined The default setting of Automatic results in the Display Range specified on the Data tab being used as a primary source with the format object being used as a fall back If neither source can define range the maximum supported range for the tag s data type is used A setting of From Format can be used to force the format object to be used while a setting of User Defined can be used to allow manual entry ofthe limits The Minimum Value and Maximum Value properties are used to manually define duta entry limits when Limit Source is set to User Defined Coton PROPERTIES A numeric tag has the following properties on its Colors tab The Color Type property defines the coloring for this tag The various types of coloring are discussed in detail in a following chapter as are the other properties that might appear according t the option you have selected ary Tip rein ALARM PROPERTIES A numeric tag has the following properties on its Alarms tab Fon EAH ALAR The Event Mode property is used to indicate the logie
6. sc ve uox B ponens kankhhhhhtttt hBRhk saese2 War vamedion nos GROUPS dun ADDING MOVEMENT PRIMITIVES ADDING TEXT To PRIMITIVES ADDING DATA TO PRIMITIVES ADDING ACTIONS TO PRIMITIVES ADDING ACTIONS TO KEYS EDITING PAGE PROPERTIES USER INTERFACE SETTINGS MANAGING IMAGES MANAGING FONTS PRIMITIVE TYPES CORE PRIMITIVES ROWS c POLYGONS AND STARS BALLOONS AND CALL OUTS SEMI TRIMMED FIGURES 132 133 ACTIONS BUTTONS 2133 ILLUMINATED BUTTONS INDICATORS ne 135 2 STATE 3 STorE 138 STATE SELECTORS 139 STATE SELECTORS LEGACY PRIMITIVES 140 SYSTEM PRIMITIVES 142 LOCALIZATION SELECTING LANGUAGES CONFIGURING AUTO TIANSLATION TRANSLATING YOUR DATABASE PREVIEWING TRANSLATIONS 152 SWITCHING LANGUAGES 2152 Usine Wipcers CREATING A WIDGET 153 WIDGET DATA DEFINITIONS Fune Wicers FOLDER BINDING 160 ADVANCED BINDING 182 DETAILS WIDGETS 1163 War vamedion netos USING THE DATA LOGGER CREATING DATA Locs Birch Loc FILE STORAGE THe Loacine PROCESS ACCESSING LOG FILES USING THE Wee SERVER IMPORTANT NOTE ssn WEB SERVER PROPERTIES ADDING WEB PAGES ren UsiNG A Custom WeB SITE
7. Enter the values shown above setting the daa items to ces and 1252 respectively Note how the preview now shows values of zer as the data boxes within the widget are now getting their data from and Tag respectively To make things a bit more interesting right click on the widget and access the Jump menu Select Tagl to jump to that tag and enter a value of 1234 in the Simulate As property Use the AcT Lerr key combination or the Bock button on the toolbar and note how the wid continuing to track the tag dta xt grab the right handle and make the widget a little wider on the upper of the two data boxes to enter group editing mode and then right lick on the same box to access its context menu mpm Label ert Em verca Dues wea gt Select the Data submenu and choose the Label and Data command to configure this data box to display the tag s label as well as its data value Note the new appearance of the widget As you can see the data box is displaying the label ftom Tag indicating that the value of that we entered into the data box s Value property is entirely equivalent to the tag to which the data item was subsequently configured We refer to the process of setting a widget item to a tag as binding that data item to that tag Binding can be performed in more complex ways as we shall see later SU
8. Opening the widgets properties shows the results In other words cach dats item has been bound to the tag within the selected folder that has a name equal to its own data item name Think for a second about how powerful this You define multiple properties and bind them ina single operation reducing design time and allowing better reuse of previously designed items ADVANCED BINDING Folder binding supports number of advanced options Class Marcius The first and simplest is the Required Folder Clase setting in the widget s properties This can be used to restrict the folders that will be accepted daring binding therefore avoiding mismatches between what amount to different object types The specified class on the widget must match the class on the folder that is being bound or an error will result BINDING PREFIXES The Binding Prefix property can be used when nesting widgets to allow the child widgets to be bound to sub folders of the folder to which the parent widget is bound For example suppose you create a dual loop widget that is to be bound to a folder that contains two PID folders named Loop and Loop2 By setting cach of the child widgets binding prefix to one of the loop names you can ensue that they are bound to different child folders of he folder that is dragged on to the parent widget For example if the first child widget has a binding meri Tp rein prefix of Loop and its
9. The alternative mode uses the first selected item as a reference This item can be identified by the larger square at its center SPACING PRIMITIVES IE you have a numberof primitives that you wish to space equally on the page you may use be Space Equally Vertical or Space Equally Horizontal commands on the Arrange menu The commands work on the curently selected primitives and attempt to reallocate the fee space between the items to achieve equal spacing The two outer primitives will be left in thelr current positions Note that the command may fil if an inappropriate set of primitives are selected and may not achieve perfect spacing if the available space is too limited REORDERING PRIMITIVES Primitives on a display page are stored in what is known as a z order This defines the sequence in which the primitives are drawn and therefore whether not a given primitive appears to be in front of or behind another primitive In fist example below the blue square is shown behind the rod squares ie at the bottom of the zorder In the second example it has been moved to the front of th order and appears in front of he other figures To move items in the z order select the items and then use the various commands on the Arrange menu The Move Forward and Move Backward commands move the selection one step in the indicated direction while the Move To Front and Move To Back commands move the selection to the in
10. The Value property is uscd in the automatic modes and will be written to the data values associated with States A and B asthe switch is changed By default State A is represented by a zero and State by a one but these values can be changed using the advanced settings for this primitive gt The Divisions property defines whether the switch is thrown vertically or horizontally and therefore bow Crimson should divide the primitive when interpreting touches by the user Refer to the previous chapter for details ofthe Protection Enable and Remote properties Refer to earlier in this chapter for details of how change or adjust the switch images ADVANCED PROPERTIES The Value A and Value B properties define the data values used inthe automatic modes to represent the two states of the switch The value read from the Value property will be compared to these two values to decide which state to display and changing the switch will similarly write the appropriate value The Default property selects the state to be displayed if the data read from the Value property docs not match ether Value A or Value The On Pressad and On Released properties define custom behaviors to be carried out when the A and B portions of the switch are pressed or released by the user For a vertical switch is the bottom half and is the top half For a horizontal switch is the left half and B is the right half 3 STATE TocaLes in is
11. hw group com provides a utility called HW Virtual Serial Port There are also a numberof other freeware port drivers available most of which seem to be derived from the same source base On the commercial side a company called Tactical Software http www tacticalsoftware com offers Seria IP for about 100 a port While the various freeware drivers no doubt have many contented users we have found that these drivers have occasional stability problems on certain PCs Tactical Software s Serial IP thus the only package that we are able to support and the following information assumes that you are using this package To create a virtual serial port open SerialP s configuration sereen and select the name of the COM port you wish to define This will typically be the first free COM port ater those allocated to the physical ports and modems installed in your PC Next enter the IP address of the Crimson based device and enter TCP IP port number that you allocated when sharing the port The example below is configured as required by the previous samples in this document Finally ensure Raw TCP Connection is selected and close the Serial dialog You will now be able to configure any Windows based software to use the newly created port for download When the software opens the connection Crimson will suspend communications on the shared port and data will be exchanged between the PC software and the remo
12. m merid cu Mes Ez i a Deje eroe em es s Bs The Value Minimum and Maximum properties are used to define the color to be displayed In the example shown the color will blue when the tag is at or below its minimum value red when itis at or above its maximum value and will transition smoothly from blue to red as the tag changes between its limits 4 The Color properties allow you to define the colors to be used DEFINING COLOR EXPRESSIONS As mentioned above color properties can be defined via integer expressions or via local programs retuming integer values These mechanisms are used in those circumstances where the standard color animation methods are not sufficient As you will rarely have to use these features feel free to skip this section if you consider it too complex Crimson works with 15 bit color values with the lowest five bits representing the red the next five bits representing the green and the upper five bits representing the blue You can manipulate color values just as you would any other integer value BUILDING Cocos The ca1Geesc3 tz g b function can be used to create color value from its red green and blue components Although Crimson uses 15 bit color values containing three Sit values the arguments passed to this function are scaled down by a factor of 8 und should thus be in the range O to 255 Co1cetaca 128 0 64 will thus retum a purple lik
13. CRIMSON 3 USER MANUAL Re Order from Omegamation 1 888 55 6634 1 888 55 omegamation com red len Copyright 2003 2010 Red Lion Controls Inc All Rights Reserved Worldwide The information contained herein is provided in good fiith but is subject to change without notice I is supplied with no warranty whatsoever and does not represent a commitment on the part of Red Lion Controls Companies names and data used as examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise stated No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted im any form or by any means electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of Red Lion Controls Ic The Red Lion logo is a registered trademark of Red Lion Controls Inc Crimson and the Crimson logo are registred trademarks of Red Lion Controls Inc All other trademarks are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners Written by Mike Granby and Jesse TABLE OF CONTENTS Gerning STARTED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE REGISTRATION CHECKING FOR UPDATES INSTALLING THE USB DRIVERS TROUBLESHOOTING GETTING ASSISTANCE THE NEXT STEPS CRIMSON BASICS WINDOW LAYOUT CATEGORIES GETTING AROUND NavicxTION Lists UNDO AND REDO GLOBAL SEARCHING WORKING WITH DATABASES Uk bb ee ANNAN DOWNLOADING
14. This type of statement is used within a program to make a decision The construct consists of an statement with a condition in parentheses followed by an action or actions to be executed if the condition is true If more than one action is specified each should be placed on a separate line and curly brackets should be used to group the statements together An optional clause can be used to provide for code to be run if the condition is fale zm Wr vamedion neos The example below shows an statement with a single ation The example below shows an 22 statement with two actions The example below shows an lt lt statement with an aise clause Note that it is very important to remember to place the cury brackets around groups of actions to he executed in the i of lt 1 portion of the statement If you omit the brackets Crimson will most likely misunderstand exactly which actions you want to be dependent upon the lt condition Although line breaks are recommend between actions they are not used to figure out what is and is not included within the conditional statement SWITCH STATEMENTS switch statement is used to compare an integer value against a number of possible constants and to perform an action based upon which value is matched The exact syntax supports a number of options beyond those shown in the example below but for the vast majority of applic
15. USING THE SECURITY SYSTEM SECURITY BASICS SECURITY SETTINGS CREATING Users SPECIFYING TAG SECURITY SPECIFYING PAGE SECURITY SECURITY RELATED SERVICES USING TIME MANAGEMENT 181 USING THE FTP SERVER USING FILE SYNCHRONIZATION USING ELECTRONIC MAIL 2187 SHARING PorTS ENABLING TCP IP 1192 SHARING THE REQUIRED PoRT 1192 CONNECTING VIA ANOTHER PORT 1193 CONNECTING VIA ETHERNET 1193 PURE VIRTUAL PORTS 2198 Usne Movems ADDING A DIAL IN CONNECTION 197 ADDING A DIAL OUT CONNECTION 2199 ADDING AN SMS CONNECTION 200 SMS MESSAGE PROCESSING 200 CHECKING THE MODEM STATUS 1202 TROUBLESHOOTING MODEM COMMUNICATION 1203 USING MULTIPLE INTERFACES 1 203 THE USB Host MEMORY STICK SUPPORT 1205 SUPPORT 206 UstNG PROGRAMS THE PROGRAM LIST 1 207 FINDING PROGRAM USAGE 1 207 EDITING PROGRAMS 1 207 Gerrine Ha 1208 THE RESOURCE PANE 1208 PROGRAM DATA TYPES 1 208 PROGRAM PROPERTIES 208 ADDING COMMENTS 211 RETURNING VALUES 211 PASSING ARGUMENTS ie Procrammine TIPS WRITING EXPRESSIONS DATA VALUES Papija edian nos SIMPLE MATH 220 OPERATOR PRIORITY 220 TYPE CONVERSION 220 CowennuN VALUES Tests CONDITIONS Croosth VALUES MANINIATING BITS
16. and note bow the widget itself now displays data items in its own properties dialog Ignore these for now and press OK to close this dialog too par Te rein The widget should still be selected in the graphie editor so click on one of the data boxes contained in the widget to ener group editing mode Remember the green rectangle marks the group that we re editing and the red rectangle shows the selected item in that group Double click on the data box to bring up its properties Enter scs in the Value field and note the results Crimson accepts this as tag name even though we don t actually have a tag called Data in cur database This value is actually equal to one of the data items defined within the widget and will represent whatever tag we assign when we go back in and edit the widget data The value of 25 shown in the preview window is the default value used for widget data items that are not mapped to anything Since Data is marked a ag we can acces its properties use it asa source of formatting information or do anything else that we would do with a tag Repeat this step for the second data box this ime setting its Value property to a2 Press Ese until you have the widget alone selected Ifyou go too far and clear the selection just click on the widget itself ensuring that it has a red rectangle round it 1 properties and this time enter values for the data items u
17. ot permitted f r tags whose source is an expression For mapped tags the exact number of registers to be ead from the remote devices depends upon the type of the registers to which the tag is mapped the length and the Packing setting The Length property defines the length of the string Non retentive intemal strings do not have to have a length defined as they can store a string of any reasonable length The Packing property is used for mapped tags to define how the Unicode string value is to be derived from the raw comms data and vice versa The following settings may be available depending on the underlying data type Rea Nue Each coma ditm a vu ara inl hacer or the sting Sbit values will be etl as ASCI wl et and larger alos wil be treated as Unicode Paces Rear Big Eni ASCII character with the most significant bits being se for the first character Only available for deta ems org wed for he fin charac Only available for dita ers of 16 bins or greater in sie Unicode Each T ri unit in tne data tom iud irc a single Big Ean Unicode character with the most significam 16 bin being se for the first character Only available for data tem Unicode ich 16bit unit in he datae iud iuro ange wed forthe frst character Only available for dia em 32 bisia ize Lite Endian hex character in the range 79 and A wth the eat significant is being usa is Writes ose vith ths packi
18. The Value and Hysteresis properties are as described for the Alarms tab Delay property is as described far the Alarms tab The Action property is used to indicate what action should be performed when the trigger is activated Refer to the Writing Actions chapter for a deseription of the syntax used to define the various actions that are available om Plot PROPERTIES Quick Plot is feature added to numeri tags which allows for an easy method of graphically racking tag values Once enabled and configured the tag plot can be added to a display page fom the Core Primitives category on the Resource Pane Click and drag the Quick Plt primitive ont the desired display page and resize as needed The following properties are on the Plot tb The Mode property is used to set how data is recorded Continuous mode records in a circular buffer discarding old values Continuous is the most commonly used mode One shor relative will start recording when the enable becomes true and stop when the buffer fills or when enable goes false The time values used to find the position in the slot will be relative to the time when the plot started One shot absolut is similar except that all time values are zero based Rewind specifies what ta do if time goes backwards This can happen since the time base can be a variable The options are to cither clear the data afer the time to which we huve stepped back or
19. They can be copied pasted sized and deleted In fact any of the usual operations can be performed You can even drag new items fom the Resource Pane and drop them into a group To exit group diting mode click outside the group or pres the Esc key Neste Group Eorring Crimson also allows editing within groups tha are themselves within groups To activate this feature begin editing within the outer group select the inner group and then slick on a member of that inner group Note in the example above how a series of fading rectangles are used to show the group hierarchy Note also how items outside the current sroups are shown in faded colors to make it easier to see where the group ends When using the Ese key to exit nested group editing each press of the key will move up one level EXPANDING GROUPS As mentioned above movement of primitives during group editing is limited such that you cannot move a primitive outside the group to which it belongs In situations where you want to make adjustments to primitives at the edge of a group you may select the Expand and Edit command from context mens of the group This will move the group boundaries fom the primitives that it contains allowing such adjustments to be made When group editing mode is canceled the group boundary will he moved inwards to tightly surround its contents ADDING MOVEMENT TO PRIMITIVES Any primitive can be animated such that it moves dynamical
20. When deciding which of the target device s serial ports to use for communications note that some devices and certain option cards multiplex a single serial controller between multiple pori This implies that if either port is used for a slave protocol the other port will be unavailable and that if a token passing protocol such as DILARS is employed the other port will similarly disabled Crimson will warn you if you attempt to create a configuration that breaks these rules Note also that a target device s programming port may be used as an extra communicatione port but that it will not be available for download in these circumstances This is not an issue ifthe unit has a USB port that is used for downloads and it is therefore highly recommended that you use this method if you want to connect devices the programming port Where USB is not used you must provide a method to re enable serial downloads by executing the ent command in response to some user action SELECTING A PROTOCOL To select a protocol for a particular click on that ports icon inthe press the Pick button next to the Driver fied in the Editing Pane avigation Pane and parry Tp rein nios The following dialog box will appear mmm Select the appropriate manufacturer and driver and press the OK button to close the dialog box The port will hen be configured to use the appropriate protocol and a single device icon
21. the ability to tum ordinary groups of primitives into powerful entities called widgets In addition to its component primitives a widget contains user definable data items that can be edited at the group widgets components This chapter explains how to create widgets and bow to use them cl but referenced by the CREATING A WiDGET The easiest way to understand widgets is to creat one Let s start creating an empty database and adding four numeric tags Leave the tag properties at their default settings resulting in four internal integer values named Tag through Tags Switch to the Display Pages section and add two data box primitives to the page Leave their properties at their default values for now and selection and select the items will be bound into a group but the following dialog box will also appear ect both items Right click on the derfully named Widgetize command from the context menu The iet has been created this dialog box will be used to edit the widget s data items but fr now we have nothing defined Click the Edit button inthe Definitions section to allow us to define some data items Complete the data fields as shown above paying particular attention to get the daa type right and to modify the Flags fields to indicate that each data item should be a tag The flags field can be edited using the Edit button next to the property Press OK to close the dialog box
22. they can be set to tag values by simply dragging the appropriate tag from the Resource Pane and dropping it on field PROPERTIES Action properties are used within tags to define action to be performed when triggered conditions are met or when a tag value is changed They are edited by a drop down and edit box similar t hose used for editing expressions 7 1 16 As with expressions the Edit button can be used to invoke a larger editing window and complex ations be crested by means of local programs Coton Properties Color properties within tags represent a pair of colors these being the foreground and a background color that may be used when displaying the tag s state im textual form The example below shows a color pair being edited The drop down menu contains the following colors The sixteen standard VGA colors Thirtytwo shades of gray between black and white Any other colors used in the database up to a limit of twenty four The More option at the bottom of the list can be used to invoke the color selection dialog Bm Gee This dialog offers several ways of defining a color You can pick fom the palet pick from the rainbow window or enter the explicit HSL or RGB parameters If the color selected has not previously been used inthe database and is not one ofthe standard colors or grays it will be added the custom colors shown in the drop down menu
23. you can use Programming category to create and manipulate programs The program list in the Navigation Pane is a conventional Navigation List that can be used to create delete rename and otherwise organize programs Note that programs can be grouped into folders and that each program s icon can display three states green indicating a program that has been translated and validated yellow indicating a program that has been edited but not yet translated or red indicating a program that contains one or more errs FINDING PROGRAM USAGE You can find all the items that refer to a given program by right clicking that items in the Navigation Pane and selecting the Find Usage command The resulting items will be placed on the Global Search Results List and can be accessed by means of the FA and Str key combinations The list itself can be shown or hidden by pressing F8 EDITING PROGRAMS To edit a program simply edit the program text using the Source tab shown in the Edi Pane You will notice that the program s icon tums yellow as soon as you start typing indicating that you have made changes that have yet to be translated You will also notice that Chimson s program editor performs syntax coloring auto indentation and a variety of other features appropriate for a code editor Editor options can be configured by right clicking on be Editing Pune and selecting the appropriate command from the resulting menu When you have fini
24. 1o stiame for binding Note that each of these special names evaluates to a string constant equal to the required name and not to the actual tag itself They are typically used to provide information to the user regarding the folder to which a widget or its root widget have been bound DETAILS WinceTs Suppose you have created a PID widget but want to display more detailed status information when the user presses button in that widget The casy answer is to create a more and perhaps larger complex widget that you would then bind the same loop You would place this widget on another page and then select that page from the original overview widget perhaps using a data item to tell the widget which page to use Well Details Widget creation performs all these steps automatically ENABLING DETAILS CREATION This feature is controlled via the Details Creation property ofthe widgets data definition Details eta Creation tals The Details Widget property is used to provide a comma separated list of the one or more details widgets that you would like to place on their own pages Each widget is specified by giving the filename to which it was saved In the example above we have one details widget to be extracted from a file called wia in the Crimson widgets directory DEFINING DATA ITEMS We must also provide data items in the overview widget so that we can access the names of the p
25. Communications category Tape rein meas EXTRACTING DATABASES The Link Support Upload command can be used to instruet Crimson as to whether ar not it should include the information necessary to support database upload when sending a database to a target device This setting is stored in the database and can thus be configured on a per le basis Supporting upload will slow the download process somewhat and may fail with extremely large databases containing many embedded images but it will ensure that should yos lose your database file you will be able to extract an editable image from the device Note that if you lose your database file and you do not have upload support enabled you will not be able to reconstruct your file without starting from scratch To extract a database from a panel use the Link Extract command This command will upload the database and prompt you for a same under which to save the file The file will then he opened for editing If the database was password protected you may be required to enter the password before if can be opened In other words enabling upload will not circumvent password protection SENDING THE TIME AND DATE The Link Send Time command can be used to set the target device s clock to match that of the PC on which Crimson is executing This command also sends the current time zone and Daylight Savings Time settings to the target device allowing the advanced features
26. Los Properties When you first enter the Data Tags category of the Navigation Pane you will notice a number of properis relating to event logging These properties control if and how events generated by tags ar by their alarms will be saved to CompactFlash They are analogous to the properties defined by data logs and you are thus referred to the Using the Data Logger chapter ater in this manual for more information on how they can be used CREATING Tacs Data tags are created and otherwise manipulated via the usual methods in the Navigation Pane You will notice that you can create folders to organize your tags and that the New button in the toolbar contains a drop down arrow to allow you to select the type of tag to be inserted The left hand side of the New button will erente tag of the same type as the last ane you created making it casier to create multiple tags without using the drop down list Tip rein nos eg ec tea DUPLICATING TAGS The Smart Duplicate command on the Edit menu can be used to create new of an existing tag incrementing its data source to refer to the next data element The definition of next depends on the exact type of the data element with Crimson being capable of selecting the next register in a comms device the next member of an array or the next tag in a sequence For example using Smart Duplicate on a 16 bit tag mapped to Modbus register 20001 will produce a tag
27. Perfomance may be reduced if large amounts of datae ere by the program Rd When Exceed Futsal data scd within he program wil Be ed only wen the programa is invoked The program will wl e period deine in the timeout property for such ats to be available Ife dta cannot be rend perhaps besuse a device he program will not execute This nodes typically used with plblly referenced programs that consume ge amount of dat that would otherwise Read ut Run Anyway External dat wil be etd as described Tor Read Always data kas boen rend Th operar will iere never see tbe NOT READY menage but ifa device ix offline thene is no guarantee that the program s ta iens contain valid data Wr vamedion neos ADDING COMMENTS You can add comments to your programs in two ways First you can use the sequence to introduce comment which will continue for the rest of the current line Secondly you can use the sequence to introduce a single or multi line comment This comment will continu until the sequence appears The sample below shows both commenting styles A single line comment may also be placed at the end ofa line that contains code RETURNING VALUES As mentioned above programs can return values Such programs can be invoked by other programs or by expressions anywhere in the database For example if you want to perform a particularly complex decode on
28. Sst function will stop the current Tp rein nos batch while Cotsen 0 will retum the name of the batch that is curently active For more information please refer to the Reference Manual Loc STORAGE As described above data logs store their data in a series of files on the target devices CompactFlash card The files are placed in the subdirectory specified in the log s properties with this directory being stored under a root directory entry called 1068 Log files are named after the time and date at which the log is scheduled to begin If each file contains an hour or more of information the files will be named where YY represents the year of the file o represents the month 00 represents the date and i represents the hour If cach file contains less than one hour of information the files will with the initial six characters as described above and the trailing representing the minute at which the log began These rules ensure that cach log file has a unique name dependant on the time at which is was created instead be named soos c The length of each file depends on the Update Rate and Each File Holds properties For example with an update rate of 5 seconds and a number of samples of 360 each file will hold S x 360 60 30 minutes of data therefore use the nohtne file will be created every 30 minutes either on the hour or at hal past the hour sv filename format new
29. THE LOGGING Process CCrimson s data logger operates using two separate processes The first samples each data point at the rate specified by the properties of cach lg and places the data in a buffer within the RAM of the target device The second process executes every two minutes and writes the data from memory to the CompactFlash card This structure has several advantages 2 Writes to the CompactFlash card are guaranteed to begin only on a two minute boundary hat is at exactly 2 4 or 6 minutes past the hour and so on This means that if your target device supports hot swapping of CF cards you can wait for the next burst of writes to start and when the CompactFlash activity LED ceases to flicker you are guaranteed to have at least until the start of the next two minute interval before further writes will be attempted This means that you can remove the card without fear of data coruption As long as you insert a new card before four minutes have elapsed no data will be lost Writes to the CompactFlash achieve a much higher leve of performance by avoiding the need to continually update the card s file system data structures for every single sample For logs configured to sample at very high data rates the bandwidth of a typical CompactFlash card would not allow data to be writen reliably in the absence of such buffering process Note that because data is not committed to CompactFlash for up to two minutes up to this amount of
30. This facility must he enabled if the web server isto be used by a remote client program to automatically synchronize data logs The Remote Viewing property is used to enable or disable a facility by which a web browser cam be used to view the current contents of the target device s display This facility is very useful when remotely diagnosing problems that an operator may be having with the operator panel ar the machine it controls The Remote Control property is used to enable or disable an option by which the remote viewing facility is extended to allow a web browser to be used to simulate the pressing of keys or display primitives thereby allowing remote control of the panel or the machine it controls While this feature is extremely useful care must be taken to use the various security parameters to avoid unauthorized tampering with a machine The use of an extemal firewall is also strongly recommended ifthe panel is reachable from the Interet The Custom Site property is used to enable or disable a facility by which files stored in the viz directory of the CompactFlash card are exposed via the web Server This facility is described in more detail below The Remote Refresh property represents the frequency at which the web browser connected to the web server will reftesh the remote view page A value of zero will result refreshes being performed as quickly as possible Higher values will reduce bandwidth usage and may be suitable
31. a selected tune using the target device s intemal sounder Tune Name selects the tune o be played Customized tumes may he played using the 25807010 funcion Tne Loc ON User This action activates the log on sereen on the target device It has no options THe Loc Orr User ACTION This action logs off the current user of the target device It has no options ADDING ACTIONS TO Keys Actions m also be added to the keys of the target device Zoom out until you can sce the keys and then double click a key to bring up its properties You will notice that this dialog contains two tabs both of which define an action The first tab defines the action that will be performed by this key when the current page is displayed while the second tab defines an action to be performed on every pa and global actions respectively These are known as the local The color used to display the key will change according to which actions are defined 21 nene ee 8 s GLOBAL action is defined Once you have defined an action you can right click on the key and use the resulting menu to select either Make Global ar Make Local to change the action type These options will not be available if both types of action have already been defined merui Wap rein nio EDITING PAGE PROPERTIES Right clicking in the Editing Pane away from any primitives at les the context menu and allows selection
32. all the daa tags in your database allowing them to be selected and edited ems within these Navigation Lists be manipulated in various ways To quickly find an item type the first few letters of its name Crimson will selest the first item that matches the characters you have entered Typing more characters will make the selection more specific while pressing Ese will allow a new sequence of search characters to be entered To create an item click on the New button in the Navigation Pane toolbar those lists that support only a single type of item you may also use the key combination The New button on the toolbar may offer a list of available items allowing you to choose the type of the item you wish to create To delete an item ether use the Delete icon in the Navigation Pane toolbar press the A T D6 key combination If you delete a folder all of the items within that folder will be deleted too Warnings are provided for multiple deletes although they can always be reversed via the Undo command To rename an item select it and press F2 You may then enter the new name and press Alternatively select the item and then single click on the name once more to activate editing Again press Erer when you are finished Workin WITH FOLDERS Some lists support the grouping of items into folders Folders can be created using the New Folder icon in the Navigation Pane toolbar and can be renamed
33. appropriate user credentials are used Wr vamedion neos Status MEANING NEG IPCP The connection is negotiating IPCP options This process decides on a set of network protocol settings that are acceptable to both the client and the server up The connection is active and IP data be exchanged HANGING UP The modem is disconnecting This state will exist for only a short ime before the modem retums to IDLE The signal strength values retumed by GSM modems have the following meaning VALUE SIGNAL STRENGTH 0 TIS oF less 1 Imm 230 5208 in Dan steps Shit or greater Signal rengti cannot be determined Cell phones typically interpret these values as follows when displaying signal strength VALUE STRENGTH NUMBER OF BARS Seres One 10am thru Sdn Two m Siue Asa Three 1S or greater Suse or greater Four TROUBLESHOOTING MODEM COMMUNICATION The various modem drivers provide a Log File property to log exchange with the modem to a file on the CompactFlash card This file is used for debugging purpose during initial modem setup or when attempting to find the appropriate configuration options Be sure to disable this feature once the correct modem configuration sequence has been established UsING MULTIPLE INTERFACES Crimson supports up to two modem independent connections When combined with
34. as a 32 bit unsigned number thereby allowing such values to be displayed and entered even though Crimson cannot perform any math on values that will not fit in a 32 bit signed representation A value of Soft Sign will display a leading minus sign for negative numbers and a space for postive numbers while a value of Hard Sign will display leading plus sign rather than the space The Digits Before DP property defines the number of digits to be shown before the decimal point For values without decimals this is the total number of digits to be shown and therefore controls the size of the data field The Digits After DP property defines the number of digits to be shown after the decimal point For integer values the decimal point is inserted into the integer representation such that 1234 would be displayed and entered as 12 34 if this property were set to twa A value of zero suppresses the decimal point The Lead Character property defines how values with leading zeroes are formatted Leading zeroes may ether be retained replaced with spaces or removed completely Removing them can sometimes cause values on a display to show unpleasant jitter as they change their number of digits particularly if the value is centered within a field The Group Digits property enables the insertion of comma separators every three digits for decimal numbers with analogous behavior fr other number bases Format UNITS The Prefix property defines a
35. data and can therefore be used to create text or data displays to provide data entry Finally they support the addition of actions and can therefore be used to implement interactive display elements m The primitive specifie property tab for these primitives is shown below ry Refer to the previous chapter for details ofthe stndard fill and edge settings The Rotation property can be used to rotate the polygon within the bounding rectangle The x and y axes ae sealed such that the overall width and height of the polygon fill the rectangle The Jnner Radius property is used to change the pointedness of the star Stars are created by taking a regular polygon with 2 sides and by then changing the radius between alternate points as the polygon is drawn This property controls the ratio of the radi BALLOONS AND CALL Ours The balloon primitive provided can be used to label items on a page or to provide help te operators It supports the addition of both text and data and for what it is worth can also be configured to show a tank fil It also supports the addition of actions and can therefore be used to implement interactive display clements The exact design of he balloon is controlled via a number of layout handles meri Te rein nios The handle controls the radius of the corners The center handle controls the height of the balloon body relative t the balloon tail The bottom handle c
36. edge will be sized to twice the defined edge width The primitive specifie property tab for a graduated button is shown below T me Sea Refer the previous chapter for details of the standard settings TEXT AND DATA PRIMITIVES The text box and data box primitives are in fact rectangles with predefined data and text items and with no fill edge colors defined They exist o make it easier to add data and text elements and to provide comfort to those users who are not used to being able to construct an database from simple geometrie primitives They ean also be used to add a second data or text element to a primitive or when constrocting a group Refer to the previous sections for details of the standard settings m merus Line PRIMITIVE The line primitive implements a simple line The property dialog is shown below Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard settings IMAGE PRIMITIVE The image primitive is used to display an image possibly chosen from a number of images based upon a numeric value The primitive supports the display of bitmaps JPEGs metafiles bitmaps and many other image types It can operate with a transparent or filled background and can optionally define an edge fo go around the image It also supports the addition of data text or actions thereby allowing more complex elements to be constructed The Image tab for an anim
