small/cheap LCD

[woody]

Hi all,

I have 2 inputs spare on my E10-Relay project. All seems to be working great. I would just like to add an interface that displays some basic stuff and allows an 'end user' to adjust the timers or counters.

It's just an after thought. Has anyone found/used a nice little LCD display with an E10? If so how would you do it?

I have been searching for something I could connect via modbus perhaps? I could pulse the remainding two inputs to scroll a menu, select, adjust etc. I've seen a lot of two button configurable devices out there before.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. I'm starting to saturate the capabilities of this nice compact little PLC but I am sure it will continue to surprise me!

Woody

[support]

E10-Relay being the simplest of our PLC does not support Modbus protocol. Theoretically a driver could be develop for a touch screen HMI that will interact with the PLC I/O using its proprietary native protocol. But the demand is too low for any HMI supplier to bother to write the protocol driver for E10 - for the simple reason that even the cheapest HMI probably cost 3 times more than the price of an E10-Relay PLC!

If you upgrade your controller to a Nano-10 then there are unlimited options - the lowest cost solution is to simply use a browser that run on an iphone, android or any PC as user interface to interact with the Nano-10 (if it is connected to your LAN).

Since Nano-10 supports Modbus RTU/ASCII and TCP/IP protocol there are also plenty of 3rd party LCD display or HMI that it can interact with right out of the box.

[woody]

oh okay thanks for that

I thought I seen something about RS485 and just presumed I could modbus it. Another case of me not reading the documentation fully I did check out the nano but I liked the fact that the E10 came with the onboard relays. I love the fact that I can switch 240v right off the board.

The web page would be great to use, I would like my end user to be able to change multiple settings in the program and at the moment I am limited to using 3 inputs for about 8 different settings.

I'll just have to fiddle with some toggle switches etc.

Regards,

Woody

[support]

FYI Nano-10 also has two relay outputs for convenient switching of AC power. The other two solid state outputs are necessary to support features such as PWM, stepper motor control signal etc that regular relay cannot handle.