Has anyone found a way to display I/O information (like controller-card-channel) on a graphic or detail display, similar to what you see in Control Studio Online? If you have, do you have to do anything different to display this for different I/O types (conventional I/O vs. CHARMS I/O vs. Foundation Fieldbus vs. DeltaV with Provox I/O vs. Devicenet, etc.)? It seems like, since it is available in Control Studio Online, that it ought to be available within DeltaV Operate but I have not found a parameter that allows me to do that.
I look forward to any responses.
Gareld Butler
Gareld,
Guessing that you want to provide hardware information relating to a control loop, such as where the transmitter and valve are connected? DeltaV does this with Control Studio, which is accessed in context through the module faceplate or any alarms. you might also want to know where a physical device is located. Maybe a Loop Sheet tied to the Control module and called in context on the Operator station would be a more complete solution. But adding this information to your control displays, via control modules will require significant configuration and data entry. It would help if you clarified exactly what you are trying to accomplish, who needs the data and why. That sort of thing.
You should understand that Control Studio does make a connection to the Database to get theinformation that it shows, and some of this data persists in the Online view. If you look at the IO parameter off line, it will be populated with the DST name and parmaeter. e.g. AI1/IO_IN = TI-4001/FIELD_VAL_PCT. In the FB diagram, this will be translated to the hardware path where this DST is assigned. This could be a CHARM or conventional IO, or blank if the DST is unassigned.
At run time, the IO_IN parameter is blank and does not return a value. If it did, it would be the DST name and not the physical path. The AI block still shows the Physical Path in Control Studio diagram under the block, but this is from the configuration database, not runtime information. The signal channel information is actually downloaded to the module but is not exposed in a referencable way at run time.
You could add text parameters to your modules and populate this with the IO hardware paths, and then modify your Facplates and Detail faceplates accordingly to display this infomration. Or you call up Control Studio and get the right path every time, with no user data errors. But there is no runtime parameter in the blocks to get the paths.
For your PROFIBUS or DEVICE net IO references, BOL recomends these be done with External Reference parameters. For these references, you can read the $REF field of the parameter and this will return the hardware path. For instance, I configured PARAM1 to DST path "PDT001/FIELD_VAL_D". At run time, I can read PARAM1.$REF and I get CTRL-1/IO1/C02/P01/DEV001/SIG001/FIELD_VAL_D.
PDT001 is a unique DST name defined under my device called "PDT1" on SIGNAL 001. Notice the path says DEV001 and SIG001. The device address is "1" and this is the first Signal configured on the device. This path uses indexes. For Devices, you'd want the Device Name which is not provided in this path.
Sorry i can't offer you an alternate method to resolve this information, other than using Control Studio in context to the module, or adding a documentation link to call up a Loop sheet or other document.
Andre Dicaire