37. examples show spaces surrounding the operators these are not required OPERATOR PRIORITY You will have noticed the Priority column in the above table As you no doubt recall fom your algebra classes when several operators are used together they are order For example multiplication is always evaluated before addition Crimson implements in a defined this ordering by means of what are known as operator priorities with cach operator being placed in group and with operators being applied from the lowest numbered group to the highest Except where noted otherwise in the text operators within group are evaluated left to right The default order of valuation can be overridden by using parentheses CONVERSION Normally Crimson will automatically decide when to switch from evaluating an expression in integer math to evaluating it using floating point For example if you divide an integer value by a floating point value the integer will be converted to floating point before the division is carried out However there will be some situations where you want to force a conversion to take place For example suppose you are adding together thee integers that represent the levels in three tanks and then dividing the total by the tank count to obtain the average lev expression such as Tanki tank2 tank3 3 then your result may not be as accurate as you If you use an demand as the division will take place
38. for modem connections SECURITY PROPERTIES The IP Restrictions group is used to restrict web server access n hosts whose IP address matches the mask and data indicated access may he restricted or the filter may be used to restrict just the remote control or data editing facilities Tip rein neo The Authentication group defines whether users connecting to the web server will be required to provide username and password information and how that information will be validated The Method defines the algorithm to be used with Digest being the recommended choice The Source property is used to indicat whether you will enter the required usemame and password directly into the web server properties or whether you will create users within Crimson s security system and grant them access to the web server ADDING WEB PAGES In addition to the facilities described above the web server supports the display of generic web pages cach of which contains a predefined list of tag values These pages are created in he Navigation Pane in the usual way Each web page has the following properties The Title propery is used to identify the web page in the menu presented to the user via their web browser Although the title is translatable current versions of Crimson use only the US version of the text The Refresh property is used to indicate whether or not the web browser should be instructed to refresh the page contents aut
39. irregular gridiine spacing A setting of Rounded allows the scale primitive to adjust the limits to achieve regularly spaced tick marks FORMAT PROPERTIES These properties used to specify colors and fonts Ther operation is conventional Burrows PROPERTIES These properties are used tn edit and optionally translate the various button labels Tine ProveRties The Time tab is used to format the time to be used when providing time and date information relating to the data k Refer to the chapter on Using Formats fr detailed information Pens PROPERTIES renes m ERI es Ses These properties are used to specify eight colors that will be used for drawing the data The colors are used cyclically such that a ninth channel will return to the first color Drawing so many channels is not recommended as it can produce a very confusing display Touch CALIBRATION The Touch Calibration primitive is used to calibrate the touch screen Its primitive specifie properties define the actions to be taken when calibration has either succeeded or failed These properties are typically configured to retum to menu sereen orto otherwise move away from the calibration page Touch Tester The Touch Tester primitive allows the user to check the touch screen performance and calibration Fach touch produces a dot onthe screen with a trail being displayed of the last so many touches It has no conf
40. is the same Find the My Computer icon either on the desktop or on your start smenu right lick it and select Manage If that doesn t work select the System option fram he Control Panel and activate the Device Manager from the Hardware tab 1f you have a problem with your USB drivers you will see a yellow icon carrying an exclamation point under the Universal Serial Bus controllers category The name of the ison may be HMI or Loader or something similar The broken driver is shown in close up below ener LEE Hu Incorrect Installed Device E Tree GOGETUS2SESEIIO Chips LS Uersl Host Coriroler 2600 After asking for confirmation Windows will remove the device from your system You can now power the Crimson target device off Aller a couple of seconds reapply power and Windows will start the driver installation process once again As mentioned above Crimson actually uses distinct device drivers for the boot loader and for the Crimson runtime You may thus have to repeat this repair process for each driver although itis unlikely that things got beyond the boot londer if that install failed om GETTING ASSISTANCE Jf you hit a problem or need assistance several resources are available BALLOON HELP Crimson contains a very useful feature called Balloon Help This via the icon at the right hand edge of the toolbar or via options on the Help menu The default mode allows the help text to be dis
41. language codes as used in the Cade properties defined in the Configure Translation dialog box After the header row each row contains a word or phrase in each of the defined languages A sample lexicon file is shown below Note that text should be entered in lower case unless a specific temm is only ever used in upper case such as might be the case with a German noun The use of lower case allows Crimson to form its own upper case and title case variants PREVIEWING TRANSLATIONS Translations cam be previewed within the graphics editor by selecting the appropriate from the drop down menu that is accessed via the flag icon in the toolbar Any direct editing of text will also apply to the currently selected language with the other languages being left unchanged Editing within dialog boxes continues to be restricted tothe default language with the other languages accessed via the Translate button as usual SWITCHING LANGUAGES The language used by the target device is controlled via calls to the SetLanguage function with the argument of the function being a number between 0 and 9 to select the required option For example call to Setanguage 1 im the example above will select French while a custom action of see Language 2 will select German The Get Language D function can be used to determine the current lr o Wr vamedion neos UsING WIDGETS Crimson 3 supports a powerful new feature
42. log data may be lost when the terminal is powered down Further if the target device is powered down while a write is in progress the CompactFlash card may be corrupted To ensure that such corruption is not permanent Crimson uses a joumaling system that caches writes to additional non vol that a write was interrupted during power down the write will be repeated when power is reapplied thereby reversing any corruption and repairing the CompactFlash card le memory within the terminal I the device detects IE you want to remove a CompactFlash card from a panel performing data logging you must observe the procedure described above with respect to the activity LED and only remove power when the activity has ceased If you are not sure if the terminal was powered down reapply power allow a CompactFlash write sequence to complete and power down according to the correct procedure The card can then be removed sale Since the gyrations required to remove a CompactFlash card are somewhat complex Crimson provides a variety of other mechanisms for accessing log files thereby eliminating the need for such removals These methods are described below ACCESSING Los FILES There are five methods of accessing log files You can mount the CompactFlash card as a drive on a PC via the process described at the start of this manual This will allow the logs to be copied via Windows Explorer This method has some drawb
43. logical AND operator produces a value of 1 if and only if the expressions on the left hand and right hand sides are true while the logical OR operator produces a value of 1 if either expression is true Note that unlike the bitwise operators referred to elsewhere in this section the logical operators stop evaluating once they know what the answer will be This means that in the above example for logical AND the right hand side of the operator will only be evaluated if A is greater than 10 as i this were not tru the result of the AND operator must already be zero While this property makes litle difference in the examples given above if the left hand or right hand expressions call a program or make a change to a data value this behavior must be taken into account CHOOSING VALUES You may find situations where you want to select between two values be they integers Hosting point values or strings depending on the value of some condition For example you wish to set a motor s speed equal to 500 rpm or 2000 rpm based on a flag tag This operation can be performed using the 2 operator which is unique in that t takes three arguments as shown in the example below Prony 3 This example will evaluate to 2000 if Fast is tue and 500 otherwise The operator can be thought to be equivalent to the 12 function found n applications such as Microsoft Excel MANIPULATING BITS Crimson also provides o
44. nominally meant to follow This setpoint cam then be used in alarms or in primitives to implement various functions FORMAT PROPERTIES A Hag tag has the following properties on its Format tab Data Lists 2 The Label property was discussed above under Tag Attributes The Description property was discussed above under Tag Attributes The Class property is reserved for future expansion om FORMAT TYPE 4 The Format Type property selects the format for this tag Two State format used by default bat Linked format may be substituted instead The various types of formats are discussed in detail in following chapter as are the other properties that might appear according to the format type that you have selected Coton ProperTIES A numeric tag has the following properties on its Colors tab Coon Twe Color Type property defines the coloring for this tag A Two State coloring is selected by default but a General Linked or Fixed coloring may be substituted The various colorings are discussed in detail in a later chapter as are the other properties that might appear according to the option you have selected ALARM PROPERTIES flag tag has the following properties on its Alarms tab 7 Tipe ere nios For EACH ALAR The Event Mode propery is used to indicate the logic that will be used to decide whether the alarm should activate The tables below list the available mo
45. not running even when the motor has been requested to start this property can be used to provide the motor with time to run up before the alarm is activated ions will result in The Accept property is used to indicate whether the user will be required to explicitly accept an alarm before it will no longer be displayed Edge triggered alarms must always be manually accepted The Priority property is used to control the order in which alarms are displayed bby Crimson s alarm viewer The lower the numerical value of the priority field the nearer to the top the alarm will be displayed The Siren property is used to indicate whether or not the activation of this alarm should also activate the target device s sounder While the sounder is active the panel s display will also flash to better draw attention to the alarm condition The Mail To property specifies the email address book entry to which a message should be sent when this alarm is activated Refer to the Using Services chapter for information on configuring email Wr vamedion nes The On Accept On Active and On Clear properties are used actions to be executed when the specified change of state occurs Note all actions will be available depending on the alam s trigger mode and accept type TRIGGER PROPERTIES A numeric tag has the following properties on its Trigger tab The Trigger Mode property is as described for the Alarms tab
46. of the Properties commands to edit a display page s properties GENERAL PROPERTIES Sea The Label and Description properties define general purpose translatable strings that can be accessed elsewhere using Crimson s property extraction syntax See the chapter on Writing Expressions for more details The Master Slide property allows the selection of another page that will be used as a background for the current page This allows common user interface elements such as clocks alam status indicators and so on to be drawn on a single page and then included on several other pages The Fill Color property defines the background color ofthe page assuming that a master slide has not been used You should avoid animating the background color as changes will require the hardware to redraw of all items on the page with a potential impact on performance The Update Rate property defines the page s update rate The overdrive setting should not be used in normal circumstances The default setting is currently equivalent to the standant setting The Timeout properties define timeout behavior I a period of time equal to Period passes without user activity the On Timeout action will be executed Refer to the Writing Actions chapter for details af the possible actions The Clear GotoPrevious Buffer property indicates that the history buffer maintained by coscreesicss and should be cleared when this page is selected You w
47. operator will ct the time and then have other devices synchronize to that source Alternatively if your installation provides TCP IP access to the Intemet via either Ethemet or a modem connection you may configure the SNTP client to synchronize to a public time server An example of this would be 192 6 15 28 which isthe current IP address of a publie time server provided by A list of other servers can be found at Intp upport microsoft com kb 262680 Note that since Crimson uses an IP address and not a host name to reference the SNTP server it will lose connection with any server that is relocated new network address While such relocations are very rare they are beyond your control and that of Red Lion The use of an enterprise time source which accesses its own source via DNS is thus considered preferable TIME ZONE CONFIGURATION As mentioned above to use advanced time management This information can be provided in two ways The easiest method is to use the Send Time command on the Link menu of the Crimson Crimson device must have knowledge of the current ime rone if it is configuration software In addition to setting the clock this command also sends the PC s current time zone and the status of Daylight Savings Time Crimson will store this data in non volatile memory and use it fom that point forward Obviously you should be sure that the PC contains valid time and date information before sending it to th
48. or user defined functions Expression tags are used to calculate derived values for intemal processing or for transfer to remote devices Typs oF Tacs Crimson supports three main types of tags Numeric Tags represent integer or floating point values Flag Tags represent an on or value 22 String Tags represent strings of Unicode characters Each of the three main tag types can represent a single value or an array of values An array is a collection of items with similar properties that are grouped together and accessed via an index value Mapped arrays correspond to multiple registers in the target device fourth type of tag is the Basic Tag This is a simplified version of a tag that can only Teprescnt string or numeric expressions It lacks many of the powerful features of the standard tags Itis typically used to encode simple data items like constants ATTRIBUTES Tags within Crimson are rich objects that define various common properties A tags label is a translatable human readable string used to automatically label data fields referring to this data item It is also used by the Web Server and the Data Logger to label associated data items A tag s description is an non translatable string used to provide an annotation as to the tag s purpose It is not normally viewed by the user of the target device but can be displayed for diagnostic purposes A tag s format is collection of settings that define th
49. parent is bound a folder called Dual the child widget s properties will be bound to expressions of 021 Loop PY and Oval Loop 5P respectively To The Bind To property of a data item can be used to modify the expression to which that data item is bound The simplest option is to enter a name distinct from the name of the data item in which case that name will be used for selecting the tag to which to bind Using Peuoos You may also enter a name that contains periods These select tags in child folders of the source folder For example entering Remote 5 will result in the data item in question being bound to an expression of Loop Renot 3P upon binding to the Loop folder sine Canes To ascend the folder tree you may prefix the name with caret characters cach of which moves up one level A data item with a Bind To setting of ae in a widget that is bound to acus Loop will itself be hound the expression of Dua 1 Name SPECIAL NAME You may also use one ofa number of special Bind To names Resat The full path of he tug to which this widget was bound ichs any parent folden Mame The nome ofthe tag to which this wid was bound excluding any parent folds The fill pth ofthe tag to which he ot widget was bound in a nested binding operation Equivalent 10 Path arn need binding opine The mame ofthe tag to wbich the roat widget was bound in a neud binding operation Equivalent
50. passed to the remote server when attempting to initialize this connection The usemame is not case sensitive while the password is Crimson s PPP implementation will ask its peer to use CHAP authentic avoid transmitting or receiving plaintext password but will fallback to using if the remote server docs not support CHAP Route Type property is used to define the data that will be transferred via this interface For on demand connections this effectively defines when the connection wil be activated If Default Gateway is selected any packets that do not match the address and network mask of the Ethernet connection will be sent to this interface Note that in this mode the Ethernet port must have a gateway setting of 0 0 0 0 o it will take all the packets and leave none to activate the modem If Specific Network is selected you must provide the address and network mask that defines the network to which packets will be routed ADDING AN SMS CONNECTION SMS connections are used when text messaging functionality is required but where neither m nor diaout PPP connections will be established They are configured as deseribed above except that the SMS via GSM Modem device should be selected for the required port The properties for this driver are a subset of those provided for dial in connections SMS support is always enabled with this driver but note once again that for SMS messaging to operate you will have t
51. property also indicates in which order the two elements should be shown Options are also provided to allow a time value to be treated as an elapsed period of time rather than time that is paired with a date For example a value of 25 5 hours will display as 25 30 in an lapsed mode In a conventional time mode it will display 00 30 as the system will assume a time in the morning on 2 January 1997 Tp rein Time Formar The Time Format property is used to indicate whether 12 hour civil or 24 hour military time format should be used As with other properties leaving this set to Locale Default will allow Crimson to pick a suitable format according to the language selected within the operator panel Time Separator property is used to select the character that will be placed between the elements of the time display The default value will be based upon the current language selection but can be overridden as required The AM Suffix and PM properties are used with 12 hour mode to indicate the text to be appended to the time field in the moming and aftemoon as appropriate If you leave the property undefined Crimson will use a default The Show Seconds property used to indicate whether the time field should include the seconds or whether it should just comprise hours and minutes Dare Formar The Date Format property is used to indicate the order in which the var
52. recipients can reply to that message and have the Crimson device runtime relay the message to the other recipients This provides a simple conferencing facility between message recipients The On Message propery is used to define an action to be executed cach time a message is received local system variables called Data is defined within the action allowing access to the message itself The source number of SMS is prefixed to the message with a colon separating it fom the message itself marum Wr vamedion neos wane TP CRIMSON 3 USER MANUAL SHARING PORTS Crimson provides a port sharing facility that allows either physical virtual serial connections to be made to any serilly connected device For example you may be using an operator panel with a programmable controller but since the PLC has only a single serial port you may find yourself swapping cables when modifying the ladder program By sharing the communications port to connect to the PLC you can send data directly to the controller either from another serial port or by means of a connection made aver a TCP IP link ENABLING TCP IP The first configuration step when using port sharing is to enable the Ethemet port as described elsewhere in this manual While you may not choose to use the virtual serial port facility even the local sharing of based upon the TCP IP protocol which will not be available unless at least one network interface is en
53. relevant symbol information for images sourced from the Symbol Library The Type column shows the file type ofthe image data The Used column indicates whether the image is used in the database The Valid column indicates whether valid image data is available This column may be set to No ifan image was being sourced ftom a disk file that is no longer available and if the database is not configured to hold its own image data via the Include Data property deseribed above The Disk column indicates whether the image exists on disk Images that were pasted or dragged directly into the editor may not ever have existed on disk and images sourced from files but also stored within the database itself may now be missing if the file is no longer available The toolbar at the top ofthe window allows various commands to be performed CThe Export command saves an image that is available but not stored disk to a file Ifa filename has already been defined for the selected image that name will be used In other cases you will be prompted to select a filename The Replace command allows you to replace a given image with another All references to the image in the database will be updated t reflect the change The Export command saves all images that are available but not stored on disk and that have filenames defined It can be used to ensure that all image stored in extemal files prior to tuming off Inclu
54. sampled at the same rate The Each File Holds property is used to indicate how many samples will be included in each log file When this many samples have been recorded new Jog file wil be created using a different name Typically this value is set such that each log file contains a sensible amount of data For example the log shown above is configured to use a new log file each day The Retain At Most property is used to indicate how many log files will be kept on CompactFlash before the oldest file is deleted This property should be set so as to allow whatever is consuming the logged information to extract the data from the Crimson device before the information is deleted The log shown above is configured to retain a week s worth of data The Allow Comments property is used to enable or disable the addition of comments to the data log via he Losccmnent function Refer to the Reference Manual for details of how this function can be used The Include in Batch property is used to include or exclude this log from the batch logging system See below for information on how batch logging operates The Log Enable property is used to allow or inhibit logging If the entered expression is true logging will be enabled Ifthe expression is false logging will be disabled I no expression is entered loging will be enabled by default The Contents property is used to indicate which tags should be included in the dat
55. that provide keyboard emulation Memory Stick SupPoRT USB memory devices are configured via the Memory Stick icon GENERAL PROPERTIES The Enable property is used to globally disable or enable memory stick support Updates property is used to configure the automatic transfer of new firmware and database to the root directory of the CompactFlash card The Database property defines the name of the database image to be copied to the image e3 file on the CompactFlash card This setting allows several files ta be placed on a single stick with each Crimson device copying the file that is appropriate o its own application The Location property specifies the location on the memory stick where the database image file specified above can be located The Restart property is used to indicate whether an automatic restart should be performed once the file has been copied Enabling this property allows the information from the database image to be immediately loaded by Crimson TRANSFER PROPERTIES pu s ates 4 Transfer property for cach synchronization group defines the function that should be performed Information may either be copied or moved and the operation may either be applied simply to the files in the specified folder or additionally sub folders and their contents on a recursive basis The Direction property specifies the direction of the transfer 2 Update prop
56. the Time tab The Show End Markers property is used to indicate whether markers should be included in the list to flag the first and last items thereby making it easier user to know when they are at either end of the list The Show Event Type property is used to indicate whether cach entry should be marked to indicate whether it is an alarm occurrence acceptance or clearance or Whether it represents a simple event If alarms are in use filing to enable this setting can produce rather confusing displays The When Empty property defines or perhaps translate the string that is displayed by the primitive when no events are present in the lg ENABLES PROPERTIES the Clear button at the bottom of the viewer is enabled via the Format tab the Enable Clear property is used to enable or disable the clearing of the event log Time ProveRries The Time tab specifies the format to be used when indicating the time and date at which an event occured Refer to the chapter on Using Formats for more details meri Wap rein no Fite Viewer The File Viewer is used to allow the user to view text files on the CompactFlash cand Opnons Properties The Root Directory property specifies the directory o be displayed The Line Numbers property is used to show or hide line numbers on the file The Sort Order property is used to indicate how files should be accessed The File Types property group is used indicate the types
57. the button may show a grayed out string that indicates the default behavior of the property An example of an empty expression property without a default value is shown below 1f you are famil ir with Crimson s expression syntax a complete description of which can be found im the Writing Expressions chapter you can edit the property by typing an expression directly into the edit box SELECTING ATAG To set an expression property to an existing tag you have four options Fist you can ensure that the target field is selected and then double click the required tag in the Resource Pane Second you can drag the tag ftom the Resource Pane and drop it on the target field Third you can select Tag from the drop down menu activated by the arrowed button and be reminded that you could just have dragged the target to the field in the first place Final you can just do it the old fashioned way and type the tag name into the expression property CREATING A TAG To set an expression property o a new tag you have three options First for expressions that define the source of a data item you can select the New Tag option in the drop down menu activated by the arrowed button Second if you already have tag selected you can press the Pick button and select New Tag from the resulting dialog box Finally you can enter the name of the new tag as part of an expression and have Crimson prompt you via a dialog similar to that sho
58. the data in the PLC moves or if you decide to switch to an entirely different family of PLC you can simply re map the tags and avoid having to make any other changes to your database Tags allow you to avoid re entering the same information again and again When you create a tag you specify how the tag isto be displayed In the case of a numeric tag this means you tell Crimson how many decimal places are to be used and what units if any are to be appended to the value When you place a tag on a display page Crimson knows how to format it without you having to do anything further Similarly if you decide to change the formatting and perhaps switch from one set of units to another you can do this in one place without having to cdit cach display page in tum War vamedion nos is are used as one basic method for color animation The various colors that are defined for a tag can be used to specify the way in which other animation primitives will be displayed While there are other methods tags provide a simple way of changing the color of display primitives ias are the key to implementing slave protocols Crimson treats these protocols as mechanisms for exposing data items within the terminal This allows the same data to be accessed via multiple ports so that for example a machine setting could be changed by both a local SCADA package and a similar package working over Ethemet from a remote site Without tags the
59. this requirement wil result in a fall baek to the default formatting rules FixED COLORING The Fixed coloring has the following properties ce 5 OENER The Colors property defines the colors to be used all the time Two STaTe COLORING The Two State coloring has he following properties see Bus ve tne ier 5 The ON Colors property defines the colors to be used when the tag is non zero The OFF Colors property defines he colors to be used when the tag is zero MuLTI STATE CoLORING The Multi State colaring has the following properties ae Cte 8 s a 2 5 E saw y Fora Cono The States property defines how many states the multi state selector will contain up to a maximum of 500 entries The window displaying the selector will update to show the required number of Data and Text properties Tipe rein The Default Colors property defines the colors be used if the data cannot be matched agains the defined sates The Match Type property defines how the data is compared against the various states If Discrete is selected the tag data must match a given state s daa value m order for that state tobe used If Ranged is selected Crimson assumes that the state data values are in increasing numerical order and will use a state value if the tag data is less than or equal to that state s data value
60. those rights to be present Rights are divided into System Rights and User Rights with the former controlling access to facilities within the Crimson software and the later being available for general use For example User Right 1 might be used within your database to control access to production targets Only users whom you want tobe able to vary such things would then be assigned this right Access CoNTROL Objects that are subject to security have an associated Access Control property Editing the property displays the following These settings allow you to specify whether the item can be accessed by anyone by any operator whose identity known or by users with specific user rights You may also specify whether a tag can be changed by a program that is running as a result of something other than user action This facility allows you to guarantee that no background changes occur to sensitive data even ifa programming error attempts to make such a change Tags also have a Write Logging property Editing the property displays the following The selection indicates whether changes made tag by users or by programs should be logged This facility allows you to create an audit trail of changes to your system thereby Tp rein pales simplifying faulfinding and providing quality control information as to process configuration Note that care should be taken when logging changes made by p
61. various fill pattems The usual option is Solid Color but a variety of dithered and hatched pattems may also be selected A numberof graduated fills are also available Parr Bescon Grabs FIT Calor Yat tp ad ono of Changing verily Calor 2 at the cene Graded FL Cor at the top ofthe hongos verily Calor 2 at the botom mmm Color 1 a the eft gh of rmi Changing horizontal to Col at the middle erm Color 1 at the el oe pmi hanging iz Color 2 at the right The Color 1 property defines the first color to be used for the ill The Color 2 property defines an optional second color to be used for the fill The Color 3 propery defines the background color for a tank fill It is not required if a block fill is being used The property may not be present if the current primitive does not support tank fills DEFINING EDGE FORMATS A primitive s Edge Format properties define how the edge of the primitive will be drawn wer aen E Estas x 71 Wap rein nios The edge may be displayed by selecting a value of None Crimson currently supports only odd The Width property specifies the thickness of th edge sizes up to nine pixels in width The Colar property defines the color of the edge The Comers property is only present for rectangles and defines whether rounded or square comers should be used when drawing the edge All other primitives use rounded comers
62. will be created inthe Navigation Pane If you are configuring a serial port he various Port Settings fields Baud Rate Data Bits Stop Bits and Parity will be set to default values appropriate to the protocol in question You should obviously check these settings to make sure thut they correspond to the settings for the device to be addressed Protocol OPTIONS Some protocols require additional configuration of parameters specifie to that protocol These appear in the Editing Pane when the corresponding port icon is selected The example below shows the additonal parameters for the Allen Bradley DF 1 driver which appear under the Driver Settings section of the Editing Pane WORKING WITH Devices mentioned above when a communications protocol is selected a single device is created under the corresponding port con In the case of a master protocol this represents the initial remote device to be addressed via the protocol If the protocol supports access to mare than one device you can use the Add Additional Device button included in the Editing Pane to add further target devices You may also use the New Comms Device command accessed via the om meri Navigation Pane toolbar Each device is represented via an icon in the Navigation Pane and depending on the protocol may have a number of properties to be configure Io the example above the Modbus Universal Master protocol has been selected and two additional de
63. with the Maintenance Access right and if the current user has gained access to the page as a result of that right Use of this mode avoids the necd to logon repeatedly when testing the system CHECK BEFORE OPERATE The Check Before Operate feature allows you to force the user to confirm every change to a particular sensitive data item The feature enabled by selecting the appropriate setting on a data tag s security descriptor When a change is made to a tag that has this feature enabled a popup will appear displaying the old and new values and demanding confirmation before the change is permitted This feature operates whether or not a user is currently logged on in addition to any user rights required fr the change to occur It is also independent of the action Protection operations defined when creating the user interface ndis Securtry SETTINGS The security system settings are accessed via the rot item in the Security category The available properties are as follows The Inactivity Timeout property is used to indicate how much time must pass without user input before the current user is automatically logged of Too high a value for this setting will produce an insecure system while too ow a value will produce a system that is awkward far operators The Clear Logon Name property is used to indicate whether or not the username should be cleared before asking the operator to logon If this setting is disa
64. 8000 will be converted to Only available for data items of less than 32 bitsin size pos The daia wil be cie cording to the preference o c communications dier iom which the data is obtained Only availble for data items of less than 32 bits in size Fang Por The daia wil be std asa 32 1 single pose Monting point value Only available for data tens of The Access property is used for mapped tags to define what kind of communications operations are to be permitted Intemal tags are always set to read and write access and expression tags are always read only The Read Mode property is used only for array tag It defines the elements to be read when the array is referenced The following settings can be used Roo Mane Eie Aray Al he cts athe array wil be red whenever the sry tree and access wil be blocked until the el operation has completed This will ensure that data i Sela but wil produce te slowest performance Manual Mode The ary will ot be wal until calls made othe finn o force a anime mal pdt On Doman Ay elements wil be rend as they ore refirenoed This produces the quickest perfomance but sisle data may be N Eier Se On Demand operation wil be used but N registers cir side ofthe referenced register will be read as well herby making adjacent data vile more quicky The Storage property is used t
65. A target device an PC is recommended INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE Crimson 3 is supplied as a Microsoft Installer package or an noi file You will typically have downloaded this file from Red Lion s website but if you have downloaded it from another source please check that Windows is satisfied with the package s digital signature so that you are assured of receiving genuine Red Lion software teens ed As shown above the publisher should show as Red Lion Controls Inc and you should be able to click on the publisher s name to verify the integrity of the digital signature Once you are happy withthe package press the Run button to start the instal The installation process is fairly standard and ought to proceed without much interaction beyond your specifying the target directory One the process complete look at your Start Menu and find the Red Lion Controls folder Click the Crimson 3 icon to start the software REGISTRATION When you first run Crimson 3 you will be offered chance to register your software While registration is optional we strongly recommend that you take the opportunity to provide us with your contact details so that we can inform you of Crimson updates and of associated products Since registration requires an Internet connection you may skip the process ifso do not have such a connection available Crimson will periodically remind you if you are running an
66. LT ROUTE In addition one single interface may also define a default route which will be used to handle packets that do not specifically match any other interface The method used to configure the route varies according to the interface type as shown in the table below INTERFACE DEFINE DEFAULT ROUTE Eihemet Enter a non zero value for the Gateway property Enter 000 for the Remote Mask D kOu Select Default Gateway for the Route Type property Again only a single interface may define a default route For example an operator panel may be connected to a number of Ethernet devices using an IP address of 192 168 1 0 and a network mask of 255 5255 0 with no gateway defined An on demand modem connection may be configured to access an Internet Service Provider so as to send alarm emails Is Route Type is set to Default Gateway making it the route for any packets for IP addresses that do not match the network defined for the Ethernet port The SMTP server is configured as 24 04 09 resulting in a dial out connection when an attempt is made to send a message Wr vamedion neos USING THE USB Host If your target device has one or more USB host ports the corresponding icon im the Communications category can be used to configure the devices that it will support Current builds of Crimson support USB memory devices and keyboards with the later category including the many USB barcode readers
67. MMARY Let us now recap what we did We placed primitives on the display and grouped them into a special kind of group called a widget The widget appeared to behave like normal group in terms of editing and so on but had additional properties We edited the data definitions for the widget creating two data items Each was given a name a description a type and a number of flags We used group editing to edit the contents of the widget setting their properties to the widgets own data items referring to them by the data item names We modified the widge s daa items binding them to tags thereby providing eal tags and their associated information tothe contents of our widget Way Tits Martens So why are widgets important We could easly have created the data boxes and bound them directly to he tags so why bother with these extra steps The answers become obvious when you ty to create more complex widgets Widgets allow data items be used in several places with multiple clements in the widget being dependent on the same tag without Your haying to select the name in multiple pl Widgets can encapsulate complex design and functionality and allow you to replicate and reuse this across or within databases In they allow complex primitives to be created by the user Widgets can be saved to disk and be added to the Resource Pane or distributed via email thereby allowi
