1. Can I Program PLC Activity Schedule to Real-Time?
Yes, the F-series PLCs incorporate a real-time clock with a battery backup built in.
The FMD series and Nano-10 PLCs also incorporate a real-time clock. However, the clock is shutdown when all power to the PLC is turned off. If there is need for a real-time clock to keep running even when power is off, an optional FRAM-RTC battery backed real time clock (plus memory expansion) module can be purchased from TRi ( this is plugged into the 10 pin socket on any of the FMD series and Nano-10 PLCs).
The older M-series PLCs also incorporate a real-time clock. However, the clock is shutdown when all power to the PLC is turned off. If there is need for a real-time clock to keep running even when power is off, an optional MX-RTC battery backed real time clock module can be purchased from TRi ( this is mounted between the 28pin SRAM and the 28pin socket on any of the M-series PLCs).
2. Can I Do Floating Point Computation on My PLC?
To optimize the computational performance, the current generation of F-series, FMD series (and M-series), and Nano-10 PLCs only compute using 32-bit integer arithmetic but they do not support floating point computation.
However, many computational task that seems to involve floating point math can also be handled using "fixed point" math, in which case a unit integer represents, say 0.01, and since a 32-bit integer can represent numbers of up to +/- 2 billion you can get a lot of fractional arithmetics computation done this way. You can still display a fixed point data on LCD display with decimal places using TBASIC divide and modulo operator.
Please read more at: http://www.tri-plc.com/yabbse/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=1084
3. Other Frequently Asked Technical or Application Questions:
Please visit TRi Internet PLC Forum FAQ Board at the follow link: