New Feature Request

[PLCwannabe]

How hard would it be to add a flasher/timer coil where the on/off times can be set to hours and minutes instead of just milliseconds? I know I can create this myself with a couple of rungs, but i have to use and document, 2 timers, and 2 c-bits, cluttering up my database.

[Controls Guy]

Build a UDT, so the element names are self-descriptive.

[Bolt]

Build a UDT, so the element names are self-descriptive.

You can't build a true UDT containing both timers and bits. Just named memory blocks I guess.

[Controls Guy]

True, had forgotten about that, but I was thinking primarily of naming the bits anyway.   Then when you look at the rung the intent is obvious. 

[PLCwannabe]

That's all fine for the more advanced users like you guys. But for someone just starting or just working periodically with Do-more, a flasher Timer would be real nice, and also an ondelay/offdelay timer as well. These are both features that even a bare-bones programmable relay like Schneiders zelio relay has built-in.

[RBPLC]

"a flasher Timer would be real nice, and also an ondelay/offdelay timer as well. These are both features that even a bare-bones programmable relay like Schneiders zelio relay has built-in."

Are you talking about something other than FLASHER, OFFDTMR and ONDTMR?

[PLCwannabe]

FLASHER coil is great but is limited to 65 seconds max on or off time. Basically I want a flasher coil that can be set to 24 hours if needed.
   OnDelay/OffDelay timer is like the name implies. A Timer with a programmable on-delay when activated, and a programmable off-delay when deactivated.

[Controls Guy]

Oh like a Debounce.   Does DM have one of those?  I can't remember.   I've written them on other platforms as functions.  Maybe a subroutine would work.

[BobO]

Oh like a Debounce.   Does DM have one of those?  I can't remember.   I've written them on other platforms as functions.  Maybe a subroutine would work.

There is a DEBOUNCE instruction.

[Controls Guy]

@PLCW, does that give you what you're looking for?  Or do you need extreme duration for those as well?

[RBPLC]

In general, the ability to adjust time bases on many of the timer based instructions would be beneficial.  This would allow timers to run longer than ~500 hrs (useful for timers associated with maintenance tasks and equipment run-time) and not require conversion of times from seconds to ms when a timer is trying to be used to directly allow an operator to adjust timing values from an HMI. As an example, I'm using the RAMPSOAK to allow HMI adjustment of variable duration steps but my process is on the order of seconds not milliseconds. I have to currently convert operator input in seconds to ms to fit the into the RAMPSOAK.

[ATU]

I think that if you are timing events with a resolution of hours or larger, I think a timer with an hour setpoint incrementing a counter is more appropriate  or just use a timestamp.

[BobO]

I think that if you are timing events with a resolution of hours or larger, I think a timer with an hour setpoint incrementing a counter is more appropriate  or just use a timestamp.

That has generally been our thinking. When should a timer become a clock? And when should a clock become a calendar?

I guess would never think of something with an interval longer than a minute being called a flasher. Obviously the flasher could be used for longer toggle periods if the accumulator was longer than 16 bits, but that wasn't what we designed it for.

[Bolt]

I agree that certain things weren't designed for what we're trying, and while there's certainly work arounds, at times a single instruction makes the code so much cleaner. Dozens of times I have found myself using a rising edge 1 second bit and an INC to create a high volume timer. Divide by 3600.0 to get hours into a real. Other times I copy $UTC to a location, and later use MATH to figure out runtime.

By that logic, sometimes I use SET/RST, other times COPY 1 and 0. Gasp, sometimes I even do a SET followed by a COPY 0. The problem is, you have given us too many ways to do many things, we're expecting the world to make our programs just a few rungs or instructions simpler.

Save vein as my recent post that nobody responded to!  https://forum.hosteng.com/index.php?topic=3284.0. We're all chasing just a little simpler, a few less helper elements to accomplish our goals.