68. P tab i used to configure the Simple Mail Transport Protocol This is the standard protocol used to send email over the Internet or over other TCP IP networks SMTP addresses follow the familiar nametima in standard om The configuration options for the SMTP transport are shown below SMTP TRANSPORT The Transport Mode property is used to enable or disable the transport Note that the mail manager must be enabled via the Mail tab before the SMTP transport can be enabled Note also that at least one transport must be enabled if the mail manager is to be able to deliver messages The Server Selection property defines how the transport will locate an SMTP server If Manual Selection is used the Server IP Address property should be used to manual designate a server If Configured via DHCP is selected at least one Ethemet port must be configured to use DHCP and the server must be configured to designate an SMTP server vis option 69 The Server IP Address property is used to designate an SMTP server when manual server selection is enabled The server must be configured to accept mail ftom the panel and to relay messages if required by the application The Server Port Number property defines the port number that will be used for SMTP sessions The default value is 25 This value will be suitable for most applications and will only need to be adjusted if the SMTP server has been reconfigured to use another
69. SSS Hi E The list contains hierarchical presentation of the properties defined by the source primitive organizing them according to the layout used when editing the primitive and showing the om 77 value assigned to each Each property or group of properties can be selected or deselected using the associated checkboxes The checked properties will be applied thereby providing you with low level control of what gets copied from one primitive to another JUMPING TO OTHER ITEMS Ia primitive references tags display pages or other items a Jump submenu will appear on its comtext menu Select this menu to view a list of referenced items Select one of those items to jump directly 10 that section of the database The example below shows a primitive that Aer you have made whatever changes you want to the tag you can use the Back button on the toolbar ar the ALr LEFT key combination to return to the display page that you were just editing Note how the selection is preserved during navigation making it easy to view or edit a referenced object and to then resume the display creation process PRIMITIVE PROPERTIES The properties of a primitive can be edited by double clicking on the primitive or by using the Properties command on the primitive s context menu You may also select the primitive and press the key combination The property dialog for a primitive will contain various tabs with some tabs onl
70. TO A DEVICE sonia THE COMPACTFLASH CARD an inna REMOTE MONITORING 16 USING THE EMULATOR 18 ENABLING THE EMULATOR Port MAPPING 18 EMULATOR CONFIGURATION Em EMULATOR LIMITATIONS UsING COMMUNICATIONS SERIAL PORT SELECTION SELECTING A PROTOCOL PhoTocoL OrrioNs Workin Devices ADVANCED SETTINGS CREATING TAGS 2 PORT AND Device USAGE 2 NETWORK CONFIGURATION 2 USING EXPANSION CARDS M SLAVE PROTOCOLS 228 PROTOCOL CONVERSION NE DATA TRANSFORMATION 33 DISABLING COMMUNICATIONS 33 WonKING WITH TAGS D Tired neos ALL ABOUT TAGS 35 ADVANTAGES OF TAGS 36 EDITING PROPERTIES 3 Los PropeRTies a CREATING TAGS 42 DUPLICATING TAGS ssn EDITING MULTIPLE IMPORTING AND EXPORTING as FINDING Tas USAGE 45 NUMERIC TAGS 46 FLAG TAGS nn STRING TAGS E BASIC TAGS E ADVANCED Topics 65 UsING FormaTs 69 FORMAT TYPES E GENERAL FORMAT LIED Formar NUMERIC FORMAT SCIENTIFIC FORMAT TIME AND DATE FORMAT IP ADDRESS FORMAT TWO STATE FORMAT ThE MULTI STATE FORMAT THE STRING FORMAT UsING CoLoRINGs TYPES OF COLORING GENERAL COLORING Linken FIXED COLORING snes TWo STATE COLORING MULTI STATE COLORING CREATING DISPLAY PAGES Basics WORKING WITH PRIMITIVES PRIMITIVE PROPERTIES
71. WITH Paces Manipulation of display pages via the Navigation List is intuitive and operates as for any other item in Crimson database That said it is worth reiterating the fact that pages can be copied between databases by simply selecting them in one database s Navigation Pane and dragging them tothe corresponding category in the tar build new databases by combining previously used page designs st database This makes it very easy to CHANGING THE ZOOM LeveL Zooming in and oat is most easily performed using the mouse wheel If you do not have such 3 mouse you can use the editor s zoom mode selecting the magnifying glass from the toolbar In this mode lef clicks will zoom in and either right clicks or le held down will zoom out You may also use the zoom commands on the View menu clicks with ern The first zoom step will take you from the fll panel view to a 1 1 display centering the target device s display in your editing window Thereafter zooming is performed so as to keep the data under your mouse pointer in view thereby making it easier to choose which area of the display you wish to examine in more detail Tue RESOURCE PANE Display pages are typically built fom items dragged from the Resource Pane You can either slide out the Resource Pane by clicking the arrowed bar to the right hand side of the window or you can choose to lock the Resource Pane in place perhaps maximizing your window to i
72. Wap rein nios USING SERVICES In addition to the core functions described earlier in this document the Communications category also allows various services to be configured These services appear in the Navigation Pane under the Services icon and each is described below UsING TIME MANAGEMENT Crimson contains facilities to allow you to synchronize the time and date within the target device with a variety of sources The Time Manager can also maintain information about the devices time zone and whether daylight saving time is currently enabled In fact having accurate time zone information available is vital to proper synchronization as the various synchronization methods are all designed to work with Universal Coordinated Time also Known as UTC or Greenwich Mean Time Crimson can act both client and a server either requesting the time or providing the time o other Crimson hased devices Note that the server implementation docs not currently support third party clients CONFIGURING THE SERVICE igured via the associated icon in the Navigation Pane The Time Manager is cor The Enable Time Manager property is used to control access to the other facilities If it is not checked Crimson will operate in the local time zone only and will have no knowledge of time zones or other time management information Time Appropriately configuring the Enable SNTP property of the Time Server section will in
73. a item called Dosis which will be set equal to the page that holds the overview widget This can be used to retum to the overview something that cannot be achieved via a simple when multiple details pages are provided USING THE DATA LOGGER Now that you have configured the core of your application you may decide to make use of CCrimson s data logger to record certain tag values to CompactFlash Data recorded in this way is stored in industry standard comma separated variable or CSV fles and can easily be imported into applications such as Excel using a variety of methods To configure data logging select the Data Logger category in the Navigation Pane CREATING DATA Locs Data logs are created in the Navigation List in the usual way Each log has the following properties The Path Name propery allows you to modify the directory in which the log will be saved By default the log is saved in a directory named after logs own name This property allows you to rename logs in a way that is not compatible with the 3 filename convention while still using valid logging directories The Update Rate property is used to indicate how often Crimson will take a sample ofthe data items to be logged Although a decimal place can be entered sampling is only accurate to 200ms The fastest sample rae is one second but note that using such high rate will produce very large amounts of data of the tags in the log will be
74. a log Tags can be dragged into the list from the Resource Par up and down within the list using standard drag and drop techniques and moved LoGGING When you first access the Data Logger you will notice a global setting to enable or diable batch logging For normal data logging operation the Data Logger will save the log files under the folder name specified for cach log Batch logging on the other hand also saves all logs that are so configured to a directory named after the current production batch This allows all the logs related to a particular batch to be accessed and manipulated as a group To illustrate this consider the following directory structure This example is talken from a target device that has batch logging enabled and has two data logs configured The first data log is set to be included in the batch while the second one is mot Note that the log files are stored by default in the directories named 1005 1061 and 1255162 Note also however that the first Jog is also being placed in subdirectories under the zaten directory Each subdirectory contains the data sampled between the time when that batch was started and the time when the batch was ended CONTROLLING A BATCH Batch logging is controlled a number of functions aame will create folder called name ending the current batch and stating a new one Files recorded after this command will be saved under the new folder The
75. a number of conditions relating toa motor and retum a value to indicate the current state you could create program that returns an integer like this You could then configure a tag to invoke this program and use a multi state format to provide names for the various states The invocation would be performed by setting the Value property to Program where Progran isthe name of the program in question The parentheses are used to indicate a function and cannot be omitted Here DRAGONS Note that you have to exercise a degree of caution when using programs to retum values In particular you should avoid looping for long periods of time or performing actions that make mo sense in the context in which the function will Be invoked For example if the code fragment above called the Got oPaze function to change the page the display would change very time the program was invoked Imagine what would happen if you say tried to log data from the associated tag and you ll realize that this would not be a good thing Therefore keep programs that return values simple and always consider the context in which they will be run If in doubt avoid doing anything other than simple math and statements PASSING ARGUMENTS As mentioned above programs can accept arguments Suppose you want to write program called to take the average of two integer values The program would be configured to ac
76. a value not higher than that string s associated data String format takes a string value and either restricts it length during input oF applies a template that indicates what type of character can be entered at which point in the sting This allows for example string to be formatted as United State telephone number with the parentheses and dashed being inserted upon display without the need to store them in the string data GENERAL FORMAT General format has properties LINKED FORMAT Linked format has the following properties The Format Like property is used to select a tag from which the formatting information for this tag is to be obtained For correct operation tag of the correct data type should be used such that for example string tag s format should be based upon another siring tag Failure to observe this requirement will result in a fall back to the default formatting rules NUMERIC FORMAT Numeric format has the following properties vL eid Tp rein DATA Format The Number Base property defines the radix of the displayed value The Passcode setting works in decimal but masks the digits using an asterisk Many ofthe other options will be disabled when a non decimal mode is used The Sign Mode property defines how the data is treated and bow the sign is displayed A value of Unsigned will display the value
77. able SHARING THE REQUIRED PORT The next step is to share the required port which is done by selecting Yes in the Share Port property and then entering a suitable TCP IP port number to indicate exactly haw the virtual port should be addressed ME you leave the port setting at zero a number of 4000 plus the logical index of the port will be used You may use any number that is not already used by another TCP IP protocol If you are stuck for ideas we recommend numbers between 4000 and 4009 meri Wap rein CONNECTING VIA ANOTHER PORT IE you want to use another port on the target device to route data to the shared port you must select the Generic Program Thru driver for that and configure this driver with the TCP IP port number of the por that you have shared In the example below we are routing dta from the programming port to a PLC that is connected via the RS 232 comms port Note that in most cases the Baud rate and other port settings do not have to be the same as those for the port that we are sharing as Crimson will perform the conversion The one exception to this is where one device transmits large bursts of data without any replies from the other In this case the device carrying the larger transmissions must not be using a higher Baud rate than the device receiving them or Crimson may not have enough memory te buffer the data while waiting for it to be retran
78. ach primitive to be added to the selection If multiple primitives are selected the red rectangle will surround all of the primitives andthe handles can then be sed to resize the primitives as a group The relative size and position of primitives will be maintained as longas Crimson can do so without violating minimum size requirements BURIED PRIMITIVES If you find that the primitive you want to select is hidden below another primitive press the key to allow the selection to be made Alternatively right click to access the context menu and choose the Select submenu This will list the all primitives that are beneath the mouse pointer ordering them from back to front Each command will select the corresponding primitive making it easy to ensure that you have selected the correct element Usine THE Quick Bar The Quick Bar is a floating toolbar that appears to the top right ofthe current selection The bar will at first appear in faded form and will become more solid as you move your mouse towards it Moving away from it will hide the bar afier which it will not reappear until the selection process is repeated or the button on your mouse is pressed The Quick Bar allows casy access to a number of commonly used features while minimizing mouse movement The bar can be enabled or disabled using a command om the View menu MOVING PRIMITIVES BETWEEN PAGES Primitives can be dragged around a di
79. acks in terms of the amount of load that Windows can put on the CompactFlash card when it is first mounted You can use the Web Server that is described in the next chapter With the web server enabled log files can be accessed over a TCP IP connection using either a web browser such as Microsoft Intemet Explorer or by using the automated process implemented by the WebSync utility provided with Crimson You can use the FTP Server to allow remote clients to connect to the Crimson device and download the logs Refer to the Using Services chapter for details fo You can use the Sync Manager to push the fles to an FTP server on a periodic basis Again refer to the Using Services chapter for more details You can enable automatic copying of the log files to a USB memory device by configuring the Memory Stick option in the Communication category Refer to he Using Communications chapter of this manual for more detai Wr vam edian netos USING THE WEB SERVER CCrimson s web server can be used to expose various data via TCP IP connections using either modems or the target device s Ethernet ports This allows remote access to diagnostic information or to the values recorded by the Data Logger The web server is configured by selecting the Web Server category in the Navigation Pane IMPORTANT NOTE While Crimson provides a variety of protection mechanisms to limit access to the web server you should use good engineering practi
80. ad or write access You can also use this category to move data between remote devices via the protocol converter to configure expansion cards and to configure services DATA TAGS This category defines the data items that are to be used to be access data within the remote devices or to store information within the target device Each tag has a variety of properties including formatting data which specifies how the data held Within a tag is to be shown on the device s display or other contexts such as web pages By specifying this information within the tag Crimson removes the need for you to reenter formatting data cach time a tag is displayed More advanced tag properties include alarms that may activate when various conditions relating to the tag occur or triggers which perform programmable a ions when those conditions are met DisPLay PAGES This category is used to create and edit display pages The page editor allows you to display various graphical items known as primitives These vary from simple items such as rectangles and lines to more complex items that can be tied to the value of a particular tag or to an expression By default such primitives use the information defined when the tag was created although this information can be overridden if required You may also use the editor to specify what actions should be taken when keys or primitives are pressed released or held down formater fee Tipe rein ne
81. ages that are created for the details widgets These properties must be named Deta 151 Details and so on with one data item for cach element in the Details Widgets list Each data item must be the Page data type In the example below we have created a single such property to old the page name of our single details page RESULTS OF BINDING When we bind the overview widget our PID loop new page is created to hold the details widget The name of the new page is based on the name of our page containing the overview widget but with a Zoom suffix and a number chosen to make the name unique par Te rein neos This page is placed in the Navigation List below the curent page We can easily define a button within our overview widget and have this button invoke an action of thereby displaying the associated details widget The denils widget itself can close the popup by calling s MULTIPLE DETAILS PAGES IE multiple details pages are created you will recall that data items called seti 151 and so on in the overview widget will hold the names of those pages These dats items can also be defined on the details widgets and will also be set to the names of the pages that have heen created This is useful if you want to allow the first details page to navigate to the second and so on thereby linking the pages together Details widgets can also define a special dat
82. aking it easy to toggle between the two applications using the same key Pressing Ese will close the Emulator Port MAPPING The Emulator is capable of running any of the communications drivers provided by Crimson and also implements the web server and other TCP IP bascd clients and services In order for these facilities to work Crimson must have access to the PC s serial or Ethernet ports Each iven port on the host PC such that 232 Communications Port Ifa port is port on the target device can therefore be mapped to a for example COMI might be used to represent the RS unmapped no comms activity will be performed for the associated devices parry Tipe rein Note that Ethernet ports are mapped such that the PC s port will appear to have a second address in addition to its own I will also have Further IP address allocated either via DHCP or statically as per the Crimson database The Emulalor s addressing is thus distinct fiom that of your PC and its web server and so on must therefore be referenced via the Crimson IP address rather than via that set in Windows EMULATOR CONFIGURATION The Emulator configuration is accessed fom the Link Options dialog E oe EI aa The top section is used to define how the target device s serial port are mapped to the PC s ports and the second section it used to similarly map the Ethernet ports Not all ports will be u
83. am completes Since most programs take very litle time to execute this may not even be noticeable If this property is set to Yes display updates will continue immediately and the program will execute at a lower priority in the background Only one background program will run at once so subsequent requests are queued for later execution Note also that Programs that retum values cannot be run im ihe background as their retum value would then not he available for the caller to use is set 10 No The External Data and Timeout properties are used to control how the program interacts with Crimson s communication infrastructure with respect to extemal data items to which the program refers You will recall that Crimson only reads data items when they are used This property is used to control the exact interpretation of this rule with respect to programs Read When Referenced Furl data ie by he program will be added o the comms sean whenever the program is ference he rogram referenced by a display page tbe data willbe read when that page deploy the program is by a global action ora wigger the data will be feud at ali times This is th default mode and is acceptable forall programs thse that use ery tage amounts of eternal dat stra dts sed by the progam wil be red all ins wheter or not the program is ference This thatthe operor wll nt se the NOT READY message The owed of this mode th os
84. ample below initializes a pair of local variables and thon uses the first to loop through the contents of an totaling the first ten elements and returning the total value to the caller eee ince the The example below shows the same program but rewritten in a compressed form loop statement now controls only single action the curly brackets have been omitted Te For Loop You will notice that the vs lop shown above has four elements 1 The initialization ofthe loop control variable 2 The evaluation ofa test to see if the loop should continue The execution of the action to be performed by the loop 4 The making ofa change to the control variable The loop allows elements 1 2 and 4 to be combined within a single statement such that the action following the statement need only implement element 3 This syntax results in something similar to the FOR NEXT loop found in BASIC and other such languages Using this statement the example given above can be rewritten as You will notice that the o gt statement contains three distinct elements cach separated by semicolons The first clement is the initialization step which is performed once when the loop first begins the next is the condition which is tested at the start of cach loop iteration to sce if the loop should continues the final element is the induction step which is used to
85. an names but do make the web page harder to design To select an element ftom an army tag follow the index number or name with a colon and the array clement number For example the sequence 117591516 will display the eleventh think about it clement in the array called Tag DePLovINe THE SITE To deploy your custom web site copy it into the wes directory on the CompactFlash card to be installed in the target device To copy the files citer mount the card as a drive as described in the chapters of this manual or use a suitable card writer connected to your PC Enable the custom site in the web server s properties and the site will appear on the main web menu When the site selected file called within the Vi directory will be displayed Beyond that point navigation is according to the links within the ste Wr vamedion nos USING THE SECURITY SYSTEM Crimson contains powerful features that allow you to define which operators have access to which display pages and limit those operators able to make changes to specific data The software also contains a security logging facility that can be used to record changes to data values indicating when the change occured and by whom it was performed SecunrTY Bas cs The follow sections detail some ofthe basie concepts used by the security system Osiecr Basep SECURITY CCrimson s security system is object based This means that security characteristi
86. and deleted just like more conventional tems Creating an item with a folder selected will place that ilem in the selected folder Folders can be nested up to any reasonable depth SORTING LISTS AND FOLDERS An entire Navigation List or the contents of a folder may be sorted by right clicking on the soot item or the folder as appropriate and selecting onc of the Sort commands Hems may be sorted in ascending or descending alphabetic order Folders are always placed before other items no matter which sort order is applied DRAG AND DROP OPERATIONS Items in Navigation Lists can be drag and dropped within the list to change their position or to move them between folders Holding down the Cra key while dragging will result in a copy of the original item being ereated The left to right postion of an item may sometimes be used decide where to place an item in the folder hierarchy I the item is being dropped into the wrong folder try moving left or right to get to the correct position Database items such as tags display pages or anything else may also be dragged between database files by opening two copies of Crimson and dragging the items in question from the source database s Navigation Pane to that ofthe target database If the appropriate category in the target is not already selected temporarily holding the item that is being dragged over the required category bar for a second or so will select that category there
87. and the converted database will be saved to disk So as to avoid accidental destruction of existing databases you may not convert a database without saving it under a new name Once the converted database has been saved it will be opened for editing and review The conversion process resizes any display pages to fit the new display format id remaps communications devices to the appropriate ports on the new device based upon whether they use the RS 232 RS 485 physical layer It may not be possible to convert a database in its Ti rein meas entirety if for example the new device has fewer communications port than the original You may thus have to perform a few adjustments after the conversion FINDING DATABASE ERRORS Certain operations may produce errors in your database For example you may delete a communications device or you set tag equal to an expression based on itself thereby producing a circular reference Crimson will wam you about any such errors by means of a red balloon that will appear above the status bar Dsante ae a octo eat an The balloon will fade after a few seconds but the red indication in the status bar will remain to remind you of the error condition Clicking on the indicator will search for all errors or circular references and place them on the Global Scarch Results List so that you may review them using the standard F and key combinations You may also ri
88. anged just as if they were being written to the associated devices If you find your communications has stopped for no reason make sure you do not have this setting set to disabled WORKING WITH TAGS Once you have configured the communications options for your database the next step is to define the data items that you want to display or otherwise manipulate This is done by selecting the Data Tags category in the Navigation Pane Tags can be created deleted and otherwise manipulated using the standard operations referred to earlier in this manual ALL ABOUT Tacs Data Tags are named entities that represent data items Dara Sources Tags may get their data from three possible sources A tag may be mapped to one or more registers in a remote device in which case Crimson will automatically read the corresponding register when the tag is referenced or displayed Similarly if you change a mapped tag automatically write the new value to the device Crimson will A tag may be internal in which case it represents one or more dat within the Crimson based device Intemal tags ean be marked as retentive in Which case they will keep their values through a power cycle or non tetentive in which case they will be reset to zero on power up A tag may be an expression in which case it represents a calculation based upon other data items optionally using mathematical operators and one or more of CCrimson s intemal
89. apter for details on how to change or adjust the switch images AbusNceo PROPERTIES Ses The Value 4 Value and Value C properties define the data values used in the automatic modes to represent the thre states of the switch The value read from the Value property will be compared to these values to decide which state to display and changing the switch will write the appropriate value The Default property selects the state to be displayed if the data read from the Value property does not match Value A Value or Value C 2 On Pressed and On Released properties define custom behaviors to be carried out when the A and C portions of the switch are pressed or released by the user For a vertical switch A is the bottom half and C is the top half For a horizontal switch is the left half and C is the right half 2 State Selectors use preselected images ftom the Symbol Library to implement rotary Selector switches with two states Their behavior is identical to Two State Toggles and they are in fact implemented using the same primitive 3 SrArE SELECTORS State Selectors use preselected images from the Symbol Library to implement rotary selector switches with three sates Their behavior is identical to Three State Toggles and they are in fact implemented using the same primitive LEGACY PRIMITIVES These primitives are provided for compatibility with other software packages These primitive
90. arged on the basis of how much data is transferred rather than how long the connection is maintained GPRS connections may thus be configured for permanent connection unless there is a need to provide downtime to allow SMS messages to be transferred The No Firewall property is used to tum aff the firewall protection that is otherwise provided for dial out connections This protection prevents incoming connections from being made to this interface and prevents the G3 from sending certain diagnostic packets that might either provide a hacker with information about the system or might be used by an attacker to keep connection active in the absence of actual data transfer I you are connecting directly to the Intemet bby means of this connection you should not normally tum off the firewall The firewall should be disabled only for connections fo corporate networks or to other controlled environments The Connection property is used to indicate whether you want this connection io be permanently maintained or whether you want it to be established automatically when an attempt is made to transfer data to hosts that are reachable via this interface Ifyou select an on demand connection you must specify the timeout afier which the link will be terminated if no packets have been transmitted hy the G3 Tapion edian meas The Logon Username and Logon Password properties are used to define the credentials that will be
91. as Dst1 Leve4 gt 10 cam be used to set or clear a bit depending on whether or not a tank level exceeds a preset value RUNNING PROGRAMS Programs may be invoked within actions by following the program name with a pair of parentheses For example eoram will invoke the associated program The program will execute in the foreground or background as defined by program s properties USING FUNCTIONS Crimson provides a number of predefined functions that can be used to perform various operations These functions are defined in detail in the Function Reference They are invoked using a syntax similar to that for programs with any arguments to the function being enclosed within the parentheses For example testensusse 1 will set the terminal language to 1 OPERATOR PRIORITY assignment operators fall into Group 14 In other words they will be evaluated after all bother operators in an action They are also unique in that they group right to left This means that code such as i32 7553 0 can be used to clear all three tags at once Re Order from 1 888 55 66342 1 888 55 omegamation com 7 Tipe ered
92. ated image primitive is shown below Tipe rein The Image Count property defines the number of image slots that are defined for this primitive One of the images will be chosen for display at any given time based upon the value ofthe Image Select property The Image Select property selects the desired image It is as zero based value and is reduced modulo the Image Count In other words if four images are defined values of 0 4 8 etc will display the first image values of 1 5 9 ete will display the second image and so on The Use Color property is used to either reduce an image to black and white oF to preserve its color An expression that evaluates non zero value or an empty expression will result color image A zero value will reduce the ima to eryscle using standard r g b brightness weightings This option is useful when showing the disabled state of an image on a button The Show Image property is used to show or hide the image If the primitive bas edge fill defined it is functionally equivalent to the Show ftem propery but will otherwise still display the edge or background as per the configuration The Shave Item property is used to show or hide the entire primitive IMAGES The Images section ofthe dialog box defines the images for each slot The Pick button nest to cach image will display a dialog box reminding you that you can simply drag an image onto t
93. ations this simple form will be acceptable This example below will start motor selected by the value in the vst ortindex tag value of Iwill start motor A a value of 2 or 3 will start motor B and a value of 4 will start molor C Any value which is not explicitly listed will start motor D Things to note about the syntax are the use of curly brackets around the case statements the use osos to end cach conditional block the use of two sequential case statements to match more than one value and the use of the optional 4 2 statement to indicate an action to perform if none ofthe specified values is matched by the value in the controlling expresion I this syntax looks too intimidating a series of statements can be used instead to produce the same results but with marginally lower performance and somewhat less readability LOCAL VARIABLES Some programs use variables to store intermediate results or to control one of the various loop constructs described below Rather than defining a tag to hold these values you can declare what are known as local variables using the syntax shown below Local variables may optionally be initialized when they are declared by following the variable name with and the value to assigned Variables that are not initialized in this manner are set to zero or an empty string as appropriate Note that local variables are truly local in both sco
94. ays it will be added to the custom colors shown in the drop down menu DEFINING FLASHING COLORS Flashing colors are defined via the following dialog box etree trees 2 The Rate property defines the rate at which the flashing should occur value of 1 produces a flashing rate of 1H with each color being displayed for SOOms It is not recommended to rates in excess of Hz as the target device s display update rate may produce unpleasant beating effects The Enable property defines an optional expression that can be used to enable or disable lashing The Steady Color will be displayed when flashing is disabled The Color properties allow you to define the colors to be used Tip rein DEFINING 2 STATE CoLoRs 2 State colors are defined via the following dialog box oie The Value propery is used to select the color tobe displayed The Color properties allow you to define the colors to be used DEFINING 4 STATE CoLORS 4 State colors are defined via the following dialog box EJ tien E x wenn 8 80 GE The Value properties are used to select the color o be displayed The Color properties allow you to define the colors to be used DEFINING BLENDED Cotons Blended colors are defined via the following dialog box
95. be accessed via the Go menu or via associated key combinations SES BACK AND FORWARD The first icon on the toolbar or the Acr amp Lerr key combination can be used to move back to items that you had previously selected The next icon the ArreRtas key combination can then be used to move forward again returning to the item you first started with This facility is very useful when switching between database categories CATEGORY SHoRTCUTS Each category is allocated a shortcut key sequence comprising the Crm key and a number indicating the category s position in the Navigation Pane For example the Communis section can be accessed directly by using the combination You can also move up and down in the category list by using the ALTePaUr and ALT PaD key combination Trem SHoRTCUTS Jf you are working in the Editing Pane you can switch between items by using the ALT UP and AvreDow key combinations Crimson will move to the previous or next item in the item list and will try to keep the curenty selected data field the same This is very useful if you want to change the same field on a number of items as you do not have to keep navigating back to that field ar switching to the Navigation Pane in order to change items Tipe rein netos NAVIGATION Lists Several categories in Crimson contain lists of items For example selecting the Data Tags category will cause the Navigation Pa o show a list of
96. ble for the next step The stripped data is then modified according to the Manipulation property reversing the transformation applied above producing comms data The comms driver than takes the comms data and writes it to one or more registers in the target device according to the type of the address UsING ON Werte A tag s On Write property contains an action which is executed when a change is made to the tag While the action is being executed a system property called Data isset to the new value allowing the new data to be examined There ae three typical uses for this feature Regular read and write taps can have an On Write property defined to allow some action to be taken on demand For example a database may need to store Wr vamedion noi the value ofa tag in two formats one being the original tag format and the other being a transformed version While there are other ways of doing this one method is to use the On Write property to catch the write and then run a program to calculate and store the transformed version Read only tags can be made writable by defining an On Write property While this seems odd imagine for example that a PID loop has a read only property to indicate its current output power and a read write property to define the manual output power You could define display fields to allow data entry to the output power when in manual mode and catch them using the On Write propery thereby wri
97. bled the previous username will be displayed and only the password will need to be re entered Enabling this feature produces higher security and may be required to comply with security standards in certain industries The Default Access properties are used to indicate the access to be provided to various objects should no specifie access be defined for that item The settings areas described in the Access Control section above The Default Logging properties are used indicate whether changes to mapped and unmapped tags should be logged should no specific logging criteria be defined for a tag It is not possible to log programmatic access by default as such logging should be carefully considered to avoid excessive log activity The Lagging Control properties define whether and how the security logs should created Refer o the Using the Data Logger chapter for information on how the data is written and how files are named Tipe rein neos CREATING USERS Esch user has the following properties The Real Name property is used to record the user s identity in security logs and is also shown in the Security Manager primitive that is used to change passwords at runtime If maximum security is required the user name should not easily derived from the real name The Password property specifies an initial password for this user The password is case sensitive and comprises alphanumeric characters Note that if t
98. but greater than the STATES The Data and Colors properties define the data and color values for each state Cook Commanos Multistate coloring objects also provide buttons to allow their states and the associated Properties to be exported to or imported from Unicode text files These files then be died by an application such as Microsoft Excel An additional button allows the Data fields of the coloring to be synchronized with the Data fields of a Multi State format object configured for the same tag avoiding your having to enter the same values twice CREATING DISPLAY PAGES Select graphics editor This editor is designed to allow the quick and efficient creation of attractive displays while also providing the maximum Nexibiity the Display Pages category in the Navigation Pane gives access to the new Crimson Eprror BASICS The graphies editor is shown below in its initial state 5 0008 Pane shows representing of the target device including both the keys and the display area itself At the lowest zoom level the entire panel will be shown even if this means allocating les than one pixel on your PC s display for each pixel on the display of the target device In this situation pages can still be viewed and most editing can be performed but accuracy will be somewhat reduced A warning message to that effect is thus displayed Workin
