Changing Colour According to Machine State

It is useful to change colour depending on the machine state. This gives a quick visual display when you have a lot of machines. For example Green to indicate that the machine is running and Orange that it is stopped.

Click Setup, System Setup, then states under Status Screens. Click the Add button to the right to add the running state as below:


Make sure when you click the search icon for the running state that you choose the value TIMERRUNS[CYCLE]. This is true when the CYCLE timer is running and false when stopped. Add the Stopped state in the same way but choosing TIMERRUNS[STOPPED] for the value and Orange for the colour.


The Real Time Screen should now look like the picture below, with the coloured bar changing from orange to green as the machine stops and starts.


We now want to make the machine flash red if the machine has been stopped for more than a certain time. To do this we need to add a third state as below. In this case we are not just picking a value from a list, we are entering an expression that can be true or false. Use the search icon to pick the TIMER[STOPPED] value and then add > 5s. This state will be displayed if the stopped timer has run for more than 5 seconds (in a real installation this would be 5m but we use 5seconds so we can easily test this state).


Once you have created this state you need to change the position in the list. Highlight the Stopped Over 5s and then click the Up Arrow button so it is as above.

Machine State Order on the Live Screen

MDC-Max will only display one machine state and it does it by checking each state starting from the top and displays the FIRST state that is true, the rest are ignored. So if Stopped comes before Stopped over 5s then Stopped over 5s will never be displayed and the display will not flash after 5 seconds.