Rockwell Automation Support Center

7771 - Displaying a Timer Accumulator value in Hour:Minute:Second format

Access Level: TechConnect
Date Created: 02/22/2000 04:03 PM
Last Updated: 11/15/2013 05:02 PM

Background:
In certain applications it may be desirable to display the Accumulated Value of a PLC or SLC timer in a numeric display that shows the accumulated seconds in
Hour:Minute:Second Format.
Solution:
You can add a calculation in several numeric displays that converts the accumulated seconds into hours, minutes and seconds. By dividing the accumulated time by 3600,
hours are displayed. Taking the remainder and dividing by 60 results in minutes. Finally, the remainder of the accumulated timer divided by 60 will produce seconds. The
modulus operator (%) is the key to this operation. "Timer%60", for example, returns the remainder of Timer divided by 60. Using this operator, hours, minutes and seconds can
be extracted from the accumulated time.
Example
The accumulated time is contained in a tag called "Timer". The following setup is for 1 timer accumulator. For each Timer Accumulator, you will have 3 numeric displays .
HH:MM:SS
First numeric display is for HH, the expression will be:
Timer / 3600
Field Length = 2
Decimal Place = 0
Second numeric display is for MM, the expression will be:
(Timer % 3600)/60
Field Length = 2
Decimal Place = 0
Third numeric display is for SS, the expression will be:
Timer % 60
Field Length = 2
Decimal Place = 0
Note: 100 timer displays have been tested on a screen with no problem.
The graphic may look something like the following example:
HoursMinutesSeconds
2

29

16
Actual Timer Value
8956

RSView Enterprise Exception (SE and ME)

RSView Machine Edition and Supervisory Edition will experience the following error message when trying to implement the expressions above. This is due to the expression
creating a floating point number. From the RSView Help "You cannot perform modulus or bitwise operations on floating point numbers". The Example below demonstrates an
expression that obtains the desired result without error.
Error message
Unable to activate connection (Timer) % 60
Invalid expression: '(Timer) % 60: 'Error at line 1, column 14: Invalid Floating point operation'
Example
Perform the modulus done before division:
For minutes: ( ({[ControlLogix]Timer.acc}%3600000)/ 1000)/60
For seconds: ({[ControlLogix]Timer.acc}%60000)/ 1000

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