99. by avoiding the need to abort and repeat the drag operation SEARCHING IN LISTS While the shortcut detailed above is useful for jumping directly to a single item you may sometimes want to find all the items that have names containing particular string This can be accomplished using the Find Item command shown on the Navigation Panc s toolbar This command will search the current list and place all the matching items in the Global Search Results List You can step through this list using the and Satrr 4 key combinations display the list in its entirety by pressing F8 For more information on the global search functions refer to the section later in this chapter UNDO AND REDO Crimson 3 implements universal undo and redo structure This means that you can load a database edit it for hours and then retum it to its original state by simply holding down the key combination You can then re apply your changes by holding down Cruzer your actions are remembered and Crimson will navigate between items and categories automatically when reversing or re implementing changes GLOBAL SEARCHING Crimson provides several options for searching within a database At the simplest level you can search for a text string anywhere in the database by pressing the CrmsSeertt key combination Alternatively as you will se later you may search for expressions which contain errors or for items that reference tag o
100. by default Groups A group is a collection of primitives that is treated as a single object MAKING AND BREAKING GROUPS I you have several primitives that you wish to treat in this way you may select them as described above and then use the Group command on the Organize menu You can perform the same operation by pressing the Cra 6 key combination Once a group has been created it can be moved sized and copied just like a single object A group can be broken into is component primitives by selecting it and using the Ungroup command or the key combination Note that groups ean comprise both primitives and other groups and that groups an be nested up to any reasonable limit Eprrine WITHIN Groups Once a group has been created you might want to edit its contents without first breaking it apart This is particularly useful when you have created nested groups as the regrouping process would then be very difficult edit within group first select that group and then click on a member ofthe group Avoid clicking on the central handle of the group object as that is used to move or select the group as a whole Once the group member has been Selected Crimson will switch into group editing mode as shown below Note the green rectangle displayed around the group that is being edited Editing within a group works just like editing within a page except that items cannot be moved beyond the group boundaries
101. cept two integer arguments and gt The program would also be configured so as to return an integer The code within the program would then be defined as Once this program has been created and translated you will be able to enter an expression suchas Finctisen 1552 to invoke it with the appropriate arguments In this case the expression would be equal to the average of and 2592 PROGRAMMING TIPS The sections below provide an overview of the programming constructions supported by Crimson The basic syntax used is that of the C programming language Note that the aim is not to try to teach you to become a programmer or to master the subtleties of the C language Such topics are beyond the scope of this manual Rather the aim is to provide a quick overview of the facilities available so that the interested user might experiment further Actions The simplest type of program comprises a list of actions with each action taking up a single line and being followed by a semicolon All of the various actions defined in the Writing Actions section are available for use Simple programs like this are typically used where combining the actions in a single action definition would otherwise prove unreadable The sample shown below sets several variables and then changes the display page The actions will be executed in order and the program will then return to the caller Tr STATEMENTS
102. ces when designing your system This means that you should avoid performing any safety related operations via the web server and you should ideally use an extemal firewall to prevent unauthorized acces in case Crimson s own security protections are breached Security is ulimately your own responsibility and Red Lion Controls does not recommend that you rely solely on Crimson s own security measures WEB SERVER PROPERTIES The web server s properties are accessed from the root entry ofthe Navigation List SETTING PROPERTIES gt The Enable Web Server property is used to enable or disable the web server If the server is enabled the panel will wait for incoming requests and then the requests as required If he server is disabled connections o this port will be refused Remember that in order for the server to operate a TCP IP connection must have been configured using the Communications category The Listen on Port property indicates the TCP port number the web server will listen on Port 80 is the standard port used by the HTTP protocol and will most likely suit your application The Title property is used to provide the title to be shown the web server This title cam be used to differentiate between several terminals on a network thereby ensuring that correct terminal is being accessed The Data Log Access propery is used to enable or disable web access to the files create by the Data Logger
103. client to use a GPS unit connected via NMEAAOI83 as an time The unit may be connected to any serial port using the appropriate driver The Frequency property specifies how often Crimson should attempt to synchronize its time by the methods enabled above Crimson will aways attempt to syne twenty seconds after power up and will then sync as specified by this property If a given attempt to sync fais the unit will retry every 30 seconds until itis successful in finding a suitable time source Time Stamps Crimson record a variety of log files on the target device s CompactFlash card and each Jog entry has a time stamp By default the time stamp comes from the local real time clock and is in the local time zone The behavior can be changed via the following properties The Time Source property is used to indicate from where the time stamps should be obtained The default setting obtains the time from the unit s own real time clock while the alternative allows the use of an expression to define the current time This expression is typically a reference to data item in a connected device allowing that device s clock to be used for data logging The expression must be entered in the Expression property The Syne Clack property is used to indicate whether the local real time clock should be synced to the alternative time source specified above If this option is enabled the local clock will be synchronized on startup and periodica
104. cs are applied to a display page or to a tag and not to the user interface element that accesses the page or makes a change to the tag The altemative subject hosed approach typically means that you have to be careful to apply security settings to every single user interface element that might change restricted data Crimson s approach avoids this duplication and ensures that once you have decided to protect a tag it will remain protected throughout your database Namen Users Crimson supports the ability to create any number of users each of whom will have a username a real name and a password The usemame is a casc insensiive string with no embedded spaces that is used to identify the user when logging on while the real name is typically a longer string that is used within log files to record the human readable identity of the user making a change Note that you are free to use these fields in other ways if it suits your application You may for example create users that represent groups of individuals or perhaps roles such as Operators Supervisors and Managers You may also decide to use the real name to hold an item such as a clock number to tie user identities into your MRP system User RIGHTS Each user is granted zero or more acces rights user with no rights acces those objects that merely require the identity of the user t be recorded whereas users with more rights can access those objects that demand
105. cter encoded in the lower 16 bits of a 82 bit signed number A character constant comprises single character enclosed in single quotation marks such that i can be used to represent a value of 65 Certain otherwise unprintable or unrepresentable characters can be encoded using what are called escape sequences each of which is introduced with a single backslash Sequence Wave roa m Hex x0 Decimal T BEL I Hex 309 Decimal TAB Hex ODA Desa 10 TF I Hex 030 Decimal 2 E v Hex 30D Doc 13 3 I Hex Ox Decimal 27 EC Ves Th hex value preted by am p Th hex vals eprint by I sng heck chr single quotation hacer A double quotation mark Locic Constants Logical constants represent 1 or O value that is used to indicate the truth or otherwise of a yes or no expression An example of something that can be assigned to be equal to a logical Constant is tag that represents a digital output in a PLC Logical constants can either be entered simply as 1 or 0 or by use of the keywords true or fa2se FLOATING POINT CONSTANTS Floating point constants represent a 32 bit single precision floating point value They are represented as you might expect by the integer portion followed by a single decimal point followed by the fractional portion Scientific notation is also supported by specifying a value for the mantissa and following this with an E and an exponen
106. d be sure to enter and download these values before connecting the target device to your network If you do not do this itis posible although unlikely that you will cause problems on your network Selecting IEEE 802 3 Only mode will enable the port for low level communications but will not allocate an IP address or allow TCP or UDP to operate This mode only makes sense when using drivers that use raw Ethernet such as certain building automation protocols PHYSICAL Laver The Physical Layer options control the type of connection that the device will attempt to negotiate with the hub or switch to which it is connected Generally these options can be left im their default states but if you have trouble establishing a reliable connection especially when connecting directly to a PC without an intervening hub or switch consider tuming off both Full Duplex and High Speed operation to see if this solves the problem Maamum SecmenT Sue The Maximum Segment Size options control the MSS settings for TCP send and receive You should not generally have to change these settings as the default values are suitable for virtually all applications and all networks MULTIPLE Ports Jf you are using more than one Ethemet port note that only a single port should have a default gateway defined and that each port should have a distinct network address Crimson will only ever send a given IP packet to a single interface so a configuration that
107. d value Formar PROPERTIES The Label property defines the label to be applied to this field It may not be available if the label is not to displayed or if the field is configured to get its label from the controlling tag The Format Type field specifies the format type to be used when displaying and optionally editing the data value Again the selection may not be available if the format is being obtained from the controlling tag Other properties are specifie to the data format that has been selected Refer to the chapter on Using Formats for details of cach formar s properties Tipe rein neo Coton Properties The Color Type field specifies the coloring to be used when displaying the data value The selection may not be available if the coloring is being obtained from The Text Color property is used to override the calor of the text if the General coloring is being used The Drop Shadow propery is used to enable an optional shadow to the right and to the bottom of the text itself This effect is useful when trying to make text stand out from its background especially if the background is an image that contains a combination of many colors It is only available with the General coloring Other properties are specific to the coloring that has been selected Refer to the chapter on Using Colorings for details of each coloring s properties ADDING ACTIONS To PRIMITIVES Primitives that do not
108. de Data The Purge Unused command is used to remove all images that are not used in the database thereby saving disk space when saving the database to disk Use of this command may also reduce memory usage in the target device MANAGING Fonts The Font Manager is invoked from the Fonts tab ofthe user interface settings It contains a list of all the fons referenced in the datubase together with their properties It allows you to view the fonts and perform certain changes to how the fonts are stored and used The sample below shows the Font Manager ftom a complex database iii The main list view shows the properties of the various fonts The Face property shows the name of the font me property shows the height in pixels ofthe font The Weight property indicates whether the font is bold or not The Type property indicates whether the fontis a system or custom font The Used propery indicates whether the font is used in the database The Options propery lists the options selected for the font The wba at the top ofthe window allows various commands to be performed The Edit button allows the properties of custom fants to be edited par Tipe rein pales The Delete button allows an unused font to be deleted Once a font is deleted it will no longer be presented inthe drop down used for font selection but may be recreated by using the associated Pick button The Replace button all
109. defines the assumed value to he used for the tag when working in the page editor Entering a sensible value allows a better representation of the page s likely appearance This value is also used as the tag s default value by the target device if communication is globally disabled Data Actions The On Write property defines an action that is to be invoked when the tag is changed The system variable Data will hold the new data value when the write occurs and when the action is executed The use of On Write properties is covered later in this chapter FORMAT PROPERTIES string tag has the following properties on its Format tab Dara Lasers The Label property was discussed above under Tag Attributes gt The Description property was discussed above under Tag Attributes The Class property is reserved for future expansion Tue The Format Type property selects the format for this tag A String format is used by default but a General or Linked format may be substituted The various types of formats are discussed im detail in a following chapter as are the other properties that might appear according to the format type that you have selected m 773 Coton Properties string tag bas the following properties on its Colors tab Coon Te The Color Type property defines the coloring for this tag A Fixed coloring is selected by default but a General or Linked coloring may be substituted The various c
110. des Mae AUS WA ACTAE Change of Sia The ag chong The following modes are only available when a setpoint is defined Max AUN WA ACTAE NEN The ag docs no eal sein ont Waen SP On The tau dows aot espn oan ON tpn On When SPOM The ag does so respond a OFF PTT The ag nls apo The Event Name property defines the name that will be displayed in the viewer or in the event log as appropriate Crimson will suggest default name based upon the tag s label and the event mode that has been se ected The Enable property defines an expression that enables or disables the alarm A non zero or empty value results in the alarm being enabled while a zero values results in the alarm being disabled The Trigger property is used to indicate whether the alarm should be edge or level triggered In the former case the alarm will trigger when the condition specified by the event mode first becomes true In the latter case the alarm will remain in the active state while the condition persists This property can also be used to indicate that this alarm should be used as an event only In this case the alarm will be edge triggered but will not result in an alarm condition Rather an event will be logged to intemal memory and optionally to CompactFlash The Delay property is used to indicate how long the alarm condition must exist before the alarm will become active In the case
111. details of how to write expressions For example code such as 7 0 Tank3eank can be used to add two tank levels and store the total quantity directly in a PLC register COMPOUND ASSIGNMENT To create an action that sets data value equal to its current value combined with another value by means of any of the operators defined in the previous section use the syntax Datsop Va1ue Where Data is the tag to be changed isthe value to be used by the operator and is any of the available operators For example the code 10 will increase Tag by a value of 10 while 7257 1 will multiply the current value by 10 INCREMENT AND DECREMENT To create an action that increases a data value by one use the syntax Datat To create an action that decreases a tag by one use the syntax dare Note that the or operators may be placed before afer the data value in question In the former case the value of the expression represented by Data is equal othe value of Dats after it has been incremented In the latter case the expression is equal to the value before it has changed CHANGING BrT VALUES To change a bit within a tag use the syntax 2 22 2221 or Data Bit 0 to set or clear the bit as required where Dats is the tag in question and 22 is zero hased bit number Note again that the value on the righthand side of the operator can be an expression if desired such that an example such
112. dialog box that allows more of the expression to be seen The editor used in this dialog box is the same as is used for creating global programs It therefore provides syntax coloring You can also acces help information on system functions by placing your cursor in or at the end of th function name and pressing F1 Cownex Boressions I your expression is too complex to fit into a single line or if you would simply rather write it as program you may select the Complex option from the drop down menu thereby allowing a local program to be erate om The statement is used provide the value ofthe expression just as if you had called a global program Note once again that the program editor is used providing syntax coloring and auto indent facilities and that the 1 mechanism described above can be used to consult help information on system functions The Description text allows you to make a quick note of the program s function This will be displayed next to the property for reference For information on writing and editing programs refer to later chapters in this manual TRANSLATABLE STRINGS Crimson databases are designed to support multilingual operation whereby any string that will be presented to the user of the target device is capable of being displayed in one of many diferent languages To allow you to define these translations properties that contain such strings have a button labeled Translate
113. dicated end of the zonder Alternatively if you have a mouse that is equipped with a wheel the wheel can be used to move the selection by moving the wheel with the Crm key held down Scrolling up moves the selection to the back of the zonder scrolling down moves the selection to the front DUPLICATING PRIMITIVES The key combination or the Smart Duplicate command on the Edit menu can be used to make copy of he current primitive adjusting its properties such that the primitive gets it controlling data from the next data item The definition of next depends on the exact type of the data with Crimson being capable of selecting the next register in a comms device the next member of an amay or the next tag in a sequence As an example repeatedly using Smart Duplicate with a bation mapped to Arzay10 will produce a sequence of buttons mapped to Aces Accer 2 and so on until the whole screen is filled EDITING MULTIPLE PRIMITIves You may on occasions want to edit the properties of multiple primitives Crimson supports this by having you edit one primitive and then allowing you to set the properties of a number of other primitives equal to those of the ane that you first edited Crimson provides two methods todo this both of which rely on the same underlying mechanism Copy From The Copy From command can be used to copy the selected properties of a given primitive to one or more other primitives To use the command s
114. ds the value but will only deactivate when the tag falls below the value by an amount greater than or equal to the alarm s hysteresis Remember that the property always acts to maintain an alarm once the alarm is activated and not to modify the point at which the activation occurs The Enable property defines an expression that enables or disables the alarm A non zero or empty value results in the alarm being enabled while a zero values results in the alarm being disabled The Trigger propery is used to indicate whether the alarm should be edge or level triggered In the former case the alarm will trigger when the condition specified by the event mode first becomes true In the later case the alarm will remain in the active state while the condition persists This property can also be used to indicate that this alarm should be used as an event only In this case the alarm will be edge triggered but will not result in an alarm condition Rather an event will be logged to intemal memory and optionally to CompactFlash The Delay property is used to indicate how long the alarm condition must exist before the alarm will become active In the ease of an edge triggered alarm vent this property also specifies the amount of time for which the alarm condition must no longer exist before subsequent further alarm being signaled As an example if an alarm is set to activate when a speed switch indicates that a motor is
115. e Test significant being bit O For an ara cach element it single bi sch that dhe bis are in effect packed within the data items The ft element ofthe ary he least ipfam bit the second is the nex moa significan and PLC wil as read al 8 bits foma si Big Ene amber i of Bit 0 accessing the mont significant bi ad wi theft element ofan ray being the most bt downwards The Bit Number property extracts a single bit from multi bit data items for mapped non aray tags The property is not used for other configurations The Manipulation property defines the transformation that is applied to the tag state afler the Treat As logic has been performed when reading data or before the Treat As logic when writing data The only option available is to invert the state ofthe tag Not a lot else you can do with a single bit value The Access property is used for mapped tags to define what kind of communications operations are to be permitted Internal tags are always set to read and write access and expression tags are always read only The Read Mode property is used only for array tags I defines the elements to be read when the array is referenced The following settings can be used Reso Mane Diss Ene Aray Al he lcs athe array WiN be red whenever and access wil be blocked und the el operation has completed This will ensue that data i valle but will produce he slow
116. e those where the Crimson device receives and responds to remote requests the process is slightly more complex as you must also indicate what data you wish to expose Paz Tapion edian neas SELECTING THE PROTOCOL As with master protocols the first stage is to select the protocol far the communications port that you wish to use The example below shows the target device s RS 232 port configured for operation with the Modbus ASCII Slave protocol Note that a single device has been created for the protocol In the case of master protocols this represents the remote device that Crimson will acess In this case though the device represents the Modbus slave that the hardware will itself embody This means that only a single device is required and that things such as the station number to which the hardware vill respond are normally configured via the port settings rather than those of the device ADDING GATEWAY BLOCKS Having configured the protocol you must now decide what range of addresses you want the slave protocol to expose In this example we want to use Modbus registers 2001 through 40008 to allow read and write access to certain data items in our database We begin by selecting the device icon in the Navigation Pane and licking the Add Gateway Block button in the Editing Pane An icon representing the block will appear under the device E In the example above we have configur
117. e Copy command to put it and its properties on the Clipboard Next select the target tags in the Navigation Lis again noting that multiple selections can be made Finally right click the selection to access the context menu and Select the Paste Special command The following dialog box will appear The selected properties from the source tag will be applied to the target tags PROPERTY SELECTIONS Both methods detailed above allow you to define which properties are to be copied Mapping copies the Source property It also copies all the properties that control that tag s communications options such as the Extent Access and all the other properties that are contained in the DataSource section Scaling copies the Seale To property and the associated scaling limits Format copies the Format Type and the associated Format object Coloring copies the Coloring Type and the associated Coloring object Alarms copies al the properties af Alarm 1 and Alam 2 Triggers copies all the properties of Trigger 1 and Trigger 2 Security copies all the properties from he tag s Security page Tip rein meas In addition the Selective option can be used to select the properties to copy HGGSSSSSSSSSSSSSS The list contains a hierarchical presentation of all the properties defined by the source tag organizing them according to the layout used when editing the tag and showing the value assigned to cach The pr
118. e an action defined or they support an inherent action DEFINING TANK FILLS Many geometric primitives support a so called tank fill option whereby the figure filled to a given level based upon the contents of a tag This feature can be used to implement simple bar graphs or to fill mare complex shapes The example below shows a six pointed star with a bottom up tan fill set to 60 Tank fills are defined using primitive s Fill Behavior properties The Fill Mode property defines whether a tank fill should be drawn and from which direction the fill should occur Fills can occur from any edge of the primitive allowing complex animations to be created Block mode results in the figure being filled with a single patter disabling tank fils The Value property selects the value used calculate the level of the fill Ifa tag s entered the Minimum and Maximum limits will automatically be set to the data limits of that tag using the tag property expression syntax The Value property may be an integer ora floating point value The fill level calculations are always performed in floating point The Minimum and Maximum values define the limits to be sed when scaling the Value property to calculate the fill evel DEFINING FILL FORMATS A primitive s Fill Format properties define how the inside of the primitive will be filled n rrj t sd sem Tal Ga The Pattern propery selects between
119. e and date at which it occurred The exact time format to be used is specified on the Time tah The Show End Markers property is used to indicate whether markers should be included in the list to flag the first and last items thereby making it easier for the user to know when they are at either end ofthe list The Colors property group specifies the text colors to be used when showing alams in different states The No Alarms message allows a dedicated background color to be defined while the various state specific colors always tse the background ofthe primitive itself The When Inactive property defines or perhaps translate the string that is displayed by the primitive when no alarms are active ACTIONS PROPERTIES If the Help button at the bottom of the viewer is enabled via the Format tab the On Help action defines an actin to be executed when the button is pressed Tine PROPERTIES The Time tab defines the format to be used when indicating the time and date at which an alam occurred Refer to the chapter on Using Formats for detailed information EVENT VIEWER The Event Viewer is used to view and optionally clear the events logged by the system in response to alarms or evens generated by data tags prions Proremes mma The Show Event Time property is used to indicate whether cach event should be prefixed with the time and date at which it occurred The exact time farmat to be used is specified on
120. e color with a red value of 16 green component and a blue value of 8 Spurning Corors The Co1Geted zgb ColGetGeeen zgb and cclcetBise rgb functions can be used to access the individual color components ofa color value In keeping with the convention used by the valves retumed by these functions are scaled to be between 0 and 255 Choosing Coors The function can be used to select between two colors based on the value af an expression For example the expression C 1Pick2 coil will retur coii Tp rein neo if ras is zero The first and second color arguments can be 86 function if required replaced by calls to the BLENDING The Coisiens function can be used to produce a color that is a user defined blend of two 0 100 Call Col2 will other colors For example the expression coaie rum coi if Data is O and 2512 if Data is 100 Intermediate values will he appropriate mixtures of the two colors allowing a smooth transition from one color to another Once again the color arguments can be replaced by alls to the co3 80 function RESPONDING TO Touch The 1sPzezz04 system variable is equal to true if the current primitive has been touched and false otherwise It can be used with the color selection functions to animate a primitive according to its touch status Note that primitives will not be enabled for touch unless they hav
121. e current language selection Numeric formatting options include the use of commas versus decimal points and the placement of digit grouping characters The Diacritial Marks property is used to override a language s default setting for the treatment of accents on upper case characters For example French as used in France as opposed to Canada applies accents to upper case characters which can make these characters harder to render in some fonts Selecting Lower Case Only for this setting will override this default behavior The Switch Keyboard property is used to select the circumstances in which the Crimson configuration software will switch the keyboard layout to that used by the language The switching can occur when using the translation dialog box whenever text is being edited in this language or not at all Keyboard switching in the translation dialog is enabled by default for languages such as Simplified Chinese thereby ensuring that the appropriate Input Method Editor is invoked The next section controls auto translation and is described below The final property selects whether the current language setting is applied to services such as the web server and the data logger or whether these should ays use the system default language CONFIGURING AUTO TRANSLATION Crimson contains powerful auto translation features to help you adapt your database for international deployment Auto ransation comprises two component
122. e default postion for popup display pages and popup keypads They can be overridden at the page level if desired by using the page s own properties to specify new values Diagnostics The Show GMCs property is used to enable or disable the display of certain diagnostic information after a runtime system faul The information is useful in allowing Red Lion correct software problems but may be distracting users The Configure Translation button is used configure the languages to be used within the system Refer to the chapter on Localization for more information ENTRY PROPERTIES The Entry tab contains global settings that apply to data entry Kevan The Keypad Size property is used to select the size of the data entry keypad The various settings progressively increase the size of the keypad with a setting Tapion redan jos Maximum causing the keypad to take up most of the screen for use in situations Where for example operators are wearing unwieldy gloves The Input Navigation property is used to show or hide the Wex and Previous keys in the various popup keypads These keys can he used to move between entry fields without first deactivating the keypad DATA ENTRY MaDe 8 The Malt Data Enty property is used to control the data entry mode used for multi state format objects Two stage editing results in the Eyrer key having to be pressed to commit any changes while single sta
123. e firewalls or when operating via certain forms of network address translation Typically it is also used when working over a GPRS modem connection te all dat The Keep Alive time is the period for which the FTP connection should be kept alive in case further transfers are required A value of zero will close the connection as soon as the current transfer has been completed Non zero values make for more efficient operation when transferring multiple files The Record Log File property can be used to keep a log of all FTP interactions in the root directory of the CompactFlash card This file can be useful when debugging FTP operations but it will tend to degrade performance slightly Loc SynciRoNIZATION The following properties relate specifically to log file synchronization The Base Directory property defines the directory on the server where the log files will be placed This directory is relative to the FTP server s folder space not to the underlying directory structure of the server s own filing system You will typically specify a different base directory for each Crimson device that is synchronizing toa given server The Sine Period property specifies how often the client will connect to the server and transfer its files It is measured in hours and is always based from midnight such that selecting a value of three will result in transfers at midnight 3 00 am 600 am and so on The Sine Delay property defin
124. e method by which the tag data is to be presented for display The format may be left as General in which case Crimson will use default formatting rules or may be set to one of many formatting types For example a numeric value may be displayed in scientific format or may be used to select a number of different text strings tag s coloring is a collection of settings that define how the tag s text is to be displayed or what colors are to be used to represent the state of the tag Again a number of different colorings exist allowing a tag to change its appearance based upon a variety of conditions Foreground and background colors arc defined in pairs and can be accessed individually by display primitives tag s security descriptor defines the access rules to be used when changing the ag and whether or not those changes are to be logged Basic tags lack format coloring and security information In addition numeric and flag tags define alarms and triggers respectively allowing alarms to be fired or actions to be taken by the occurrence of cerai conditions ADVANTAGES OF TAGS Since Crimson allows you to place a PLC register directly on a display page without going to the trouble of defining data tags it is worth spending a moment pointing out the benefits of the minimal extra work that is involved with using tags Tags allow you to name data items so you know which data item within the PLC you are referring to Further if
125. e primitive properties Dragging a ag onto page will create a data box that is hound to that tag with all the formatting properties based on the properties defined by the tag itself You may also select and drag multiple tags by using the Sear and Crm keys in the usual way These facilities make it very quick and easy to add data to a page pe ADDING ITEMS TO A PAGE As mentioned above the various items in the Resource Pane can be dragged onto the editor thereby adding them to a display page Suitable primitives will be created for tags and The example below shows how after clicking on the Core Primitives selection in the Primitives category a rectangle primitive can be dragged onto the page WORKING WITH PRIMITIVES The following sections describe how to perform common operations on primitives SELECTING PRIMITIVES To select a display primitive simply move your mouse pointer over the primitive in question and perform a left lick You will notice that while your pointer is hovering over a primitive bounding rectangle is drawn in blue to help show what will be selected When the actual selection is performed the rectangle will change to red and handles will appear so as to allow you to resize the primitive as required To select several primitives either drag out a selection rectangle around the primitives you want fo select or select each primitive in tum holding down the Surry key to indicate that you want c
126. e that the current database matches that in the target device and will then begin showing live data The tag data will be displayed according to the appropriate format object Items can be added to the Watch List by right clicking and selecting the appropriate menu command One or more tags be added at once as can the content of a mapping block A command also exists to add all the tags references by a specific display page thereby allowing easier debugging of the page you are working on The buttons at lop of the Watch Window can be used to remove one item or all the tem from the Watch List om USING THE EMULATOR Crimson 3 contains an Emulator that is capable of executing configuration databases on the same PC that you are using for development purposes The emulator is not just a simulation of the target device s user interface but actually runs the same operating system and code ensuring that you get an accurate representation of the target device s behavior ENABLING THE EMULATOR The Emulator is enabled or disabled from the Link Options dialog box Ix resp When the Emulator is enabled the download process initiated from the Link menu or via the FS key will start the Emulator program and then send the current database or the database changes to that process just as if it were talking to an actual target device Pressing F9 while running the Emulator will switch back to Crimson itself m
127. e the number of blocks in the database This means that if the registers in the Allen Bradley lay within single range but the registers in the Modbus device are scattered all aver the PLC the Gateway Block should be created within the Allen Bradley device so as to remove the need to create multiple blocks to access the different ranges of the Modbus address space CONTROLLING MASTER BLOCKS Gateway blocks within master devices have several additional properties Tipe ren ejos As with slave blocks the Tag Data property selects how data tags are mapped to and from the block As you will discover inthe next chapter a tag data can be subject to various stages of transformation This property selects where in the transformation process the gateway block will obtain and inject its data The Update Policy property is used o define how the block updates The dell setting of Automatic will cause read blocks to update continuously and write blocks to transfer only those values that have changed A setting of Continuous will cause all blocks to update continuously setting of Timed wi blocks to update at the rate defined by the Update Period property with the entire contents af a write block being written cach time cause all The Request and Acknowledge properties are used to control the timing of block updates via tags or other data items I the Acknowledge property is left empty Request will act as an enable fi
128. e unit The altemative method is to use the system variables Timezone and users The former holds the number of hours by which the local time zone differs from UTC and may be either negative or positive For example a setting of corresponds to Eastern Standard Time inthe United States The latter contains either O or 1 depending on whether Daylight Savings Time is active Editing either of these variables via the user interface will result in the unit s clock changing to take account of the new settings For example enabling Daylight Savings Time will move the clock forward one hour while disabling it will move it back typical database will only need to expose ose for editing by the user and even this may not be necessary if the Linked DST facility described above is in us USING THE FTP SERVER CCrimson s FTP server provides a method to exchange files between a Crimson device and a remote computer running an FTP client application The Crimson device will act as a server waiting for client applications to connect and download r upload files CONFIGURING me Service The FTP Server is configured vin the associated icon in the Navigation Pane The following properties can be configured The Anonymous Access property defines the rights if any granted to a user accessing the server using anonymous FTP A setting of Disabled will prevent anonymous access A setting of Read Only will allow the user to download file
129. ed the Start Address to 40001 to indicate that this is where we want the block to begin We have also configured the Block Size to eight so as to allocate one Modbus register for cach tag we want to expose and we have configured the om Direction as Device to Crimson to indicate that we want remote devices to be able to read and write data items exposed via this block Finally we have left the Tag Data property at its default setting of Use Scaled Values indicating that we want any scaling to be applied to tag data before that data is transferred to the gateway block ADDING ITEMS TO A BLOCK Once the block has been created and its size defined entries appear in the Navigation Pane to represent cach of the registers that the block exposes to remote access When one of these entries is selected an expanded Resource Pane appears and provides acces o available data items These items comprise bath tags from within your database and data registers fom any master communications devices that you have configured To indicat that you want a particular register within your gateway block to correspond to a particular data item simply drag that item from the Resource Pane to the Navigation Pane dropping it on the appropriate gateway block entry The example above shows how the first four registers in the block have been mapped to tags called Tag through indicating that accesses to 40003 through 40204 should be mapped t
130. eld with a zero value disabling the block and a non zero value allowing it to operate If the Acknowledge is defined the Request and Acknowledge will operate a standard two wire handshake with the block updating once on cach rising edge of the Request and the Acknowledge being set after the transaction competes DATA TRANSFORMATION You may also use Gateway Blocks to perform math operations that your PLC might not otherwise be able to handle For example you may want to read a register from the PLC scale it take the square root and write it back to another PLC register To accomplish this refer to the section on Data Tags and create mapped tag to represent the input value that will be read from the device Then crest a tag to represent the output vale setting the expression so as to perform the required math You can then create a Gateway Block targeted at the required output register and drag the formula across to instruct Crimson to write the derived value back o the PLC DISABLING COMMUNICATIONS Crimson provides the option to disable all driver based communications by means of a property contained in the top level item of the Communication category Eene Disabling communications can be useful during development when you do not have the emote devices available at your current location When operating in disabled mode Crimson initially sets all tags equal to their simulated values and then allows them to he ch
131. elect the required tr rightclick to access the associated context menu Select one of the Copy From commands and the cursor will change to allow you to select the primitive fom which the operation should be performed Depending on the command that was selected one or more properties from the source will then be applied to the target primitives and then PASTE SPECIAL The Paste Special command can be used to achieve the same result but via a different method that also allows properties to be copied between databases and between multiple instances of Crimson First select the source primitive and use Copy command to put it on the Tipe rein no Clipboard Then select the required target primitives right click the selection and select the Paste Special command The following dialog box w pre p p CED The selected properties from the source primitive will be applied to the target primitives Property SELECTIONS Both methods detailed above allow you to define which properties are to be copied 2 All Formatting copies everything except any text data itemm or action Text Formatting copies the font alignment and margins of text or data items Fills and Edges copies the ill and edge atributes from the Figure tab M Aetion copies any action assigned to the primitive In addition the Selective option can be used to select the properties to TN i DHGDDS
132. er or floating point values Crimson performs all intemal calculations using either 32 bit signed integers or single precison floating point so all data will be converted to one of these forms before processing Mapped numeri taps support number of transformations that occur between the raw daa and the data that will be used by Crimson The exact proces is defined in detail later in this chapter DATA PROPERTIES A numeric tag as he following properties on its Data tab serge n ER DATA Source The Source property defines where the tag gets its data The default setting results in an internal tag but the drop down list may be used to select a general expression another data tag or an item from a remote device The Extent property is used choose between a single clement tag or an array If you select an array you must enter the required number of elements Arrays are not permitted for tags whose source an expresion Far mapped items the mumber of registers to be red from the remote device depends upon the data type defined for the address For example an array of two elements that was mapped to a register of type Word as Long will result in four registers being accessed with two words being needed for each long value A similar mapped to a data type of Word as Word will only need two register The Manipulation property defines the first stage transformation that is applied as comms data is being transfered in
133. ere the contents of the group will placed relative to outline The Minimum and Maximum values represent the limits ofthe control values For 2D movement the minimum settings resulting the group contents being in the tp left corer ADDING TEXT PRIMITIVES fost primitives within Crimson can support the addition of text To add text o a primitive simply select the primitive press F2 and begin typing Altematively you can right click the primitive and select the Add Text command from the resulting menu The example below shows text being entered into a rounded rectangle ote first ofall how the bounding rectangle for the primitive is shown in yellow and how all the other primitives on the page are faded out Note also how the text editor automatically splits the text across lines Try resizing a primitive containing text and you will see how Crimson reflows the text to fit into the new shape During text editing the toolbar changes to provide commands to modify the text alignment and to grow or shrink the spacing between lines The more advanced text properties can be editing by ether selecting Text Properties from a primitive s context menu or by pressing while in text editing mode Tex PRoveRries The Text property contains the text to be displayed Vertical bar characters are used to encode hard line breaks Since this field is a translatable string multilingual versions can be edited Th
134. erty is used to indicate whether files that appear to be already present on the target device should he copied in any case or whether only new and modified files should be transferred Crimson uses the file s timestamp and size to decide whether the file should be processed Source and Destination properties are used to indicate the folders on the source and target devices where the files should be located KEYBOARD SUPPORT A USB keyboard may be connected to the target device so as to provide a further method of data entry Crimson primitives will accept the characters from the keyboard as if they had ben entered via the popup keypad The keyboard is configured via the Keyboard section of the USB Host Ports with the only option being to choose the keyboard layout so that Crimson can convert the sean codes into the corresponding characters Only US and UK layouts are currently supported Note that USB barcode readers that implement the keyboard HID class and thereby emulated keyboards are also supported This allows barcodes to be entered directly into Crimson string tags by means ofa simple data entry primitive Tp rein UsING PROGRAMS The previous chapters of this manual refer to using actions to perform operations in response to key or touch screen presses or to changes in data tags Ifyou need to perform an action that is too complex to fit on a single line or that demands more complex decision making logic
135. es an offset in minutes from the standard time at which file transfers will occur This property can be used to allow multiple terminals to talk to one server without all the file transfers occurring at once and thereby overloading the target s capabilities Wr vamedion netos UsING ELECTRONIC MAIL Crimson can be configured to send email messages when alarm conditions are present or when notifications need to be provided of other events within the system The mail transports and the email address ook are configured via the Mail Manager The properties on the Mail tab are usd to enable or disable the mail manager and to provide a name for the device on which Crimson is running This name will be used within email messages to identify the originator of the message Applications will typically use the name ofthe machine to which the device is attached or the name of the site that it is monitoring ADDING Contacts The Contacts button can be used to access Crimson s address book Each entry allows Display Name and an Address to be entered The address should be in a format suitable for the required transport For example SMTP names should be in the usual nanetdnain format while SMS names should be entered as intematonal frmat telephone numbers without the leading plus sign Multiple email addresses can be entered by separating them by semicolons allowing simple mailing lists o be created CouricuniNa SMTP The SMT
136. est performance Manual Mode The ary will ot be wal unt calla made tbe Rescbet finn o force a anime update On Doman Ary elements wil be red as thay Tis produces the quickest perfomance but sisle data may be NER Suc Os Demand operation wil be used but N repite eider side ofthe referenced register will be read as well derby making adjacent data available more quic Wr vamedion nos The Storage property is used to indicate whether the tag will be retained through of the target device This is typically used for internal tags but mapped write only tags may also have thcir values retained Dara SIMULATION The Simulate As property defines the assumed value to he used for the tag when working in the page editor Entering a sensible value allows a better representation of the page s likely appearance This value is also used as the tag s default value by the target device if communication is globally disabled Data Actions The On Write property defines an action that is to be invoked when the tag is changed The system variable Data will hold the new data value when the write occurs and when the action is executed The use of On Write properties is covered later in this chapter Data Serpouvr The Use Setpoint property is used enable or disable setpoint for this tag The SP Value property defines an expression or another tag that this tag is
137. expression values while the color page and action data types allow more complex items to be created Page and action items can be treated as display page names and programs from within the widget s primitives The Flags property for cach data items is used to modify items that have data types of real integer or string It supports the following settings serine m The vais enero for the dla ir must be a The rime within the widget ean ea the data tema a tag and accom its properes data format and soon 2 The value entered forthe dla item must viable The primitives within the widget are sity allowed o write tothe dara tem The value entered for the data item must be the name of an aray Th primitives win widget wil inem os an array and stt the index operto ces individu values Element The vabe entered fot the data te must bean ay lement The primitives within widget will see the dhata iem asan element and will be able o past functions hat require arguments of this No Bind Crimson wil not apply older nding to this property Allowing it to be sd to tre predefined values without being generated on binding See ler sections far deils of folder binding The Binding property group is used to control an advanced feature known as folder binding It is discussed in detail below The Details property group is used to control an advanced feature known as details page creatio
138. fer to the previous chapter for details of he standard data entry properties Ford PROPERTIES The Format tab defines the data format used by the primitive Since the primitive doesn t actually display any data you may wonder why itis needed and the answer is acceleration The acceleration of data entry depends on knowing the number base of the dat being edited and the position of any decimal point The other settings are ignored Note that the format selection may not be available if the Format is being obtained from the controlling tag System PRIMITIVES Viewer FORMAT Mast system primitives display or manipulate data created or accessed by Crimson Each viewer consists of a viewing area with a number of buttons beneath The appearance of the list based viewer is controlled via the Format tab ofthe properties dialog T ERE Gs Colors and fons are specified in the conventional way The Buttons allows some of buttons at the bottom of the viewer to be disabled orto allow their labels to be edited or translated for international applications Remember that translatable strings can be set 10 expressions implying that the label on a button can be customized at runtime meri Wap rein ALARM VIEWER The Alarm Viewer is uscd to display and optionally accept alarms within the system Orion Properties The Show Alarm Time property i used to indicate whether each alarm should be prefixed with the tim
139. for example defines the first Ethernet port as 192 168 100 1 and the second as 192 168 1002 will result in all packets for the 192 168 1000 network going to the first por thereby preventing the second port from operating correctly Wr vamedion netos d NewenConncanmon Rourine Serrincs The second tab configures Ethernet routing options Routine Mone The IP Routing option is used to enable or disable packet routing between interfaces If this option is enabled IP packets received on an Ethemet or modem that are destined for devices connected to another port will be forwarded as required Disabling this option will prevent such forwarding The required seting will be dependent on your network topology ROUTING TABLE The routing table defines addtional static routes for Crimson s TCP IP stack In the example above a single route has been specified telling Crimson to forward any packets destined for IP addresses starting with 192 1683 to the router located on the local network at address 192 92008 Once again the exact settings required will be dependent on the topology of the network to which the target device is connected m Downtoan SerriNas The third tab is used configure downloads to the target device over TCP IP REMOTE UPDATE The IP Download option is used to enable or disable TCP IP downloads while the Port Number option specifies which TCP port should be used for
140. g The comms data is then modified according to the Manipulation property for the tag in question These processes perform bit or byte level changes to the d typically to account for driver incompatibilities other situations where the data is not in the form that the comms driver normally expects to encounter The manipulated data is then interpreted in conjunction with the tag s Treat As property being viewed as a 32 bit integer or a 32 bit single precision floating peint value as appropriate Data items smaller than 32 bits will be ether zero or sign extended based per the configuration If no scaling is defined the result of tis step defines the final value and data type ofthe tag I scaling is defined the interpreted data is then scaled according to the domain and range defined for the tag The result of the scaling may be of a different type from the interpreted data such that a floating point value may be scaled to an integer or vice versa Assuming scaling is defined the result of this step then defines the final value and data type of the tag NUMERIC TAG WRITE PROCESS When data is written to a device the following steps occur scaling is defined the domain and range are reversed converting the data back to an unscaled value whose data type is defined by the Treat As property I the unsealed data is larger than the comms data the high order bits are removed producing a stripped version of the data suita
141. ge editing results in the new data being writen to the associated data item as soon as RAISE OF Loven are used to make a change Single stage entry is faster but may result in the writing of intermediate values when changing a multi state setting The Flag Data property is used to control the data entry mode used for two state format objects I operates in the same way as the property above Misceaneous The Activate Beeper property is used totum the target device s beeper on or aff as desired The beeper provides feedback as to keyboard and touch screen activation but become annoying during the development process IMAGES PROPERTIES The Images tab is used to manage images within the database The Include Data propery indicates whether external images dragged into a display page should be stored as pointers to the source location or whether the actual image data should be included inthe database file Including image data om will typically make the database very large and may make it impossible to use the Support Upload feature without filling the memory of the target device Stored Paths property defines how image links are stored Absolute mode stores the fll path including the drive letter The two relative modes store and interpret image paths relative to either the database or the Crimson image directory allowing database and image files to be moved between machines wi
142. ght click the indicator to access commands to recompile the whole database or to optimize the way in which device communications are organized Manual database recompilation is rarely needed as Crimson will typically perform the necessary steps without user intervention DOWNLOADING To A DEVICE Crimson database files are downloaded to the target device by means ofthe Link menu The download process typically takes only few seconds but can take somewhat longer on the frst download if Crimson has to update the firmware in the device or if the device docs not contain an older version of the current database After this first download Crimson uses a process known as incremental download to ensure that only changes to the database are monsferred This means that updates can be made in seconds thereby reducing your development eyele time and simplifying the debugging process ConFIGURING THE LINK The programming link between the PC and the target device can be made using an RS 232 port a USB port or a TCPAP connection While TCP IP connections are typically made via the panel s Fthemet port they may also be established via a dial in ink Before downloading use the Link Options command to ensure that you have the correct method selected Note that this dialog does not provide any method to select the target IP address when using TCPAP for dawnload This information is now stored n he database file and is configured via
143. have lots of space above or below their characters either for diacriticals or descenders The Direction property defines the direction in which the text will be moved when the associated primitive is pressed It is only enabled when an action assigned to the primitive or when the primitive is something like a button that has an inherent action associated with it This option is useful when creating custom buttons that should provide feedback when touched Step property indicates how far the text should move when the primitive is pressed One to three pixels can be chosen according to the effect desired ADDING DATA TO PRIMITIVES Primitives which support the addition of text also support the display of live data and can optionally be configured for data entry To add data to a primitive right click the primitive and select the Add Data command from the resulting menu Altematively select the primitive and press the key combination The primitive s properties dialog will be displayed with a number of additional tabs being available define the data item and its behavior DATA PROPERTIES The Value property defines the dat value to be displayed The Contents property deines whether the field should display the data value the data value and its associated label or just label alone The Operation property defines whether the field should just display the value or also provide data entr
144. he This image can be dragged from the Symbol Library category in the Resource Pane from a folder in Windows Explorer or from any other drag and drop capable application The Browse button can be used to open file containing a suitable image format and to load that file into this image slot As mentioned above JPEGs metafiles bitmaps and many other file formats are supported IMAGES The Adjust button next to the image be used to modify the image C The various sliders can be used to pan zoom and spin the image while the checkboxes can be used to mirror it horizontally vertically The Show Center checkbox shows or hides the blue lines that mark the center of the image while the Reset button can be used to restore the image its original state The manipulation options are sometimes used to modify an image 0 as to create various different states for use in animation SCALE PRIMITIVE The scale primitive is used to draw a vertical scale The limits of the scale can be defined as ther constants or can be varied according to the value of specifie expressions The scale can be labeled or unlabelled with any labels being based upon a specified format object which may optionally be obtained from a tag DATA Properties Value property defines an optional tag that will be used to obtain limits and format information for the seale The value itself is not actually used by
145. he Override Existing box is checked any changes made to this password from the target device will be overridden when this database is downloaded System Rights properties are used to grant a user the ability to perform certain system actions The properties relating to password changes arc self explanatory while the user of Maintenance Mode is described above The Custom Rights properties are used to grant a user certain rights which may then be used within the database to allow access to groups of tags or display pages The exact usage of these rights is up to the system designer SPECIFYING TAG SECURITY Each tag has a tab called Security which defines the access control and write logging settings for that tag If you do not define specific settings the system will use the appropriate default settings depending on whether it is mapped to external data m merus SPECIFYING PAGE SECURITY The access control settings fr display pages are defined via their Properties dialog Once again if no setting is defined default settings will be used SECURITY RELATED FUNCTIONS Please refer to the Reference Manual for details on the Usertogon Usertesotti and E functions This last function is useful when changing many values ftom within a program as it allows you to force an access check early in the code to avoid making changes only to have later operations fail due to insufficient user rights maim
146. he primitiis Tan Ot See dao 0 whe the primit pes Button Data property defines the data to be changed by the key In the example above touching the primitive will toggle the value ofthe output tag CHANGE VALUE ACTION This action is used to write numeric value to a data iem The Write To property defines the data item to be changed The Data property defines the data to be written In the example above touching the primitive will set the Data tag to 250 Note that this action supports either floating point or integer values The Data property must be of a type appropriate for the data item defined by the Write To property RAMP VALUE ACTION This action is used to increase or decrease data item The options are shown below The Write To property defines the data item to be changed The Data property defines the step by which raise or lower the item merus Tp rein nos The Limit property defines the minimum or maximum data value The Ramp Mode property defines whether to raise or lower the item In the example above pressing and holding down the primitive will repeatedly increase the Data tag by 5 until it reaches 500 Note that this action supports either floating point or integer values The Data and Limit properties must be of a type appropriate for the data item defined by Write To property THE PLAY TUNE ACTION This action plays
147. here are probably errors in the init strings being sent to the modem IDLE The link is idle GSM modems will retum a number at the end of the string to indicate signal strength The next table explains how to interpret these values SMS The modem is sending SMS messages or polling the modem to see if new SMS messages are available If SMS messaging is enabled fora modem you will se this state appear for a short period every five seconds CONNECTING The modem is establishing a connection This state typically appears only for client connections and indicates that a call is being placed LISTENING The modem is waiting for a call This state appears only for server connections Note that GSM modems will also return an IDLE state while waiting for a call in order to show signal strength ANSWER The modem is answering a call and trying to negotiate the Baud rate for the connection This state appears only for server connections If he connection is established the modem will enter the CONNECTED state CONNECTED The modem has established connection This state will persist for only a short time as the LCP negotiation process will begin after a small delay NEG LCP The connection is negotiating LCP options This process decides on a set of ink protocol settings that are acceptable to both the client and the server AUTH The connection is performing the authentication process to ensure that the
148. igurable properties beyond visibility contol Tp rein nios LOCALIZATION Crimson 3 supports a number of features that allow you to adapt your database for deployment in multilingual environments This chapter describes how these fe dures are used and how you can easily create databases that can be used across the world SELECTING LANGUAGES The frst stage in creating multilingual database is to configure the languages to be used within your project Pressing the Configure Translation button on the Global page of the user interface properties dis lays the following dialog box e The top section ofthe dialog box defines a number of properties for each language The Language property is used to select the required language A language may exist in several variations according to the different countries in which it is spoken The Generic setting may be used for languages that are not directly supported within Crimson The Code property is used to display or enter the two character code for the language that has been selected This property will be passed to the web translation services during automatic translation and will be used to define the header row in a lexicon file You must enter the code manually for Generic languages of which Crimson has no prior knowledge The Numeric Format property is used to define whether Crimson will format numbers using US format or using a format specifie to th
149. in the Enable field This expression may reference a flag tag al operators defined in the Writing Expressions section If you need more complex logic such that one of several actions is performed based on more complex decision making configure the key for User Defined directly or may use any of the comparison or Wap rein nios mode and use it to invoke a program that implements the required logic You can also use the Remote property to block access t this action from the web server THE Goro PAGE ACTION This action is used to instruct the target device to show a new page The Target Page property is used to indicate which page should be displayed In addition to the pages contained in the database you have the option of selecting either Previous Page or Next Page to navigate within the page history list The New button may be used create a new page without leaving the dialog The Show As property is used to indicate how the page should be displayed selection of Normal Page will cause the page to be selected inthe usual manner while the Popup Window option will cause the primitives on the new page to be displayed in rectangular popup on top of the current page A popup can be closed by executing the HidePapup 1 function USER DEFINED ACTION This action is used to perform onc or more user defined actions The On Pressed property defines the action to be performed when the primitive
150. ious date elements ie date month and year should be displayed The Date Separator property is used to select the character that will be placed between the elements of the date display The default value will be based upon the current language selection but can be overridden as required The Show Year property is used to indicate whether the date field should include the year and if o how many digits should be shown for that element Show Month property is used to indicate whether the month should be displayed as digits ie 01 through 12 or as its short name ie Jan though Dec IP ADDRESS FORMAT IP Address format bas no properties Two SrATE FORMAT Two State format has the following properties _ The ON State property defines the text o be shown ifthe value is non zero The OFF State property defines the text to be shown ifthe value is zera THE MULTI STATE FORMAT The Multi State format has the following properties i ja T oa re i Formar Cono The States property defines how many states the multi state format will contain up to a maximum of 500 entries The window displaying the format will update to show the required number of Data and Text properties The Limit property defines how many states will be used when matching data against this format It can be dynamically adjusted while the absolute number of states s statically defi
151. is also implies that the property can be set to an expression allowing its contents to change dynamically Crimson supports fall dynamic reflow allowing complex and atractive presentation options The Text Font property allows the required font to selected Crimson s new default font is Hei a Unicode font that provides support for simplified Chinese and most other languages The Pick button can be used to invoke the font selection dialog allowing any font that is installed on your system to be rendered in a form that can be used by the target device Note that it is your responsibility ensure that you are licensed for this kind of font usage The Horizontal property defines the horizontal alignment ofthe text The Vertical property defines the venial alignment of the text The Line Spacing property defines additional line spacing in pixels The Text Color property selects the color ofthe text The Drop Shadow property is used enable an optional shadow to the right and to the bottom of the text itself This effect is useful when trying to make text stand from its background especially if the background is an image that contains a combination of many colors Tip rein meas More Proverries The Text Margin properties are used to control the margin around the text relative to the text bounding box provided by the primitive They can be useful m achieving better visual centering when working with fonts that
152. is pressed This action may invoke any of the functions in the Function Reference or the data modification operators described in the Writing Actions chapter It may also run a program to perform a more complex action The On Auto Repeat property defines the action to be performed when the primitive is pressed and then held down The action occurs bath on the initial depression and on subsequent auto repeas so there is no need define both this property and On Pressed This action may invoke any of the functions from the Function Reference or the data modification operators described in the Writing Actions section or it may run a program The On Released property defines the action to be performed when the primitive is released This action may invoke any of the Functions from the Function Reference or the data modification operators described in the Writing Actions section orit may run a program Inthe example above a user defined action is used to implement a momentary pushbutton Ti rein neos THE PUSH BUTTON ACTION This action is used to emulate a pushbutton 3 The Button Type propery selects the desired behavior Biron Te Pun Bu Toss Change the anat when he piv ia real NO Macy See casio 1 wien ho primitive t ped Sethe data 1o O when the mative teed NC Moses Sethe data to 0 when the primitiis Sethe data 1o 1 when he primitive is released Tan Oe Sethe data to 1 whe t
153. l either be dragging items ftom the Resource Pane or you will be clicking the appropriate option on the drop down menu and then selecting the item from the resulting dialog box There will be situations though when you want to make a property dependent on a more complex combination of data items perhaps using some math to combine or compare their values Such eventualities are handled via what are known as expressions which can he entered in the propery s edit box whenever General mode is selected via the drop down DATA VALUES AIL expressions contain at least one data value The simplest expressions are thus references to single constants single tags or single PLC registers If you enter ether of the last two options Crimson will simplify the editing process by automatically changing the property mode as appropriate For example if you enter a tag name in General made Crimson will switch to Tag mode and show the tag name in the selection field Constants Constants represent not surprisingly constant numbers or strings INTEGER CONSTANTS Integer constants represent single 32 bit signed number They may be entered in decimal binary octal or hexadecimal as required The examples below show the same number entered in the four different number bases Base Bane The U and suffixes supported by earlier versions of software are not used CHARACTER Constants Character constants represent a single Unicode chara
154. l change to indicate that you now need to click on the primitive to which you wish to align As soon as you click the alignment will be performed UsiNG THE GRID The Grid button on the toolbar can be used to control the behavior and the display of the alignment grid Clicking on the left hand side of the button will show or hide the grid Clicking on the drop down portion will allow the operations far which the grid is used to be configured You may separately enable or disable the grid for creation sizing and movement operations or you may use the or None options to enable or disable it globally You may also control whether the grid is used when editing within groups Tp rein meas ALIGNING PRIMITIVES While the Smart Alignment and Quick Alignment options discussed above allow many alignment operations to be performed without further concer there are times that you will want to use a more traditional approach To do this select a number of primitives and use the Align Selection command on the Arrange menu to display the following dialog box The Horizontal and Vertical settings can be used to indicate what type of alignment is to be performed while the Reference setting defines which primitive is used as the reference for he alignment operation In the example above Auto mode will use the left most primitive as a reference as we are performing a le alignment Other alignment modes work in similar
155. lable For example the candy button shown above is available in red green yellow blue oF grey Condy Dutton The Control propery defines the value to be written when the button is pressed or released This value must be writable and will be set to one or zero depending on the exact operation defined for the button The Status property is used to control the illumination of the button I it is left blank it will default to the Control value A different value can be used if more complex logie is required T The Operation property selects the required behavior Orsanon Buron Bene Change dhe data sae wh the buton i pres Luci Ire data 0 to 1 when utn is presi he data 1 seit O when the bon released NO Momentary Set the datato 1 whom the button is pressed Set the data toO when the btn dene NC Momentary Sethe datato O when the buton s pressed Sethe data to 1 wen the buoni released Tumon Set th data to 1 when the buton is pred Tumor Set he datato O when the buton is pred Cuon The behavior is defina using tbe Action ab Note that Latching is slightly different from Toggle in respect of the point at which a non zero control value is set back to zero Toggle makes all changes when the button is pressed while Latching tums a value off when it is released This produces a result more in keeping with the behavior of a real world latching pushbution Refer to the previou
156. le pushbutton replacement easier The Favor UI Writes option specifies whether to give priority to write operations that directly result from user actions This is useful when working with a database that performs a lot of background communications as result of protocol conversion or programmatie activity The Comms Delay option specifies a delay that will be inserted between any two comms transactions for this device It is useful when working with remote T devices that are unable to up with Crimson s performance or when a lower comms priority is to be given to a device CREATING TAGS Some drivers provide an option to crete tags within Crimson that correspond to the data items that exist in the remote device This option is accessed via the Make Data Tags link on the device configuration page The exact operation is driver dependent but typically you will be asked to select a configuration file that has been exported by the device s programming software The import process will delete any tags from a previous import of the same device bu will preserve tag settings such as formas triggers security and so on Port AND DEVICE USAGE You can find all the items that refer to a given communication device or to any of the devices connected to a particular port by right clicking that item in the Navigation Pane and selecting the Find Usage command The resulting items will be placed on the Global Search Results Li
157. llows the minimum and maximum ticks to line up with the edge ofthe primitive making it easier to align with say a tank fil FIGURE PROPERTIES The properties on this page define the colors and fonts used for the scale Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard properties The Label Shift property can be used to move the labels up or down relative to the tiek marks producing more attractive results when working with fonts with spacing above or below the character glyphs ProperTIES The properties on his page are used to set the minimum and maximum values to be shown by he scale Expressions may be specified in which case Crimson will dynamically update the scale at runtime choosing tick marks and label positions appropriate o the new values These settings may not be available ifa tag has been chosen as the source of limit values Fonmar PROPERTIES The Format Type field specifies the format type to be used when drawing the scale labels Only general or numeric formats are supported The selection may not be available if the format is being obtained from a tag Refer to the section on Using Formats for details ofthe various other properties that are displayed when a numeric data format is selected BEEE The four arrow primitives are in fact predefined versions of a single primitive This primitive supports tank fils It also supports the addition of text or da
158. lly thereafter and will be used as a time stamp source if the alternative source is not available due to comms problems The Time Zone property is used to indicate the time zone to be used for time stamps It is only applicable when the local real time clock is configured as the source for time stamps Selecting Local will use the local time zone selecting UTC will use Universal Coordinated Time instead This latter setting produces Wr vamedion neos log files which are more easily portable across time zones and which do not suffer from discontinuities when switching in and out of Daylight Savings Time CHOOSING AN SNTP SERVER When configuring the SNTP client you have several options when selecti you have a Windows or Unix based time server as part of your network infrastructure you should ultimately synchronize to this source to ensure enterprise wide synchronization If you have several Crimson devices om the same network though you will find it beter to nominate one of these as the master device for the purpose of setting Daylight Savings Time and then have that device alone synchronize to the enterprise time source You can then configure the other devices to synchronize to the master device and enable the Linked DST facility to propagate the Daylight Savings Time setting around your factory If you have no enterprise time source available you may choose to nominate a si Crimson device as the point where an
159. ly within a bounding rectangle that you define Primitives can be moved horizontally vertically or in both dimensions they can be moved according to polar coordinates such that they orbit a point at a variable distance In each case cach dimension is defined by a control value and a pair of imis To apply movement select the required primitive or primitives and choose one of the Add Movement commands from the Behavior menu A red rectangle will appear around the primitives representing the movement group in which the animation will take place The group can be resized to change the extent of animation but unlike a regular group resizing a movement group does not change the size of the primitives themselves The group contents can be edited just as with standard groups using the techniques detailed above When polar movement is being edited an ellipse will show the path that the primitives will follow when Tipe rein nos the radius is set to 100 Note that this will always be smaller than the group itself as it represents the position of the center of the items that are being animated and space must be left to ensure that they do not extend beyond the group boundary To define how the movement is controlled open the properties of the movement group The example above shows the configuration of 2D movement Polar movement is configured in a similar way For each dimension of movement the Position value defines wh
160. make in if you want more than one action to be included in the loop include them in curly brackets a change to the control variable to move the loop on to its next iteration A THe Do Looe This type of loop is similar the loop except that the condition is tested at the end of the loop This means that the loop will always execute at least once The example below shows the example from above rewritten to use 22 Loop Conor Two additional statements can be used within loops The statement can be used to terminate the loop early while the continue statement can be used to skip the balance ofthe loop body and begin another iteration without executing any further code To make any sense these statements must be used with i statements to make their execution conditional The example below shows a loop that terminates early if another program retums truc pz Wr vamedion netos WRITING EXPRESSIONS You will recall from the sections of this manual that many configured as what are called expression properties You will further recall that these fields are edited by means ofa user interface element similar to that shown below within Crimson are In many situations you will be configuring these properties to be equal to the value of a tag or to the contents of a register in a remote communications device In these cases you wil
161. mapped to 20002 while using it on tag mapped will produce a tag mapped to 3 This y makes it much easier to create sets of tags referring to sequential data items EDITING MULTIPLE TAGS You may on occasions want to edit the properties of several tags at once Crimson supports this operation by having you edit one tag and then allowing you to set the properties of the other tags equal to those of the one that you first edited Crimson provides two methods to do his both of which rely on the same underlying mechanism UstNG Copy From The Copy From command can be used to the selected properties given tag to one or more tags in the Navigation List To use the command select the target tags and then right click to access the context menu Note that the Navigation List for tags supports multiple selection via the usual Syrer and key combinations Select one of the From commands and the cursor will change to allow you to select the tag from which the copy operation should be performed Depending on the command that was selected one or more properties from the source tag will then be applied to the target tags USING PASTE SPECIAL The Paste Special command can be used to achieve the same result but via a different method that also allows properties to be copied between databases and or between multiple instances of Crimson First select source tag and use th
162. mpted by the client A selection of Digest will insist upon a authentication technique that sends the password in an encrypted form and will skip authentication if the server does not support such a method A selection of Basie will attempt to use the secure technique but will fallback to trivially encoded transmission if necessary A selection of None will not attempt to authenticate Your server may fo not require authentication Contact you network administrator or mail provider for more details af the setting that should he used for your server The Username and Password properties provide the optional credentials for the authentication process described above ConeicuriNe SMS The SMS tab is used to configure the Short Messa Service transport that is supported when using a GPRS modem in association with the target device Email addresses for the SMS transport are in the form of intemational format telephone numbers without the plus sign For example an address of 17175551111 would send a message t the cell phone or other GSM device that had a number ot 717 555 1 1 within the United Stats The configuration options for the SMS transport are shown below The Transport Mode property is used to enable or disable the transport om The Message Relay property is used to enable or disable Crimson s SMS relay feature If this feature is enabled a user who receives an SMS message that has been sent to several
163. n It is discussed in detail below FILING WipGETS Each widget has a Filing tab in its property dialog The Description and Category properties are sed to control how a widget will be displayed on the Resource Pane after it is saved All widgets of the same category will be grouped together in the same subcategory on the Primitives category and the widget description will be displayed when the user hovers over an em To save a widget simply select it and choose Save Widget from the Edit menu or press the key combination A standard Save dialog will open allowing you to save the widget as a wia file in the Crimson widget directory The Resource Pane will update automatically whenever a widget file is added to this directory This will occur whether the change is made via Crimson or by simply dropping a via file in the directory via Windows Explorer Note that widget files are stand alone and can be transferred between Crimson installations on different machines This provides a powerful mechanism for sharing user interface elements or for exchanging items with other engineers when multiple individuals are working on a project FOLDER BINDING Crimson s ability to organize tags in folders allows a kind of object oriented design whereby tags that represent the properties of an object can he grouped together in a folder that represents the object itself Consider the example below Tip rein
164. n Bradley controller have been exposed for access via Modbus TCP IP as registers 40002 through 40008 Crimson will automatically ensure that these daa items ae read from the Allen Bradley PLC so as to fulfill Modbus requests and will automatically convert writes to the Modbus registers into writes to the PLC This mechanism allows even simple PLCs be connected on an Ethemet network m To move data between two master devices simply select one of the devices and create a Gateway Block for that device You can then add references to the other device s registers just as you would when exposing data on a slave protocol Again Crimson will automatically read or write the data as required transparently moving data between the devices The example above shows how to move data from a Modbus device into an SLC S00 WHICH Wav AROUND One question that may occur to you is whether you should create the Gateway Block within the Allen Bradley device as in this example or within the Modbus device The first thing to note is that ther is no need to create more than a single black to perform transfers in a single direction Ifyou eeate block in AB to read from MOD and a block in MOD to write to AB you ll simply perform the transfer twice and slow everything down The second observation is that the decision as to which device should own the Gateway Block is essentially arbitrary In general you should create your blocks so as to minimiz
165. n is selected its return type and argument types are shown on the status bar Dropping a function into your code enters the appropriate text and places the text cursor im the parentheses following the function name hereby allowing you to enter the required arguments marum Tipe rein nios PROGRAM DATA TYPES The field above the program editor can be used to edit the program s d es The Data Type property is used to indicate whether this program should simply perform a series of actions or whether it will perform a calculation and retum the value of that calculation to the calle Programs that return values cannot by definition be run in the background The Parameters property section defines up to six parameters that the program will accept Each parameter has a name and a data type In this example the program accepts two parameters the first named va1ue1 and the second named and both being 32 bit signed integers Returning values and passing parameters is discussed in more detail below PROGRAM PROPERTIES The second tab af the editor defines the program s execution environment The Run in Background property is used to indicate whether Crimson should wait for the program to complete execution before continuing with processing whatever task invoked the program For example if this property running a program in response to a key being pressed will result in a pause in display updates until the progr
166. n it tests The operators be used on integers floating point values or strings If strings are being compared the comparison is case insensitive such that abe is considered equal to ABC TesriNG Crimson allows you to test the value of a bit within a data value by using the bit selection perator which is represented by a single period The left hand side ofthe operator should be the value in which the bit is to be tested and ihe right hand side should be an expression indicating the bit number to test This right hand value should be between 0 and 31 The result of the operator is equal to 0 oF 1 depending on the value of the bitin question Orson Prony 7 The example shown tests bit 2 ie the bit with a value of 4 within the indicated tag you want to test for a bit being equal to zero you use the logical NOT operator Prony 7 This example is equal to 1 if bit 2 of the indicated tag is equal to 0 and vice versa MULTIPLE CONDITIONS If you want to define an expression that is tue if a number of conditions are all true you can use the logical AND operator Similarly if you want to define an expression that is true if any of a number of conditions are true you can use the logical OR operator The examples below show each operator in use Orenaron Prony Togel AND Gros 3010 10 logi OR The
167. n therefore be used to create text or data displays or to provide duta entry Finally they support the addition of actions and cam therefore be used to implement interactive display clement The primitive specife property tab for these primitives is shown below Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard fill and edge settings Note that the wedge has one additional property namely a Pastion property used to specify the orientation ofthe triangular wedge within the bounding rectangle The trimmed rectangle rectangle with rounded comers and plaque all have a layout handle that can be used to specify the radius of the comer effect In their degenerate form with a zero comer radius they become equivalent to a simple rectangle While the geometrie primitives are very simple their support for tank fills data text and portion of most databases can in fact be created by using just the rectangle or the rounded rectangle actions means that a lar 3D Primrrives The various 3D primitives represent rectangles with a thre dimensional bonler While three versions are presented in the Resource Pane all are really just preconfigured variations of a single primitive These primitives support tank fils and can therefore be used o implement effets such as bar graphs It also supports the addition of text or data and can therefore be used to create text or data displays or to provide data entry Finally it
168. n will listen on a specific TCP IP port for incoming connections Virtual ports are typically used to communicate with devices via remote serial servers A standard serial protocol is employed but that protocols data is being encapsulated within TCP IP packets USING EXPANSION CARDS Some target devices support the addition of one or more expansion cards so as to provide additional communications facilities A number of cards are available including models to support bus protocols such as CANOpen Profibus or DeviceNet Installation instructions are provided with each card so please refer to the supplied data sheet for information on how to fit the card to the device Once the card is installed configuration is performed by selecting the appropriate icon in the Navigation Pane and clicking on the Pick button next to the Option Card propery dialog similar to the one shown below will be displayed The additional ports can be configured by following the instructions supplied in the previous sections Note that the drivers available for a port will depend on the connection type it supports For example the CANOpen expansion card shows a port that will only support drivers designed for the CAN communication standard Suave PROTOCOLS For master protocols ie those where the Crimson device initiates communication there is no further configuration required under the Communications category For slave protocols i
169. ncrease your available workspace The Resource Pane has three categories The Primitives category is used to access the key building blocks used to assemble display pages and is shown to the left in its various states You will notice that the top level contains a number of sub categories cach of which provides acces to a numberof primitives Clicking on an icon displays a sub category and its primitives Clicking on a given primitive displays versions of that primitive in predefined colors The icons in the toolbar can be used to move between sub categories o move up to a higher level ar to change the number of primitives displayed per row The primitives are described in the next chapter The Symbol Library category operates in a manner that is very similar to the Primitives category providing acces to a number of sub categories each of which contains a number of predefined symbols Clicking on a given symbol provides a number of pre colored versions of that symbol although this facility is used less often than it is with primitives Take some time to explore the Symbol Library it contains many thousands of possible images and its correct use can produce more attractive and easy to use databases Tapion redan jos The Data Tags category contains a tree view of all the data tags in the current database It is used both to drag tags directly on to a display page and to provide access to tags while configuring th
170. nd The On Update property defines an ation o be ran on cach display update PROPERTIES Refer to the Using Security chapter for details om security descriptors User INTERFACE SETTINGS stion List will access the user interface settings Selecting the root item in the Navi GLOBAL PROPERTIES The Global tab contains various general settings that apply across the database GLOBAL ACTIONS The On property defines an action to be ran when the sytem stars 2 The On Initialize property defines an action to be un slightly later The On Tiek propery defines an action to be un once per second The On Update property defines an action to be run on cach display update GuceaL Timeouts Keypad Timeout property defines the period of time without user action afier which any data entry operations will be cancelled and the associated popup keypad removed from the display om merus The Backlight Timeout property defines the period of time without user action after which the display backlight will be tumed off to conserve power and display life The default value of zero disables this feature The Relock Timeout propery defines the period of time after which any actions protected via the Locked or Hard Locked methods will relock automaticaly such that the user will once again have to unlock them before they be used Porup Postrion The Horizontal and Vertical properties define th
171. ned This property is wseful when the state fields are populated at runtime as it allows unused fields to be skipped during the data entry process The Default property defines a string to be displayed if the data cannot be matched against the defined states f no value is provided the numeric representation of the unmatched state will be displayed in parentheses The Match Type property defines how the data is compared against the various states If Discrete is selected the tag data must match a given state s data value in onder for that state to be used If Ranged is selected Crimson assumes that the state data values are in increasing numerical order and will use a state value if the tag data is less than or equal to that state s data value but greater than the prior state s data value During data entry ranged format objects assign values equal to the individual states actual data values Formar STATES The Data and Text properties define the data value and display text for cach state in this format States with empty text fields are disabled and are ignored Tape rein meas Format Ce ee Multi state format objects also provide buttons to allow their various states and the associated properties to be exported to or imported from Unicode text files These files can then be edited by an application such as Microsoft Excel THE STRING FORMAT The String Format has the following properties The Templa
172. ned to the primitive or when the primitive is something like a button that has an inherent action associated with it This option is useful when creating custom buttons that should provide feedback when touched The Step property indicates how far the text should move when the primitive is pressed One to three pixels can be chosen according to the effect desired ENTRY PROPERTIES These properties are only available when data entry is enabled The Maximum Value and Minimum Values properties define the data entry limits They will not be available if the field has been configured to get its data entry limits from the controlling tag Not particularly if their data limits are implicitly defined format types honor these settings The Enable property is used to provide an expression to enable or disable dat Disabled data entry fields will act just like display only fields The On Selected property specifies an action to be executed when the user presses on the data entry field just before data entry begins The On Deselected property specifies an action to be executed when data entry ends either as a result of a value being written a page change or the user pressing button to cancel the entry process The On Entry Complete property specifies an action to be executed when data entry is successfully completed The On Entry Error property specifies an action to be executed when the user enters an invali
173. ng easier cooperation between Crimson users or between users and Tech Support Down ro The next section revisits most of the topics above but in more detail They also explore some ofthe magic that can be used to make widgets even more powerful WIDGET DATA DEFINITIONS The features that give widgets their power is their data items The data definition of a widget is edited by opening the widger s properties and by clicking on the Edit button in the Definitions section of the Data page Event property defines how many data items are required for this widget This value can be changed at any time but making it smaller will result in data items and their values being lost Up to eighty data items may be defined merum Wap rein neo The Name property of cach data item is used to refer to that item from primitives contained within the widget It must therefore meet all the requirements ofa tag name t must contain no spaces or punctuation and it must start with a letter The Description property fr cach data item is used to provide a more friendly version of the name this time for display in the data item editing dialog No restrictions are placed on the contents of this field The Data Type property for each item defines the required dta type The way in which the dta item is displayed in the widgets property dialog will depend on the setting that is selected The real integer and string data types correspond to
174. ng method are not supported Big Endian hex character in the range 7079 and AF with the mos significant 4 bits being used fist Wee to string SB ths packing method are not supported The Access property is Tead and write access and used for mapped tags to define what kind of communications operations are to be permitted Intemal tags are always set to expression tags are always read only The Read Mode property is used only for array tags It defines the elements to be read when the array is referenced The following settings can be used Reso Mane Al the lems in he array WiN be ad whenever the sry i referenced and access wil be blocked until e ul operation has completed This will ensure that data i Sela but wl produce te slowest perfomance The aay will ot be wal uni calls made oe Rescbete function o force a anie minal dat Ay elements wil be vend as cy Thi produces he ices performance bt sisle data may e On Demand operation wil be used b N repite cer side of the referenced register wil be read as well thereby making adjacent data available more qul Tip edian netos The Storage property is used to indicate whether the tag will be retained through of the target device This is typically used for internal tags but mapped write only tags may also have their values retained Dara SIMULATION The Simulate As property
175. o enable the SMS Transport within the Mail Manager SMS MESSAGE PROCESSING When SMS messaging is enabled Crimson will instruct the GSM modem to check for new incoming or outgoing messages every five seconds Incoming messages are forwarded tothe mail manager which will optionally forward them to other users according to its configuration Note that it is mot possible to check for messages while the modem is connected to a CSD or GPRS session so you will want to avoid using permanent connections when working with SMS Note also that if more than one GSM modem is configured all will ges but only the last modem will be uscd for sending be able to receive mess CHECKING THE STATUS In order to help debug modem connections Crimson provides the function This function takes a single argument which is the numeric index of the required interface Interface zero is the intemal loopback interface Next come any Ethernet interfaces that are enabled followed by the PPP interfaces In a system using a single Ethernet port for example the first PPP interface will have an index of 1 The function returns a string which can be interpreted according to the following table STATUS MEANING CLOSED The interface has not yet been initialized This state will only occur for a short time during system start up INIT The modem is being initialized Ifthe connection remains in this state t
176. o indicate whether the tag will be retained through a power cyele of the target device This is typically used for internal tags but mapped write only tags may also have their values retained DATA ScaLine The Scaling property is used for mapped tags to define a final scaling step to be performed on the data Data may either be scaled to integer or to floating point irrespective how Crimson is treating the manipulated comms data For example an integer value may be sealed to a floating point value in which case Crimson will consider the tag to be floating point Likewise floating point value might be converted back to an integer perhaps without even changing its magnitude The Data From and Data To properties define the domain of the transformation that occurs on read and the range of the transformation that occurs on a write The values must match the data type specified in Treat As such that only data that is being treated as floating point can have non integral values entered in esc fields On read values beyond these limits are still accepted and willbe scaled to corresponding values beyond the Display limits In other words no clipping of the value is performed The Display From and Display To properties define the range of the transformation that occurs om read and the domain of the transformation that occurs on a write The values must match the data type specified in Scale such that only data that is being scaled
177. o the respective variables ACCESSING INDIVIDUAL BITS 1f your application requires it you can expand individual elements within Gateway Block to their constituent bits and map a different data item to cach bit To do this right click on the element in question and select Expand Bits from the resulting menu The Navigation Pane Tipe ren nios will be updated to show the individual that make up the register and these can be mapped using the drag and drop proces deseribed above CONVERSION In addition to exposing internal data tags via slave protocols Gateway Blocks can also be used to expose data that is obtained from other remote devices or to move data between two such master devices This unique protocol conversion feature allows much tighter integration between elements of your control system even when using simple low cost devices MASTER AND SLAVE Exposing data from other devices over a slave protocol is simply an extension of the mapping process described above except this time instead of dragging a tag from the Resource Pane you should select the Comms Devices category expand the appropriate master device and drag across the icon that represents the registers that you want to expose You will then be asked for a start address in the master device and the number of registers to map and the mappings will be created as shown In this example registers 17 0 through 17 7 im an Alle
178. occurs Note all actions will be available depending on the alarm s rigger mode and accept type TricceR PROPERTIES flag tag has the following properties on its Trigger For The Trigger Mode property is as described for the Alarms tab 4 The Delay property is as described for the Alarms tab CThe Action propery is used to indicate what action should be performed when the tigger is activated Refer to the Writing Actions chapter for a description of the syntax used to define the various actions that are available SECURITY PROPERTIES Refer to the Using Security chapter for details on security descriptos ary Tip rein neos STRING Tacs string tag represents one or more strings of Unicode characters While Crimson 3 works support various encoding in Unicode it can read and write strings from fbit sources t00 Mapped string tags allowing one or more characters to be extracted from one register DATA PROPERTIES string tag has the following properties on its Data tab DATA Source The Source property defines where the tag gets its data The default setting results in an internal tag but the drop down list may be used to select a general expression another data tag or an item from a remote device The Extent property is used choose between a single element tag or an army I you select an array you must enter the required number of elements Arrays are
179. of an cdge triggered alarm oF event this property also specifies the amount of time for which the alarm condition must no longer exist before subsequent re activations will result in a further alarm being signaled As an example if an alarm is set to activate when a speed switch indicates that a motor is not running even when the motor has been requested to start this property can be used to provide the motor with time to run up before the alarm is activated The Accept property is used to indicate whether the user will be required to explicitly accept an alarm before it will no longer be displayed Edge triggered alarms must always be manually accepted The Priority property is used to control the onder in which alarms are displayed by Crimson s alarm viewer The lower the numerical value of the priority field the nearer to the top the alarm will be displayed The Siren property is used to indicate whether or not the activation of this alarm should also activate the target device s sounder While the sounder is active the panel s display will also flash to better draw attention to the alarm condition The Mail To property specifies the email address book entry to which a message should be sent when this alarm is activated Refer to the Using Services chapter for information on configuring email The On Accept On Active and On Clear properties are used to specify actions to be executed when the specified change of state
180. of file that should be made available for viewing Note that only text files can be displayed CThe Messages property group defines and perhaps translate various messages used by the file viewer USER MANAGER The User Manager is used to allow the changing of passwords at runtime ECES lis core properties are contained on a single tab and all are conventional Renn merus TREND viewer The trend viewer allows the display of information from the Data Logger Oprions Prorexmes The Data Log property selects the data log to be displayed The View Width property is used to indicate the initial amount of data to be shown across the window The user can subsequently zoom in and out using the buttons at the bottom ofthe viewer The Pen Mask property is used to provide 32 bit integer value to selectively enable or disable the display of specific channels 0 corresponds to the first channel of the data log bit 1 to the second and so A bit value of one shows the channel while a value of zero hides it A blank entry provides the default behavior with all channels being displayed The Show Values propery enables or disables the display of the data values associated with each channel of the data log either during live mode or when scrolling back and forth using the cursor The Show Cursor property is used to enable or disable the display ofa cursor on the viewer The cursor can be activated b
181. of the Time Manager ta be used Make sure your PC s clock is correct before you do this THE COMPACTFLASH CARD IE your target device has a CompactFlash card several additional functions are available MOUNTING THE CARD If you are connected o suitable device via the USB you can instruct Crimson to mount the device s CompactFlash card as a drive within Windows Explorer You can usc this functionality to save files to the card ar to read information from the Data Logger The drive is mounted and dismounted by sending commands using the Mount Flash and Dismount Flash options on the Link menu Once a command has been sent the target device will be reset and Windows will refresh the appropiate Explorer windows Note that some caution is required when mounting the CompactFlash card When the cant is mounted the target device will periodically inform the PC if data on the card has been modified This means that both the PC and the device will suffer a minor performance hit if the cand is mounted during data logging operations for longer than necessary 16 you write to the CompactFlash card from your PC the target device will not be able to access the card until Windows releases its lock on the card This may take several seconds and will restrict data logging operations during that time and prevent access to custom web pages Crimson will use the device s RAM to ensure that no data is lost but if too many writes are perf
182. olorings are discussed in detail in a later chapter as are the other properties that might appear according to the option you have selected SECURITY PROPERTIES Refer to the Using Security chapter for details security descriptors Basic Tacs Basic tags are used to represent constants or expressions Dara VALUE The Data Value propery defines the value of the tag It must be an expression The tag itself will adopt the data type of the expression that is used Tapion edian nios Data SIMULATION Simulate As propery defines a value to be used as the default for the tag when editing display pages Entering a sensible value allows a better representation of the page s likely appearance This value is also used as the tag s default value y the target device if communication is globally disabled Dara Lasers The Label property was discussed above under Tag Attributes CThe Description property was discussed above under Tag Attributes The Class property is reserved for future expansion ADVANCED ToPICS ARRAY PROPERTIES Many ofthe properties of array tags can be made variable based upon the exact element of the array being referenced To achieve this a system property called isse to the element index during the evaluation of those properties For example the Label property could be set to Riesen 7 AsText 11 to label the array elements Element 1 Element 2 ete This feature can be
183. om web site using your favorite third party HTML editor and by inserting certain special sequences and storing the resulting files on the device s CompactFlash card publish this site using the target device s web server CREATING THE SITE The web site may use any HTML facilities supported by your browser but must not use ASP CGI or other server side tricks The filenames used for the HTML files and associated graphies must also comply with the 8 3 naming convention This means that file extensions will be for example instead of and 276 instead of 3226 This also means that the body of the filename must be eight characters or les and that you must not rely on the difference between upper and lower case to differentiate between pages You may use any directory structure as long as you once again ensure that your directories observe the 8 3 naming convention and do not rely on ease differences EMBEDDING DATA To embed tag data within a web page insert the sequence N replacing with the index number or name of the tag im question When the web page containing this sequence is served the sequence will be replaced by the curent value of the tag formatted according to the tag s properties Each tag s index number is displayed on the status bar when a tag is selected within the Data Tag category and more or less corresponds to the order in which the tags were created Index numbers provide faster access to tag data th
184. omatically Update rates between 1 and seconds are supported Note that the amount of flicker exhibited by the web browser will vary according to the exact package used and the performance of he machine being employed The update is not intended to be icker re The Use Colors property is used to indicate if colors defined by a tag s coloring should be used when rendering this page If enabled the color shown in the web browser will change depending on the tag status Refer to the Using Data Tags chapter for more details The Allow Editing property is used to enable the editing of data tags via this Page If it is enabled cach data value will have an Edit button displayed allowing the user to change that value Ifthe tag has security settings defined the user logged on to the web server must have sufficient rights to modify the tag The use of authentication is recommended when using this feature om The Contents property is used to indicate which tags should be included on the page Tags can be dragged into the list fom the Resource Pane and moved up and down within the list using standard drag and drop techniques USING A Custom Wes SITE While the standard web pages provide quick and casy access to the data within the terminal you may find that your inability to edit their precise formatting leaves your artistic Capabilities somewhat frustrated You may thus use Crimson s custom site facility to create a completely cust
185. ontrols the position of the balloon tail Text within the balloon will automatically reflowed as the handles are moved SeMI TRIMMED FIGURES The semitimmed figures are versions of the rounded rectangle trimmed rectangle and plaque that have only two of their comers removed These are useful for creating title bars and other effects on the edge of primitive groups They are cach available in four orientations Actions BUTTONS Actions buttons use preselected images from the Symbol Library to crate a button that will perform a given action when it is pushed Many versions are provided beyond those shown hove Clicking on a given button in the Resource Pane will show the different color variants that are available For example the square button is available in red green or black When using an ation button you will primarily use the Action tab of the properties dialog to define an action as per the description in the previous chapter The Button tab can also be used to adjust the button images or to define your own versions om merus ILLUMINATED BUTTONS lcsinated buttons use preselected images from the Symbol Library to ereate button that will control a tag and light up based either upon the state of that tag or the state of another expression Many versions are provided beyond those shown above Clicking on a given button in the Resource Pane will show the different color variants that are avai
186. operties or groups of properties can be selected or deselected using the associated checkboxes Only the checked properties will be applied providing you with low level control of what gets copied from one tag to another IMPORTING AND EXPORTING Selecting the Data Tags item in the Navigation List provides access to buttons that can be used to export and import the data tags in your database Tags may be exported to either Unicode text file or ANSI comma separate variable files with either capable of being edited via applications such as Microsoft Excel The export file is divided into sections based upon ag type format type and coloring type Each section contains a number of columns the meanings of which can be determined by consulting the sections below Note that certain communications drivers have the ability to import far example a PLC configuration file and crete data tags that correspond to the PLC registers This facility is accessed via the device configuration page using the Make Data Tags command FINDING TAG USAGE You can find all the items that refer to a given tag by right clicking that item im the Navigation Pane and selecting the Find Usage command The resulting items will be placed lobal Search Results List and can be accessed by means of the F4 and SHFT ES key combinations The list itself can be shown or hidden by pressing F8 onthe NUMERIC TAGS numeric tag represents one or more integ
187. options when deciding bow to mix protocols and devices to achieve the results you want For example suppose you want to connect to two remote slave devices using Modbus over TCP IP Your first option is to use two network protocols configuring both as Modbus masters with a single device attached to cach For most protocols this will produce higher performance as it will allow simultaneous communications with the two devices It will however consume two of the available protocols limiting your ability to connect via additional protocols in complex applications Your second option is therefore to use a single protocol configured as Modbus TCP IP Master but to add a further device so that both slaves are accessed via the same driver This will typically produce slightly reduced performance as Crimson will poll each device in tum ther than talking to both devices at the same time It will however conserve network protocols allowing more complex applications without running out of resources USING VIRTUAL PORTS As mentioned above Crimson supports the addition of virtual ports to the network configuration A virtual port looks to Crimson s communications system just like a serial port but sends and receives its data over a TCP IP link Virtual ports may be configured in cither active mode or passive mode In the fermer case Crimson will attempt to open a TCP IP connection to specified remote device while in the latter case Crimso
188. or example if you have a tag called Text that contains the string ABCD then the expression 10 will retum a value of 65 this being equal to the Unicode value of the first character Index values beyond the end ofthe string will always return zero ADDING STRINGS As well as adding numbers the addition operator can be used to concatenate strings Thus the expression Ag e co evaluates to ABCD You may also use the addition operator to add an integer to a string in which case a single character equal to the Unicode representation ofthe integer is appended to the data in the sting CALLING PROGRAMS Programs that return values may be invoked within expressions by following the program name with a pair of parentheses For example Progeani 20 will invoke the associated program and multiply the return value by 10 Obviously the retum type for Program must be set to integer or floating point fr this to make sense USING FUNCTIONS Crimson provides a number of predefined functions that can be used to access system information orto perform common math operations These functions are defined in detail in the Function Reference They are invoked using a syntax similar to that for programs with any arguments to the function being enclosed within the parentheses For example cos 0 will invoke the cosine funcion with an argument of 0 retuming a value of 10 PRIORITY SUMMARY The table below shows the priority of all
189. ormed such that the card is kept locked for four minutes or more data may discarded You should never attempt to use Windows to format a CompactFlash card that you have mounted via Crimson whether it be via Explorer or from the command prompt Windows does not correctly lock the card during format operations and the format may thus be unreliable and lead to subsequent data los Sce below for details of how to format a card in a reliable manner FORMATTING THE CARD The only supported method of formating a card is via the Format Flash command on the Link menu Selecting this command will explain that the formatting process will destroy all the data stored on the CompactFlash card and offer you a chance to cancel the operation I you elect to continue the operator panel will be instructed to format the card Note that this process may take several minutes for a large card Slow formats on panels that are performing data logging may therefore result in gaps in the recorded data REMOTE MONITORING Crimson supports as so called Watch List that allows you to view the contents of the tags and mapping blocks contained within your database The Watch List is displayed in the Watch Window This can be shown hidden using the F2 key or the command on he View menu Tapion edian jos When first displayed the Watch Window will show the simulated data that was defined when the tags were created Pressing the View Online button will ensur
190. ort access such that the package cannot sce the virtual ort Luckily these issues are rare and most packages will happily communicate as if they were directly connected to the PLC in question UsING MODEMS This chapter explains how configure Crimson to work either with modems or with direct serial connections to computers running the Windows operating system Note that Crimson s modem support is entirely based upon the Point To Point Protocol otherwise known as PPP While protocols such a Modbus allow a single conversation tn occur between any two devices PPP is more akin to an Ethernet connection in that it allows pep connection can thus allow simultaneous access to the panel s TCP IP download facility its web server its shared serial ports and to any TCP IP protocols that have been defined an unlimited number of logical connections to exist on a single physical link A singl ADDING A DIAL IN CONNECTION To add dial in connection to your database select the Communications category and navigate to the serial port via which the connection will be made Click on the Pick button of Driver property and select the PPP and Modem Server driver from the System section LM ipee CE po The Editing Pane will now show the modem configuration The modem has the following configuration options The Connect Using property is used to select the ph
191. os PROGRAMS This category is wed to cct and programs ng unique Cie amp lage Ties poems cm proe deci rling or operans cd upon dts ima iine spem They sve to etd the of Crimson bejond dut of stead nc indo inde solu ewig Dat cv os complex apis vas be eked Prog cm cl ona variety of sper actions opina common cations Wen SERVER This category is used to configure Crimson s web server and to create and edit web pages The web server is capable of providing remote access to the target device via number of mechanisms First you can use Crimson to create automatic web Pages which contain lists of tags with each formatted according to the tag s properties Second you can create a custom site using a third party HTML editor such as Microsoft FrontPage and then include special text instruct Crimson to insert live tag values Finally you can enable Crimson s unique remote access and contol feature which allows a web browser to view the target device s display and control its keyboard The web Server can also be used to access CSV files from the Data Logger DATA Loccer This category is used to create and manage data logs cach of which record any number of variables to the target device s CompactFlash card Data may be recorded as quickly as once per second The recorded values will be stored in CSV Comma Separated Variable files that can easil
192. ould typically set this property on the main menu page of your database removing the ability to go back beyond that point The Links property group allows number of pages o be selected by standard actions on a display page The Parent Page property defines a page to be slecte if the timeout occurs and no action is defined The Next Page property defines a page to be selected if input navigation is enabled and the focus is moved beyond the last field on the page The Previous Page property defines a page to be selected ifthe focus is similarly moved beyond the first field The Pasition property allows the globally defined position of popup windows to be overridden for this page If local settings are enabled the Horizontal and Vertical properties are used to specify the position The Master Slide property is used t indicate whether the master slide should be kept active while a popup is displayed The default setting of enabled allows butions on the master slide to function even though buttons on the actual page will be disabled while a popup is present This can be useful if you want global navigation options on the master slide to always be available ACTION PROPERTIES The On Select property defines an action to be run when the page is displayed Tipe rein meas The On Remove property defines an action to be nn when the page is deselected The On Tick property defines an action to be run onee per seco
193. ows a font to be replaced with another references to the font in the database will be updated to reflect the change The Show System button controls whether system fonts are shown in the list The Purge Unused button removes all unused fonts from the database thereby reducing the amount of memory used in the target device As with a deleted font purged fonts will no longer be presented in the drop down list used far font selection but may be recreated by using the associated Pick button Editing the properties of custom font produces the following dialog box The various options allow specific sets of characters to be included in the font image that is created and downloaded to the target device Restricting the characters to the ones that are needed for your application will save memory especially with larger fonts Note thatthe Numeric Output option can be used alone to restrict the font to digits decimal points and those other characters used to render conventional scientific or hexadecimal numbers PRIMITIVE TYPES This chapter describes cach ofthe primitives provided by Crimson Core PRIMITIVES The geometrie primitives represent simple shapes a rectangle a circle a trimmed rectangle a rectangle with rounded corners a plague and a wedge All these primitives support tank fll and can therefore be used to implement effects such as bar graphs They also support the addition of text or data and ca
194. pe and lifetime This means that they cannot be referenced outside the program and they do not retain their values between function invocations If a function is called recursively each invocation has its own variables Loop Constructs The three different loop constructs can be used to perform a given section of code while a certain condition is true The whe loop tests its condition before the code is executed while Wr vamedion nos the ss loop tests the condition afterwards The lop is a quicker way of defining loop allowing you to combine three common elements into one statement You should note that some care is required when using loops within your programs as you may make a programming error which results in loop that never terminates Depending on the situation in which the program is invoked this may seriously disrupt the terminal s user interface activity or its communications Loops which iterate too many times may also cause performance issues for the subsystem that invokes them THe WHILE Loop This type of loop repeats the action that follows it while the condition in the whe statement remains true If the condition is never true the action will never be executed and the loop will perform no operation beyond evaluating the controlling condition If you want more than one action tobe included inthe loop be sure to surround the multiple statements in curly brackets as with the statement The ex
195. perators to perform operations that do not treat integers as numeric values but instead as sequences of bits These operators are known as bitwise operators 3 Wr vam edian nos AND On AND XOR These throe bitwise operators each produce a result in which each bit is defined to be equal to the corresponding bits in the values on the operator s left hand and right hand sides combined using a specific truth table Orson Pun Bann Bic OR Gn Data Mask The table below shows the associated nth tables Sur OPERATORS Crimson also provides operators to shift an integer bits to the left or right Prony 7 Shi Rig TH bata gt Z Each example shifts two bits in the specified direction Brrwise NOT Finally Crimson provides a bitwise NOT operator invert sense of the bits in a value Prony 7 This example produces a value where every bit is equal to the opposite ofits value in ssi INDEXING ARRAYS Elements within am array tag can be selected by following the amy mame with square brackets that contain an indexing expression This expression must range fom 0 to one less than the number of elements in the array If you create 10 element for example the first element will be tice 0 and he last will be INDEXING STRINGS Square brackets can also be used to select characters within a string F
196. perform their own implicit action support the addition of customized actions to be performed when the operator presses or releases the touch screen An action can be added by selecting the Add Action command from the primiive s context menu or by selecting the primitive and pressing the Cra Z key combination An Action tab will be added to the primitives properties and the properties dialog will appear PROTECTING ACTIONS action s Protection property can be used to prevent an action from being invoked accidentally This facility operates in addition to any protection provided by the Security System and is invoked before the associated actions are begun The following protection modes are available Confirmed mode displays a popup to confirm the action and then performs the action immediately if the user indicates that the action should proceed Locked mode displays popup stating that the action is locked If the user indicates that the action should proceed it becomes unlocked and they must activate the actin again for it to actually take place Selecting another action ill lock the previous action as will waiting beyond the global timeout Hand Locked mode operates as for Locked mode except that the action will relock once it has been performed and must unlocked each time ENABLING ACTIONS If you want to make a particular action dependent on some condition being true enter an expression for that condition
197. played by pressing the F1 key providing a quick way of getting information if you are unsure of the settings for a given field Keep this in mind and your life will bea lot easier ility allows you to see help information for each item within Crimson It is controlled TecHNICAL SUPPORT Technica assistance is available om the web at Mese redlion net support hm Or we can be contacted via email at supporedlion net You may also call 1 717 767 6511 and ask forthe HMI Support Team OnLine Forums A number of online forums exist to support users af PLCs and HMIs Red Lion recommends the Q amp A forum at wwo pletalk net qanda The discussion board is populated by many experts who are willing to help and Red Lion s own technical support staff also keep an eye out for questions relating to our products THE Next STEPS Since Crimson 3 has completely new user interface we suggest that existing Crimson users at leas give the next chapter a cursory reading We also suggest that you look at the chapters on tags and display page configuration as some of the concepts used by Crimson 2 have been simplified and many things can be achieved through casier methods Ifyou are completely mew to Crimson please try to read at least as far as the start of the chapter on Widgets Good luck and have funt D We rein neo CRIMSON BASICS To run Crimson select the Crimson 3 icon in the Red Lion Controls section of
198. pplications and need no further explanation DATABASE IDENTIFIERS Each database crated by Crimson is given a unique identifier This identifier is used upon download of a new database to determine ifthe target device should clear its intemal memory and delete any log files recorded to CompactFlash 17 the identifier matches that of the database already in the device the database is assumed to be merely a different version of the same file so the data is retained Conversely if the identifiers are different the data is cleared When you use the Save As command on the File menu to save a copy of a database fle Crimson will ask if you want to allocate a new identifier Select Yes if this is going to be anew project and select No if you are just saving a backup copy of what is essentially the sume database This will ensure that the target device s retentive data is cleared or preserved as is appropriate SAVING AN IMAGE A Crimson specific item om the File menu is Save Image This command allows the creation of file that can subsequently be used to update the database in a terminal via CompactFlash or optionally via a USB memory stick The file contains a non ediable form of the database plus any firmware and boot loader updates required for execution Placing an image file called imags c34 im the root directory of the target device s CompactFlash cand and then resetting the device will update the boot loader firmware and database using
199. r a communications device All of these search operations place their output in the Global Search Result List allowing you to review the results or to navigate back and forth between the items that have been located mario Tired neos The results list can be displayed at any time by pressing the key The title bar of the window describes the search operation that produced the list while each linc contains the deseription an item that matched the search criteria In the example above right clicking on a communications device and selecting the Find Usage command listed all the locations where the device was referenced Double clicking a given entry will jump directly to that item while the F4 and SrtereF4 key combinations can be used to step back and forth through the list The commands associated with this feature may also be accessed via the Find Global commands on the Edit menu WORKING WITH DATABASES Crimson stores all the information about a particular configuration in what is called a database file These files have the extension of 5 although Windows Explorer will hide this extension if it is left in its default configuration While Crimson 3 databases are still essentially text files they are compressed and therefore cannot be directly edited using a text ditor like Notepad As you would expect databases manipulated via the commands found on the File menu Most of these commands are standard for all Windows a
200. r value and converts it toa string using a specifie number base and selecting the required number of digits before and after the decimal point It can also add a prefix string and a units string to the value and handle signed or unsigned values Scientific format takes a floating point or integer value and converts it io exponential format selecting the required number of digits after the decimal point It can also add a prefix string and a units string to the value Time and Date format takes an integer value and treats it as number of seconds elapsed since 1 January 1997 t can display the result as date value a time value or both or treat the value as elapsed time that can contain more than 24 in its hours value Date formatting and time formatting options are supported to allow for various intemational standards IP Address format takes an integer value and displays it as four decimal bytes separated by periods This allows a 32 bit number to be displayed as an IP address without further configuration Tivo State format takes a numeri value and displays one of two strings based on whether the value is zero or non zero This is the permanently defined format type for flag tags Multi State format takes a numeric value and compares it against a table containing values and strings Either the string associated with a matching data value is displayed or the format can be configured to display the last string with
201. ranslated text to be entered or allowing auto ranslation to be invoked for this string alone Local auto ranslation lke this allows you to review the translations for accuracy GLOBAL AUTO TRANSLATION The Utilities submenu on the File menu contains a command to apply auto translation to every string in the database This command may take some time to execute especially if a bandwidth limited translation service is used Some care should be taken when using global auto ranslation as strings that are not in the system lexicon may be subject to erroneous translation if they contain technical terms or industry specific jargon EXPORTING AND IMPORTING The Utilities submenu also contains commands to export and import text files containing all the translatable text in the database These files can be edited using an application such as Microsoft Excel allowing translations to be entered manually This facility is particularly useful when working with a third party translation service The fle format includes several columns that indicate the source of each string allowing distinct occurrences ofa given string tobe translated into different text according to context APPLYING A LEXICON In addition to the system lexicon described above you may create your own lexicons either from scratch or by using Export Lexicon command in the Utilities submenu Lexicon files are Unicode text files that start with a header row containing tab separaed
202. re would be nothing to expose and this mechanism could not be implemented gs are used within Crimson to implement many advanced features If you want to use functionality such as alarms triggers datalogging or the web server you will have to use tags period The formatting data from the tag definition is typically required by all these features so tags are mandatory for their operation In other words tags will automate many tasks during programming saving you time Even if you decide not to use tags many of the subsequent chapters of this manual refer to concepts discussed in this chapter You should thus read them thoroughly before proceeding EDITING PROPERTIES Most properties are edited in ways that are self evident to anyone who has used a Windows operating system For example you may be required enter a numeric value or to select an item from a drop down list Certain types of property though provide more complex editing options and these are described below EXPRESSION PROPERTIES Expression properties are capable of being set to A constant value The contents ofa data tag The contents ofa register in a remote communications device A combination of such items linked together using various math operators The return value of a local program In its default state the arrowed button immediately after the labe of the property shows that the field is in General mode The edit box to the right of
203. rograms as certain database may log unmanageable amounts of data in such circumstances DerautT Access To speed the configuration process Crimson also provides the ability to specify default access and write logging parameters for mapped tags intemal tags and display pages The differentiation between mapped and unmapped tags is important in systems where all changes to extemal data must be recorded but where data intemal to Crimson can be manipulated without the need for such an audit wail ON DEMAND CCrimson s security system supports both conventional and on demand logon A conventional logon can occur when a user interface clement such as pushbutton is used to activate the Log On User action or to the UsezLogcn 0 function On demand logon occurs if the operator attempts an action without sufficient acces rights and if a failed logon attempt has mot occurred within the same action For example user may press a button that runs a rogram to reset a number of values As soon as the program attempts to change a value that requires security acces the system will prompt for logon credentials This method reduces operator interaction and produces a more responsive system MAINTENANCE ACCESS The system also provides a facility called Maintenance Mode to allow the user inactivity timeout to be overridden during system commissioning This mode is activated if a display page is marked as being accessible
204. s from the CompactFlash card but will prevent uploads A setting of Read Write will allow both uploads and downloads Enable the Record Log File to keep a log of all FTP interactions in the root directory of the CompactFlash card This file can be useful when debugging FTP operations but it will tend to degrade performance slightly FTP As the FTP Server can provide full access to the CompactFlash card it is high recommended that you use the Security Manager to define specifie username and password combinations and to grant those users the appropriate access rights In general you should avoid granting anonymous access and you should especially avoid allowing anonymous writes Tp rein USING FILE SYNCHRONIZATION The Synchronization Manager can be used to exchange files between a Crimson device and an FTP server This facility can be used to synchronize log files with a server computer cither automatically or on demand thereby providing an alternative to accessing the log file via the web server and allowing for unattended transfer of files from many stations to a central point Note that although itis called the Synchronization Manager for historical seasons this service is actually based upon a general purpose FTP client that can also be used to perform other FTP transfers whether or not log files are being synchronized CONFIGURING THE SERVICE The Synchronization Manager is config
205. s namely a System lexicon and a web based translation service The system lexicon is a Unicode text file that contains many standard words and phrases that are used in industrial automation and process control together with translations in cach ofa number of common languages This lexicon can be consulted during the translation process allowing commonly occurring text to be translated very quickly and with a high degree of accuracy The web based portion uses one of two services Google WebAPIs typically provides faster translations as it is not subject to bandwidth restrictions In contrast Microsoft Translator provides more accurate translations but is not as quick as there is a limit on the number of submissions that can be made per minute You can select either service from the Configure Translation dialog pictured above Auto tanshation can be configured to use either or both of these methods If you ave an Internet connection it is generally better to use first he lexicon and then the web based service The lexicon can be used alone in some cumstances to avoid the questionable translations that the web based services ean sometimes provide TRANSLATING YOUR DATABASE Database translation can be accomplished in a number of ways Wr vam edian nos ENTERING TRANSLATIONS Manual translation is performed by pressing the Translate button next to each translatable string in the database A dialog will be displayed allowing t
206. s a si example the rounded recta In this case moving the bundle changes the radius of the rectangle s comers The function ofeach handle depends on the specific primitive but is usually intuitive SMART ALIGNMENT If you have the Smart Align features of the View menu enabled Crimson will provide you with guidelines during a move or size operation These will help align a primitive with existing primitives or with the center of the display With a little practice this feature can make it very easy to align primitives as they are created without the need to go back and weak your display pages to get the various figures into alignment In the example shown below a circle is being aligned with two squares Guidelines are present at both the edges of the figures and at the center showing that both and the centers are aligned The red rectangle is highlighting the primitive that is being manipulated while the blue rectangles are highlighting the primitives to which the guidelines have been drawn Quick ALIGNMENT Crimson s Quick Alignment features allow primitives to be aligned 1o other primitives without the need to bring up dialog box To use this feature simply select the primitive you want to move and right click to bring up the context menu Select the Align submenu and then select one of the various With Of options marked with the rectangl and cursor symbol The mouse pointer wil
207. s chapter for details ofthe Protection Enable and Remote properties and to earlier in this chapter for details of how to change or adjust the various button images AS you can see from the example above four images are required to represent the button states Indicators use preselected images from the Symbol Library o show the on off status of a data value Many versions are provided beyond those shown above Clicking on a given button in the Resource Pane will show the different color variants that are available Far example the pilot indicator shown above is available in red green yellow blue or white Indicators have a very simple set of properties The Status property controls the images o be drawn other properties are standard 2 STATE 2 State Toggles use preselected images from the Symbol Library to implement toggle switches with up and down positions Many versions are provided beyond those shown above Clicking on a given toggle in the Resource Pane will show the different color variants that are available For example the paddle switch is available in red green or black merus Tapion redan nio Actions property controls the behavior of the switch The three automatic modes model conventional or biased toggle switches while User Defined mode allows you to specify more complex actions that will occur when either half of the toggle switch is pressed or released
208. s represent quarter or half of an ellipse Their properties are conventional Rich Supers Rich Slider primitives allow a tag value to be adjusted by means of an analog slider While they can be useful they are likely to be superseded by more powerful primitives in later release of Crimson and are thus in the Legacy sub category DATA PROPERTIES The Valve property specifies the data whose value is to be edited The Operation property is used to indicate whether data entry is to be enabled d not The default value enables entry as read only sliders tend to misl The Interaction property specifies how the user will interact with the primitive be it via the push buttons by manipulating the slider directly or by both methods meri Tp rein neo Acceleration property specifies how many levels of acceleration will be provided during data entry Acceleration moves the slider progressively quicker afier an appropriate number of steps have been taken More than onc level of acceleration can result in large changes being made inadvertently The Get From Tag properties are used to indicate whether the slider limits and data format will be obtained from the tag provided in the Value property or whether they will be entered manually FIGURE PROPERTIES ener Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard fill and edge settings ENTRY PROPERTIES Re
209. sed by every target device as some may not have say dual Ethernet ports available The Use Second Monitor option can be used to force the Emulator to appear on a second display connected to your PC making it casier to view the Crimson configuration and the resulting Emulator behavior at the same time The Delete Files command can be used to clear the files that the Emulator uses to represent the various memory devices of the target hardware This is not normally required but can be used to resolve Emulator startup problems should they occur EMULATOR LIMITATIONS Note that execution ofthe Emulator is limited to 15 minutes if any serial or network ports are mapped to physical hanware on the PC With no ports mapped execution time is unlimited Rawson mers UsING COMMUNICATIONS The first stage of creating a Crimson database is to configure the communications ports ofthe target device to indicate which protocols you want to use and which remote devices you want to access These operations are performed from the Communications category As can be seen the Communications category lists the uni s available ports in the form of a tree structure The example shown above has three primary serial ports with the option to add farther two ports in the form of an expansion card Target devices may als provide one or two Ethemet ports capable of running several communications protocols simultaneously SERIAL PORT SELECTION
210. shed writing your program pres the Cri key combination or select the Translate button on the toolbar The program will then be checked for errors Pan error is found dialog box will be displayed and the program s icon will tum red The cursor will also be moved to the position ofthe error If no errors exist chime sound will be omitted and the program s icon will tum groen indicating that the program has been translated into a form suitable for execution within the target device While working within the editing pane a shortcut is available to provide help on system functions Place your cursor within or at the end of the function name and press the F1 key to display information on the function s operation arguments and retum type You may also press F1 after typing a function s name to gain access to the same information THE RESOURCE PANE The Resource Pane displayed by the program editor contains a variety of items that can be dragged into your code The Data Tags and Programs categories are self explanatory and provide quick access tothe respective items in your database by allowing the name of the item to be inserted into the editor The System category provides access to Crimson s extensive library of system variables and functions 8 ET caren As you can see variables and functions are grouped into categories When a functio
211. shift all the data in the buffer so that the old data is retained but is shifted back in time Enable starts and stops the rend Data Valid allows gaps to be reconded in the data without stopping the trend and thereby dropping all the data when it restarts By default Tine Base is the system time It is used to define the time base For specialized applications e g recording ramp soak performance from an external controller it can be an extemal time base Time Span isthe number of time base ticks to recond in the buffer Note that this is typically larger than the point count and together with that variable def how many ticks cach slot will ake up Point Count is the number of points to store in the buffer As the quick plot is designed for a basic display of a tag s changes over time this is typieally a smaller value ie smaller than the number of pixels across the display Tp rein pales SECURITY PROPERTIES Refer 1o the Using Security chapter for details of security descriptos Fiac Tacs flag tag represents one or more on or off values and is considered to have an internal data type af integer no matter what the type af the underlying data Mapped flag tags allow simple transformations between the raw data ane the data that will be used by Crimson DATA PROPERTIES Aag tag has the following properties on Data tab DATA Source The Source propeny defines where the tap gets its da
212. smitted In the example above to make use of the shared port you would connect spare serial on your PC to the programming af the target device and configure the PLC programming Software to talk to this COM As soon as the PC begins to send to the PLC all communications between Crimson and the PLC will be suspended and the target devices two ports will be connected in software such that the PC will appear to be talking directly to the PLC If no data is transferred for more than a minute communications between Crimson and the PLC will be resumed CONNECTING VIA ETHERNET Rather than using an additional serial port on your PC and on the Crimson based device it is possible to use a third party utility to create what are known as virtual serial ports on your PC These appear to applications to be physical COM ports but they in fact send and receive duta to remote device over TCP IP By installing of these utilities and configuring it to address the Crimson based device you can have serial access to any devices connected to that m merus device without any addtional cabling Indeed there is no need to have any physical serial poris available on the PC at all something that is very valuable when working with modem laptops where a COM port is often an expensive option Several third party virtual serial port utilities are available On the freeware side a company known as HW Group
213. splay page in the usual way but can also be copied from one page to another To do this select the primitive you wish to copy and dmg it towards the Navigation Pane If the pane is hidden hover over the arrowed bar and the pane will slide into view Hover over the target page and that page will be selected Now drag the primitive back into the editor and drap it on the new page Holding down Crm will change the operation to a move working in an opposite sense as when moving within a page MOVING PRIMITIVES BETWEEN DATABASES Dragging primitives between databases is just as casy Simply select the items you wish 10 and drag them to another copy of Crimson that contains the new database This will work with entire pages groups of primitives just a single item CHANGING THE SIZE OF PRIMITIVES Resizing primitives is performed in the intuitive manner of grabbing one ofthe sizing handles and moving it in the required direction The Crit key can be held down to restrict sizing operation such that the primitive s width and height are equal The key can be held don to allow the sizing to operate frm the middle out rather than from one edge Tip rein Ustne Lavour HANDLES Certain primitives have intemal handles that can be moved to change their layout For layout handle its top left hand comer The handle is marked with a diamond whenever the primitive is selected shown below ha
214. st and be accessed by means of the F4 and Suter F4 key combinations The list itself can be shown or hidden by pressing F8 NETWORK CONFIGURATION The target device s IP network configuration is edited via the Network icon in the Navigation Pane When the icon is selected the Editing Pane will show a number of tabs ach of which allows a given set of properties to be configured ETHERNET SETTINGS The first one or two tabs configure the target device s Ethernet ports Serrines The Port Mode field controls whether or not the port is enabled and the method by which the port is to obtain its IP configuration I DHCP mode is selected the target device will attempt to obtain an IP address and associated parameters from a DHCP server on the network If DHCP fils an IP address will he allocated automatically using If the unit is configured to use slave protocols or to serve web pages this option will only make sense if the DHCP server is configured to allocate well known IP address to the unit s MAC address as otherwise users will not be sure how to address the device If the more common Manual Configuration mode is selected the IP Address Network Mask and Gateway fields must be filled out with the appropriate information The default values provided for these fields will almost never be suitable for your application Be sure to consult your network administrator when selecting appropriate values an
215. string to be displayed before the numeric value The Units property defines a string to be displayed after the numeric value SCIENTIFIC FORMAT Scientific format has the following properties memes fi Dara Formar The Mantissa Sign Mode property defines how the sign is displayed on the mantissa A value of Soft Sign will display a leading minus sign for negative mumbers and space for positive numbers while a value of Hard Sign will displays leading plus sign rather than the space The Exponent Sign Mode property defines how the sign is displayed the exponent A value of Soft Sign will display a leading minus sign for negative values and nothing for positive values while a value of Hard Sign will display a leading plus sign for positive values instead The Digits After DP property deines the number of digits to be shown afler the decimal point By definition there is always one digit before the decimal in scientific format A value o zero suppresses the decimal point Formar UNITS 4 The Prefix property defines a string to be displayed before the numeric value The Units property defines a string to be displayed after the numeric value Time AND Dare FORMAT Time and Date forma bas thi following properties z lalala The Format Mode property is used to indicate whether the field should display the time the date or both In the lat case this
216. struct Crimson to act as an SNTP server This will allow other Crimson devices to synchronize their own clocks to the clock ofthis unit Note that Crimson s implementation of SNTP is not fully RFC compliant and is not supported as a source of synchronization for third party clients Time Quer Selecting Yes in the Enable SNTP property of the Time Client section will instruct Crimson to run its SNTP client Crimson will then attempt to synchronize its clock with another CCrimson based device or to another network accessible SNTP time source such as a computer runni Windows XP The time client has the following additional properties The Linked DST property is used to instruct the SNTP client attempt to read the curent Daylight Savings Time setting from the SNTP server As this facility is not a standard part of the SNTP protocol it will only operate if another Crimson device is specified as the server The facility is useful in that it allows the Daylight Savings Time adjustment to be made via a single device on the factory network with he other devices then following the central setting The SNIP Mode and SNIP Server properties are used to configure the address ofthe Simple Network Time Service server Configured via DHCP is selected at least one Ethemet port must be configured to use DHCP and the server must be configured to designate a server via option 42 The Enable GPS property is used to instruct the time
217. such downloads The default value of 789 should be used unless you have a good reason to use something else UNIT ADDRESSING These settings are used to specify the IP address to be used by the Crimson configuration software when the TCP download method is selected in the Link Options dialog box Auto mode will use the IP address configured for the selected Ethemet port Obviously the port must be manually configured for this to make sense Manual mode allows an IP address to be entered via the Remote Address field Note that this information is saved as part of the database allowing you to easily switch between units on the same network Ports The fourth tab can be used to add additional network protocols Tipe ren ejos Pressing the Create New Network Port button will add a further network protocol up to the maximum number of ports supported by the target device Pressing the Create New Virtual Port button perform a similar operation but will add a port capable of emulating a serial connection over TCP IP Either type of port can be deleted by selecting it in the Navigation Pane and by pressing or by selecting the delete toolbar option PROTOCOL SELECTION Once the network has been configured you can select the protocols that you wish to use for communications Several protocols may be used at once and many of these protocols will support multiple remote devices This means that you have several
218. supports the addition of actions and can therefore be used to implement interactive display elements The primitive specifie property tab for these primitives is shown below Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard fill and edge settings The Edge Style selects the type of edge to be drawn effectively choosing between the three predefined versions shown above The Edge Width property defines the number of pixels to be allocated to cach edge element Primitives with an edge style of Border will have an edge that is sized to twice the defined edge width As with the geometric primitives the 3D primitives can be usd to create large portion of a standard database by virtue of their support for tank fill data text and actions BUTTON Primrrves The button primitives implement beveled or graduated buttons Text is preconfigured to allow the button to be labeled but can be removed to allow the addition of live data An action tab is also provided by default but will disabled if live data is added and configured for data entry Buttons with data entry fel use the button press to activate editing Tip rein neo The primitive specifc property tab fora beveled button is shown below Sea Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard settings The Edge Width property defines the number of pixels to be allocated to cach edge element Since this primitive always uses an edge style of Border the
219. t Constants String constants represent sequences of characters They comprise the characters to be represented enclosed in double quotation marks For example the string represents a four character string comprising the values 65 6 67 and 68 Actually five 16 bit words are used to store the string with null value being appended as a terminator The various escape sequences discussed above may also be used within strings Wap vamedion nes Tac VALUES The value of a tag is represented in an expression by the tag name Tags that are organized into folders are represented by the pathname of the tag with each pair of elements being separated by a period tag named in a folder named Loop would thus be re Note that upper case and lower case characters are considered equivalent when finding the required tag Once an expression has been entered any changes tothe name ofthe tag will modify all of the expressions that make reference to it mcd as TAG PROPERTIES Data tags have certain properties than can be accessed by following a tag name with a period and then with the name of the required property The following properties are defined Descnserton Thes Label pope Sting Pectin The prefix deadly Format Sem The unis defined by the tag s oma The tag s over data entry ini pM Tore
220. t be the same asthe IP address of the 03 Eiern port as every physical IP interface mast have a distinet IP ares The dealt value will work inmost situations unles your network design demands that you usea diferent The Remote Address property is used to define the IP address to be allocated to the remote end of the connection It is used together with the Remote Mask property to determine what packets will be routed to this connection For most applications mask of 255255255255 will be uscd thereby instructing Crimson to send via this interface only those packets directly bound for the remote client mask of 0 0 0 0 by contrast will allow all packets that do not specifically match another interface to be forwanled io the remote client presumably for further forwarding to the intended host Intermediate masks may be used to control exactly which packets are sent ADDING A DIAL OUT CONNECTION Dial out connections are added exactly as described above except that the PPP and Modem Client driver should be selected for the required port The configuration options for this modem are shown below The modem has the following properties that are distinct fom those for dial in connections The Connect Using property is as for dial in connections with the addition of support for GPRS connections via a GSM modem These connections differ Hom CSD connections in that they achieve much higher speeds and are typically ch
221. ta The default setting results in an internal tag but the drop down list may be used to select a general expression another data tag or an item from a emote device The Extent propery is used to choose between a single element tag or an array IF you select an array you mast enter the required number of elements Arrays are not permitted for tags whose source is an expression For mapped tags the exact number of registers to be ead from the remote devices depends upon the type of the registers to which the tag is mapped and the Treat As setting The Treat As property is used for mapped tags to define how the value is to be derived from the raw comms data and vice vers The following settings may be available depending on the underlying data type Taras Resa igno nce The ag willbe ihe dala som zr or e as aera true vale willbe writen aan integer ale o wile se value willbe writen as zero Fora tapped ach meray element corresponds to a single comm dais eren This seting is available for any coms data off bi or mor ia siae Tear he Rear lating Pon The ag wil bete value nz ze A e ale wil be writen a 32 bit ating point vale of 1 ile le ah wil e writen as zo For single comms data element This setting i available for ms data fea 32 bins ia ia TA tingle its exacted Dom the data For a singe Lie Ein emt he Bit Number i selects the bit with th
222. ta and therefore be used to create text or data displays or to provide data entry Finally it supports the addition of actions and can therefore be used to implement interactive display elements The primitive specifie property tab is shown below parr Tip rein pales Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard stings The Mirror property is used to control the direction of the arrow It is this property that is used to produce the four predefined versions shown in the Resource Pane POLYGONS AND STARS Powycons These primitives as used to display regular polygons a triangle pentagon a hexagon and an octagon support tank fills They also support the addition of text or data and can therefore be used to create text or data displays or to provide data entry Finally they support the addition of actions and can therefore be used to implement interactive display elements The primitive specifie property tab for these primitives is shown below Refer to the previous chapter for details of the standard fill and edge settings The Rotation property can be used to rotate the polygon within the bounding rectangle The x and y axes are sealed such that the overall width and height ofthe polygon the rectangle Suns These primitives represent regular stars with four five six and eight points All these primitives support tank fills They also support the addition of text or
223. tae Toggles use preselected images from the Symbol Library to implement toggle switches with up center and down postions Other versions are provided beyond those shown above Clicking on given toggle inthe Resource Pane will show the different color variants that are available For example the paddle switch available in three colors gt Actions property controls the behavior of he switch The four automatic modes model conventional or biased toggle switches while User Defined mode allows you to specify more complex actions that will occur when either half of the toggle switch is pressed or released Note that the switch can only be moved one position at a time so moving from State A to State C will necessarily mean moving through State as would occur with a physical toggle switch The Valve property is used in the automatic modes and will be written to the data values associated with States A B or C as the switch is changed By default State is represented by a zero State B by a one and State by a two but these values can changed using the advanced settings for this primitive The Divisions property is used whether the switch is thrown vertically or horizontally and therefore how Crimson should divide the primitive when interpreting touches by the user Tipe ren nave Refer to the previous chapter for details of the Protection Enable Remote properties Refer to earlier in this ch
224. te PLC just as if they were connected directly When the port is closed or if no data is transfered for a minute communications will he resumed Note that assuming you have purchased the appropriate number of licenses for SeriaIP you willbe able to create as many virtual ports as you need This means that you can be connected to multiple devices from the same PC downloading to cach via its respective programming Ti rein package all without plugging or unplugging a single cable This feature is extremely valuable when you have many devices in a complex system Pure VIRTUAL PORTS In some circumstances you may want to use a spare serial port on a Crimson based device to hase effectively using the spare port as a remote serial server To do this configure the port in the usual way selecting the Virtual Serial Port driver for that port Then share the port as described above exposing it via TCP IP The Virtual Serial Port driver performs no comms activity ofits own but stil allows the device to be shared for remote access provide access to a remote device that is not otherwise referenced im your da LIMITATIONS Note that some PLC programming packages may not work with virtually or physically shared poris Issues to watch out for are tight timeouts that do not allow Crimson time to relay the data to the PLC a reliance on sending break signals or on the manipulation of hardware handshaking lines or DOS syle p
225. te propenty is used to enter an optional picture of what the string should look lke template comprises a number of special formatting characters that indicate what type of character is acceptable at that position The following formatting characters are supported Character Permitted Characters InTemplate AZ 09 Space Misc Ye cem Ye s Yer Ye s Yer N Yer Yer Li Ye Ye Yer Ye m Ye e Ye 0 Yer x Ye ves Ye e Ye The addtional characters referred by the Misc column are Any characters that are not formatting characters are interpreted as literals and displayed without their having to he present in the underlying data For example a template of 000 000 0000 will allow entry of US standard telephone numbers Without the user having to enter the punctuation and without those characters having to be stored for each string The Mar Length property may be used as an alternative to the Template property to allow free form entry to maximum number of characters Note that the format length and the underlying data length are independent values but that the former should not typically be larger than the latter mare Wr vamedion netos USING COLORINGS Numeric tags can have one of various so called colorings selected while flag and string tags have their colors fied to Two State and General respec
226. ted to alternate between two colors at a specifie rate with another color being displayed when flashing is disabled In 2 State mode the color is animated to switch between two colors depending on the value of tag or other data item In Site mode the color is animated to switch between four colors depending on the value of two tags or other data items in Blended mode the color is animated to transition smoothly from one color to another based upon the value of a tag or other data item relative to specified minimum and maximum values in Expression mode a numeric expression can be entered that will be used to determine the color to be displayed below for more details In Comple mode a local program retuming an integer value can be written ta define the color t be displayed Sce below for more det The drop down menu contains the following colors CThe sixteen standard VGA colons f Thirty two shades of gray between black and white Any other colors used in the database up to a limit of twenty four The More option at the bottom ofthe list can be used to invoke the color selection dialog mm Bm ime w This dialog offers several ways of defining a color You can pick from the palette piek fom the rainbow window or enter the explicit HSL or RGB parameters If the color selected has not previously been used inthe database and is not one of the standard colors or gr
227. that will be used to de whether the alarm should activate The tables below list the available modes Mone nL ATE Dasa Mac The vale of he tag he ars Va Da Mia Th aloft na equal alas Va Th valne of he tag excea Ihe mrs Va Ainai Low The ale oft tag fl below the alas ale Risin Value The vale of tag by the Vai Fall Vale Th valne of he tag il by ie sums lu Changes Vilar The valne ofthe tag changes by tbe mr Value The following modes are only available when a setpoint is defined Max BURN WALATNATE Deviation High The val of the tag excess aps point hy am prm The lag move quide band wich i equ i vili twice the lr Vale amd is centered onthe as twice the lens Vale s centered on tbe tas The Event Name property defines the name that will be displayed n the alarm viewer or in the event log when referring to this event The Value property defines cither the absolute value at which the alarm will be activated the deviation from the setpoint value or the change in value that must occur since the alarm last triggered The exact interpretation depends on the event mode as described above The Hysteresis property is used to prevent an alarm from oscillating between the on and states when the process is near the alarm condition For example for an absolute high alarm the alarm will become active when the tag excee
228. the primitive but the tag is simply used as a source for farther information The Get From Tag properties are used to indicate whether the tag option defined in the Value property should be used as a source for the data in question ly The Show Labels property is used to show or hide the numeric scale labels The Show Units propery is used to show or hide the units defined by a numeric duta format The units may be appended to each scale label or may be drawn vertically by the edge ofthe scale The Limit Values property specifies how the top and bottom values of the scale are determined If a setting of Precise is specified the limit values will be used exactly even if this produces limits that do not exactly correspond to the automatically selected tick spacing This can produce irregular scale labels but will ensure that a tank fill placed next to the seale and bound to the same tag will be drawn exactly as required by the scale primitive setting of Rounded allows Tipe rein meas the scale primitive to automatically adjust the limits to achieve regularly spaced tick marks The Limit Positions property specifies how the limits of the scale relate to the unit labels A setting of Aligned keeps the tick marks and the labels aligned precisely at the cost af moving the outer ick marks inwards from the edge of the primitive Choosing a setting of Shifted moves the outer two labels relative to the tick marks but a
229. the Download tab of the Network configuration item This method makes it easier to switch between multiple databases without having to e configue the target IP every time Note also that Crimson maintain distinct download settings when working with multiple product families This makes it easier to use USB for downloading to those products that support it while falling back to serial download for less capable devices SENDING THE DATABASE Once the link is configured the database can be downloaded using either the Link Send Link Update commands The former will send the entire database whether or not individual objects within the file have changed The ate will nly send changes and will typically tke a much shorter period of time to complete The Update command is typically the only one that you will need as Crimson will automatically fall back to a complete send if the incremental download fails for any reason As a shortcut you can access Link Update the lightning bolt symbol on the toolbar or via the F9 key on the keyboard Note that downloading via TCP IP relies on a CompactFlash card being installed in the panel if the device s firmware is to be upgraded Since you may want to perform such upgrades at some point in time it is highly recommended that you install a CompactFlash card in any device 1o which TCP IP downloads are likely to be performed Note also that TCP IP download must be enabled via the Network settings in the
230. the image file contents Note that image files can optionally contain upload information thereby allowing an editable version of the database file to be extracted from a terminal DATABASE PROTECTION Databases can be password protected using the Protection command on the File menu The Default Access parameter is used to define what level of access will be permitted without first entering the database password A setting of Read Only Access will allow the database to be opened but will not allow changes to be mide or saved A setting of No Access will prevent all access without the password The default seting of Full Access will allow the database to be opened far editing without any password being entered Lost passwords can be recovered by Red Lion Controls for free or for a nominal fee if you make a habit of it Note that for security reasons the recovered password will only ever be sent to the Recovery Email red in the protection dialog box Be sure to sc this to a valid email address CONVERTING A DATABASE database designed for one target device may be converted for use on another by using the Save Conversion command on the File menu The conversions that can be performed depend on the original target device but most combinations are supported The conversion process is started by selecting the new target device using the dialog shown above You will then be prompted for new filename
231. the one or two Ethernet ports provided by target device this gives a total of up to four distinct interfaces all of which will operate according to the configuration parameters defined for cach connection This section describes how these multiple interfaces will interact and how Crimson will decide where to send each packet of data INTERFACE SELECTION Each interface has an IP address and a network mask which are used to decide whether to forward packets to that interface For example if an Fihemet interface is configured with an IP address of 192 168 1 0 and a network mask of 255 255 255 0 any packets for IP addresses starting with 192 168 1 will be sent to this interface Likewise if an on demand modem connection has a remote IP address of 192 168 2 2 and a network mask of 255 255 255 255 sending a packet to address 192 168 2 2 will result in the connection being established Note that this mechanism will only ever send a packet to a single interface This implies that interfaces should have distinct network addresses as defined by their IP address ANDed with their network mask If you breach this requirement packets will not get routed to the second interface with that network address and communications on that port will fail For example you must not configure one Ethernet as 192 168 100 1 and the other as 192 168 100 2 as Packets for the 192 168 100 0 network will only be sent to the first por Derau
232. the operators defined in this section rour Group 77 Gran T TI m peer Wr vam redan nas Operators in the lower numbered groups are applied first Grow Orenarons WRITING ACTIONS While expressions define values actions define what you want to happen when an event occurs The vast majority of the actions im a database will relate to interactions with primitives or with the keyboard Since Crimson provides a simple method of defining commonly used actions for these items you will often be able to avoid writing actions by hand Actions are needed though if you want to use triggers write programs or use a key or primitive in User Defined mode CHANGING PAGE To create an action that changes the page shown on the panel s disp GotsPage ane where Nane is the name of the display page in question The curent page will be removed and the new page will be displayed in its place use the syntax CHANGING NUMERIC VALUES Crimson provides several ways of changing data values SIMPLE ASSIGNMENT To create an action that assigns a new value to a tag or to a register in a communications device use the syntax Data va 216 where Data is the data item to be changed and Va 2s is the value to be assigned Note that soe need not just be a constant value but can be any valid expression of the correct type Refer to the previous section for
233. thout tno much worry about absolute path locations The Image Directory property defines the image path referenced above MAINTENANCE The Manage Image Database button is used to invoke the Image Manager in order io view and manipulate the images used in the database See the section below for more information on this facility Fonts PROPERTIES The Fonts tn is used to manage fonts within the database MAINTENANCE The Manage Font Database button is used tn invoke the Font Manager in order to view and manipulate the fonts used in the database See the section below for more information on this facility MANAGING IMAGES The Image Manager is invoked ftom the Images tab of the user interface settings It contains a list ofall the images referenced in the database together with their properties It allows you to view the images and to perform certain changes to how the images are stored and used merus Tipe ere nios The sample below shows the Images Manager from a complex database i The main list view shows the properties of the various images Source column indicates whether the image is being obtained from a file via either a fixed or a relative path from the Symbol Library or from intemal data stored when an image was pasted or dragged from another source The Name column shows the filename for images stored in files and the
234. ting the values to the manual output power Complex transformations can be implemented by defining an expression tag to Perform the forward transformation and an On Write action to perform the inverse For example tag could be set to Sart 1400221 to take the square root of a value im a Modbus PLC Since this is an expression tag it is by definition read only but writes can be allowed by defining a On Write equal to 140001 Data Data thereby reversing the square root calcul UsING FORMATS Numeric tags can have one of various data formats selected while flag and string tags have their formas fixed to Two State and General respectively Each format type will take a data val and convert it to or from a text string FORMAT Types The following formats are supported General format provides simple formatting of values converting numeric values to signed decimal values and passing strings without Further processing The general format has no configuration properties and is the default format for string tags t is also implicitly used by basic tags Linke format uses the data format of another tag to format the tag that you are configuring It is useful for creating format templates and then applying them to many tags in the same database This can avoid repetition and make it easier to adjust settings such as units or decimal point counts M Mumeri format takes floating point or intege
235. tively Each coloring will take a data value and convert to a foreground and background color pair TYPES OF COLORING The following colorings are supported mu The Linked format uses the coloring of another ag to format the tag that you are configuring It is useful for creating templates and then applying them 19 many tags in the same database This can avoid repetition and make it easier to adjust your color settings from a single location The Fited coloring always retums a fixed pair of colors Two State coloring takes a numeric value and picks one of two color pairs based on whether the value is zero or non zero This is the permanently defined coloring fr flag tags Multi State coloring takes a numeric value and compares it against a able containing data values and color pairs Either a color pair associated with a matching data value is selected or the selector can be configured to use the last Color pair with an associated data value not higher than the data GENERAL COLORING The General coloring has no properties Linken COLORING Linked coloring has the following properties The Color Like proper is used select tag from which the coloring information for this tag is to be obtained For comet operation a tag of the data type should be used such that for example a numeric tag s coloring should he based upon another numeric tag Failure to observe
236. to mapped tag The following options may be available depending on the exact data type being used The data wil nor be changal prm Each iti be dit wil have iste ve 1 Tip rein no Maranon The os sg bit in the the eas significant bi with nee bits being tes in a slr fic uem The most spi byte th daa wil be sapped wal the least significant byte and so on Only available fo Roe Words The mos spin word Ihe data wil with the least significant word Only available or data CD Bau Tack four bi group i the dat wil be single decimal digit Selecting his option wil rede The Treat As property for internal tags defines the tag s datatype For mapped tags it defines how the manipulated data is to be interpreted by Crimson The property will be set to a sensible default when the tag is mapped but can be changed Note that far most tags the Treat As property does not have the final say on the actual data type of the tag as the scaling properties may be used to convert the data further The following options may be available depending on the exact data type of the comms data Taras ger The data wil be oda iind value wi sale data values bong sum extend For example 2 signo cae The daia as a 32 bit signed val with small data items being zo extended For example a Tobit value of
237. to floating point can have non integral valucs entered in these fields On write values beyond these limits are still accepted and will be scaled to corresponding values beyond the Data limits In other words no clipping ofthe value is performed War vamedion neos Dara SIMULATION gt The Simulate As property defines the assumed value to be used for the tag when working in the page editor Entering a sensible valve allows a better representation of the page s likely appearance This value i also used as the tag s default value by the target device if communication is globally disabled Data AcrioNs The On Write property defines an action that is to be invoked when the tag is changed The system variable Data will hold the new data value when the write occurs and when the action is executed The use of On Write properties is covered later in this chapter Data Serpouvr The Use Setpoint property is used to enable or disable a setpoint for this tag The SP Value property defines an expression or another tag that this tag is nominally meant to follow This setpoint can then be used in alarms or in primitives to implement various functions FORMAT PROPERTIES numeric tag has the following properties on its Format tab Dara Lasers 2 The Label property was discussed above under Tag Attributes Description property was discussed above under Tag Attributes The Class property is reserved for future expansion
238. to their right hand side 1 nat To enter the translations click the button and the following dialog box will appear The languages listed in the dialog are defined at the database level Refer to the chapter on Localization for information on how they are selected on the operation of the Auto Translate function and on how to switch the language at runtime Note that if you do not enter text for particular language and that language is subsequently selected by the operator Crimson will use the text from the default language instead Tipe rein meas Translatable strings are also capable of being defined as expressions thereby allowing them to change at runtime For example while an alarm name would typically be set during configuration a database designer might want the alarm to contain the value of the tag that triggered the alarm Expressions can be entered by prefxing them with an equals sign just as would do when editing a spreadsheet as shown in the example below Eco ar Gic Note the use of the ext property of the tag to allow its value to be accessed as a string according to its format setting Refer to the Writing Expressions chapter far more details Two Way PROPERTIES Properties such as translatable strings that are capable of being set to a constant value or an expression are two way properties As well as accepting expressions prefixed with an equals sign
239. ue of the selected tag Many items con also be double clicked thereby setting the current field to that item om EDITING PANE The central portion of the window is used to edit the currently selected item Depending on the selection it may contain number of tabs each showing a given of the properties for that item or it may contain an editor specific to the item that you are working on COLLAPSING PANES Either or both of the Navigation Pane and Resource Pane can be collapsed to the edge ofthe main window in oder to free up more space for the Editing Pane To close a pane click on the x in the top left hand comer of its title bar It will then be replaced by smaller bar marked with arrows Clicking this bar will expand the associated pane Clicking on the pushpin icon ofa temporarily expanded pane will lock it in place THe CATEGORIES The main categories in a Crimson database are as follows COMMUNICATIONS This category specifies which protocols are to be used on the target device s serial ports and Ethernet ports Where master protocols are used ie protocols in which the Red Lion hardware initiates data transfer o and from a remote device you can also usc this icon to specify one or more devices to be accessed Where slave Protocols are used e protocols in which the Red Lion hardware receives and responds to requests from other systems you can specify which data items are to be exposed for re
240. unregistered copy of the software CHECKING FOR UPDATES If you have an Intemet connection you can use the Check for Update command in the Help menu to scan Red Lion s web site for a new version of Crimson 3 Ifa later version than the one you are using is found Crimson will ask if it should download the upgrade and update your software automatically You may also manually download the upgrade from Red Lion s Website by visiting the Downloads page within the Support section INSTALLING THE USB DRIVERS I you ve followed the instructions that came with your target hardware you will not yet have connected the hardware to your PC Now that you have completed the Crimson 3 installation you may safely connect the device using a standard USB cable After some churning Windows should indicate that it has found the drivers for the new hardware and that it is ready for operation No further user intervention should be required TROUBLESHOOTING Ifyou connected the target device to your PC before installing Crimson 3 it is possible that an aborted installation has made it impossible For you to install the drivers correctly check for this open the Windows Device Manager by finding the My Computer icon right clicking and selecting the Manage command A window similar to the one below should appear pees Tip rein netos The exact process for geting to this point will vary from one operating system to another but the basi idea
241. ured via the associated icon in the Navigation Pane The following properties relate to the FTP clint The Enable Sime Manager property is used to enable the FTP client The client may be enabled without actually enabling synchronization allowing it o be used dor manual file transfer via the Fep iePue and resrileceti functions The Enable Log File property is used to enable actu synchronization See the next section for details of the other settings related to this feature The Server IP address property is used to indicate the IP address of the server The Port Number property is used to indicate the TCP port to which the FTP client service will attempt to connect The default value is suitable for most applications as most servers will listen on port 21 The Logon Username and Logon Password are the credentials that are submitted to the server when the connection is established Both are typically case sensitive although that depends on the server implementation For anonymous login leave the Username at its default value and either leave the password blank or enter your email address as a courtesy to the server provide om merus The Data Connection provides a choice between standard and mode You can enable the PASV mode to have the FTP client ini ather than waiting for incoming connections from the server This mode is sometimes required when working behind awar
242. usd with the following properties The tags label The tags sealing values The tag s setpoint The tas limits The tag s On Write propery The tag s event labels CThetag s event and trigger values and hysteresis settings The tag s trigger actions Note that triggers and events are evaluated separately for cach element of the array for which they are configured allowing several events or triggers to be created at once The only limitation to this feature is that alarms and events only operate for the first 256 elements of he array Triggers operate for all elements regardless of the size of the array TAG DATA FLOW you will ave noticed numeric tags in particular have a number of data transformations that occur between the comms data and the value actually used by Crimson These can be configured to handle just about any sort of dta in any way you like but the exact way in which they operate for numeric tags deserves further attention NUMERIC TAG READ PROCESS When data is read from a device the following steps occurs The comms driver is asked to read a value based on the address setting that has defined for the source of the tag Based on the type of the address the diiver may combine more than one register to create the data value For example reading a single Word as Long value will result in two registers being read and combined by the driver using its knowledge of the device s word orderin
243. using integer math and the average will not contain any decimal places To force Crimson to evaluate the result using floating point math the simplest technique is to change the 5 to 3 0 thereby forcing Crimson to convert the sum to marin Tiron noi floating point before the division is performed A slightly more complex technique is to use syntax such as 2132 Tanki tTank tank3 3 This invokes what is known as a type cast on the term in parentheses manually converting it to floating point Type casts may also be used to convert a floating point value to an integer value perhaps deliberately giving up some precision from an intermediate value before storing it in a PLC sister For example the expression int cos Theta 200 will calculate the cosine of an angle multiply this value by 100 using floating point math before converting it to an integer dropping any digits after the decimal place COMPARING VALUES You will quite often find that you wish to compare the value of one data with another and make a decision based on the result For example you may wish to define a flag formula to show when a tank exceeds particular value or you may wish to use an 26 statement in a program to execute some code when a motor reaches its desired speed The following comparison operators are provided Prony 7 Each operator produces a value of or 1 depending on the conditio
244. vices have been created indicating that a total of three emote devices are to be accessed The Editing Pane shows the properties for cach device The Enable Device property is present forall devices while the balance of the fields are specifie to the protocol that has been selected Note that the devices are given default names by Crimson when they are created These names may be changed by selecting the appropriate icon in the Navigation Pane pressing F2 and then typing the new device name ADVANCED SETTINGS In addition to the device settings mentioned above certain master devices will also offer a number of advanced settings that can be used to optimize communications behavior The Spaming Reads option specifies whether Crimson will optimize read operations by reading blocks of data even if those blocks span registers that are not currently on the comms scam or referenced in the database For example with spanning reads enabled fora database that references registers DI D2 and D4 a single comms command will be issued to read four registers from DI onwards Disabling spanning reads will results in two read operations onc for two registers from DI and one fra single register from D4 The Transactional Writes options specifies whether a series of changes to a data value in Crimson should result in a corresponding series of write operations or whether only the last written value be transferred Transactional writes make fr examp
245. wn below 1 eset rmm In this example an expression referencing Tagd has been entered but no such tag exists Within the database Crimson spots the error and asks if you would like to create this tag automatically The drop down list can be used to select the type of the new tag and will contain options appropriate for the context in which the tag was used The Yes to Al Tipe rein neo can be used to tell Crimson to use the default data type to create any other missing tags contained within this expression without any further prompting Comms RereRences To select a register from a comms device select a device from the drop down menu A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to choose a register within that remote communications device The various communications devices are listed at the end of the menu in the onder in which they were created You may also select the Next option from the drop down menu thereby setting the current tag equal to the last used PLC register lus the number of registers mapped to that address For example mapping a 32 bit tag to Modbus register 1000 and thon selecting Next will map the subsequent tag to 40003 EDITING AN ExPRESSION mentioned above general expressions are typically edited directly in the edit box of the property However they can also be edited by pressing the Edit bution next to the feld thereby activating dedicated
246. y appearing when additional items such as text data or an action have been added to the primitive The properties dialog shows a live preview of the current primitive allowing you to see the effect of changes before you commit them SHOWING OR HIDING PRIMITIVES All primitives have a Show tab in their property dialog The Visible property can be set to an integer expression to show or hide the associated primitive at runtime A value of zero will hide the primitive while a non zero value will allow it to be shown All primitives are visible by default marin Pason edian neos DEFINING CoLoRS Colors within primitives are edited using a field similar to that shown below T You will note that the color property is presented by means of a drop down menu button a drop down list and a Pick button The drop down menu selects color animation mode which can be any one of the following in Fized mode the color does not change and is selected from the drop down list ar by invoking the color selection dialog by pressing the Pick button 5 in Tog Text mode the color is animated to match the foreground color defined by a particular tag The specific tag can be selected by pressing the Pick button n Tug Back mode the color is animated to match the background color defined by a particular tag The specific tag can be selected by pressing the Pick button n Flashing mode the color is anima
247. y be imported into applications such as Microsoft Excel The files be accessed by swapping out the CompactFlash card hy mounting the card as a drive on a PC connected on the target device s USB port or by accessing them via Crimson s web or FTP servers using an Ethernet port modem Securmry This category is used to create and manage the various users of the target device sel the cen righi get to Real ay aro be given wich ES ows the security logger to econ not only what data was changed and when als by whom Th rights required in modify a panicula tg aro access a page are sd vin the ecu propric of the fv item Rights can ale be piped oll deny access to the FTP server or the web server Monutes This category is only available only when configuring a Modular Controller It is used to define up to 16 IO modules to be connected to the Master and to define their operation Each module operates independently and will continue to control the associated process even when the Master is being reprogrammed Data from the modules ith other extemal devices con be mapped into data tags just as when worki GETTING AROUND The casiest way to get around a Crimson database is to click on the category bars in the Navigation Pane and then click on the item you want to edit However a number of shortcuts exist tallow quicker movement and thus greater productivity Mos of these shortcuts can
248. y functionality Data entry is obviously only available if the Selected data value is writable The Get from Tag properties define whether certain properties of the data field are defined locally or are linked to the properties of the tag being displayed The options are only available when a tag is specified in Value The Text Font property allows the required font to be selected Crimson s new default font is Hei a Unicode font that provides support for simplified Chinese and most other languages The Pick button can be used to invoke the font selection dialog allowing any font that is installed on your system to be rendered in a form that be used by the target device Note that it is your responsibility ensure that you are licensed for this kind of font usage The Horizontal property defines the horizontal alignment ofthe text Vertical property defines the vertical alignment ofthe text pers Tp rein More PROPERTIES The Text Margin properties are used to control the margin around the text relative to the text bounding box provided by the primitive They can be achieving better visual centering when working with fonts that have lots of space above or below their characters either for diacriticals or descenders The Direction property defines the direction in which the text will he moved when the associated primitive is pressed It is only enabled when an action is assig
249. y the user to allow a specific point in time to be precisely determined and optionally t allow the associated historical data values to be displayed The Time Axis property defines whether grdlines should be displayed for the time axis The pitch of the gridlines is automatically determined by Crimson based on the amount of time covered by the viewer The Data Axis property is used to control the display of for the data axis Gridlines may be defined manually by specifying ether just major divisions both major and minor divisions or may be defined automatically by Tp rein pales specifying minimum and maximum values for he d calculate the best gridline pattem axis and letting Crimson The Majar Divisions and Minor Divisions properties define the number of divisions to be drawn when using manually defined gridlines The Minimum and Maximum properties are used to indicate the range of data to be displayed when using automatic gridlines Crimson will use these values to determine the best gridline pattern to adopt Data values will also be scaled to these values as opposed being scaled to their own data limits The Limit Values property specifies how the top and bottom values of the scale are determined Ifa setting of Precise is specified the Minimum and Maximum values will be used exactly even if this produces limits that do not exactly correspond tothe automatically selected tick spacing This ean produce
250. your Start Menu After a couple of seconds Crimson will appear The first thing you will notice is the updated user interface that we have adopted This new interface allows quicker navigation and faster database construction We hope that it will greatly improve your productivity Winpow LAYOUT The main Crimson window comprises three sections THE NAVIGATION PANE The left hand portion ofthe window is called the Navigation Pane It wed to move between different categories of tems within a Crimson configuration file Each category is represented bya barat the base of the pane and clicking on that bar will navigate to that section The top section of the Navigation Pane shows the available items in the current category and provides toolbar to allow those items to be manipulated If you want to make the top section larger you can pick up and drag the dividing line between it and the category bas THE RESOURCE PANE The right hand portion of the window is called the Resource Pane tis used to access various items that are of use when editing the current category Just ike the Navigation Pane it contains a number of categories which can be accessed via the category bars hems in a given resource category can be drag and tropped to the places where you wish to use them For example a data tag be picked up from the Resource Pane and dropped on a configuration field to make that field dependant on the val
251. ysical device to be used to make the connection The devices supported are direct serial connections to computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system generic landline modems which implement the Hayes command set and GSM modems implementing the industry standard GSM commands For dial in connections he GSM devices must be configured in Circuit Switched Data mode The Manufacturer property is used to select from the manufacturers or models for which specifie configurations have been developed and stored within Crimson Leaving this setting at Generic will allow you to customize the settings elated to initialization strings and the like Please consult Technical Support for the settings required for any particular modem The Timeout property is used to define how long a period must pass without the G3 sending a packet over the PPP link in order for the connection to be terminated For dial in connections it is assumed that the connecting device is friendly so effort will be made to filter out optional packets that might result im the link staying active for long periods Note that even if you want a permanent connection you must enter a suitable timeout so as to allow the detection of dead links This implies that so called permanent connections may still drop on occasions but will in any case be immediately reestablished The Init String property is used to enable or disable certain commands during the initiali
252. zation sequence It is automatically configured if a specific setting is entered in the Manufacturer property Tapion edian nj The Additional Init string is used with non direct links and provides series of AT commands to be used to initialize the modem The initial prefix is not required Several commands may be combined by simply placing one afier the other The exact string that will be required for your modem is dependent upon its internal software so if you contact Technical Support for assistance be sure able to have exact make and model information a The SMS Support propery is usd to enable Short Message Service messaging when using GSM modem In order for SMS messaging to operate propery you will also have to enable the SMS Transport in the Mail Manager as described elsewhere in this manual The Logon Username and Logon Password properties are used to define the credentials that the remote client must provide in order to be allowed to connect to this device The usemame is not case sensitive while the password is Crimson s PPP implementation will ask its peer to use CHAP authentication to avoid transmitting or receiving plaintext password but will fallback to using PAP if the remote client docs not support CHAP The Local Address prope is usd to define the IP adres to be piota to the end of the connection Tis wil thus be the IP adres ofthe G3 for his lnk Please noe that this must no

CRIMSON 3 USER MANUAL

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