Periodic and Event File Reporting

You may retrieve  data from any of the four periodic or event files and display in tabular format on the screen, display as an html web page (which can be printed by your web browser) or saved to your disk in html or plain ASCII format (for importing into spread sheets). You may also graph data from the periodic or event  files.

Basic Setup

1. Use the "File type" drop down list to select "Periodic" files or "Event" files. Periodic files save data on a fixed time base such as every hour. Values can include average, standard deviation, maximum and minimum for each recording interval. Event files save data whenever a particular "event" occurs. This might be a high temperature alarm or the result of a calibration.
2. Use the "File #" drop down file to select 1 of four files. There may be up to 4 periodic and 4 event files.
3. You may view the file status information which includes "Number of Records", "Current record" and start and end dates. For the periodic files, the recording interval is also displayed.
4. You may click the "Refresh" button to update the last record written information.
5. Now enter the desired bins or events. You may click the drop down list button to view your choices. If you click on a choice it will automatically be added to your list. The report will display in the bin order entered.
6. Select the "bin" numbers if displaying data from a periodic file. Each "bin" is a separate field in a record for displaying data. There can be up to 128 different bins per periodic file. You may enter individual values separated by commas and you can include a range with -. For instance the entry "1-128" would select all 128 bin fields. An entry of "1,4-6" would select bins 1, 4, 5 and 6 from the selected periodic file.
7. If your data contains status information, user the "Selection Set" drop down list to select the selection set used to decoded the values in your status bin. Now, for any data bins that have been defined to included a status bin, this bin will automatically be included to the right of the data bin with the decoded status.
8. If you have selected an event file then you can specify which events you wish to view. Again there can be up to 128 different event definitions per file. As before, an entry of "1,4-6" would select events 1, 4, 5 and 6 from the selected event file.
9. You may pick a data range by start and end record number or start and end date.
10. If selecting by record number, use the "Current record" display value to show which record was last written. If "Current record" displays 535 and you would like to see information from the last 10 records, enter  "Start record" of 526 and "End record" as 535. To view every record enter 536 for the start record and 535 for the end record.
11. Make sure the appropriate radio button "Select by time" or "Select by record" is selected.
12. If desired check the "Show record number" box. Your display will include the ICON file record number in addition to the date in your report.
13. Click the "Retrieve" button to transfer the data from the ICON. A display in the lower left of the screen will display the record numbers as data is retrieved.
14. Data is displayed in the right pane. Before you click the "Retrieve" button "No Data Available" will be displayed at the top indicating that you have not transferred data from the ICON yet.
15. If you wish to remove this data from your PC click the "Clear" button.

1. Click the "Graph" button to graph your data.
2. Click the "Display as HTML" button to display your report in a web browser as an HTML page. You may use your web browser to print the report.
3. Click the "Save" button to save your data to a local PC file. If you select a file extension of .html the report data will be saved as an HTML page. Otherwise the report data will be saved in ASCII format. A spread sheet can import the ASCII format data file.

The dates and times indicate the end of the period for data in the periodic file. If data is recorded once per hour and the time on a record is 09:00:00 this indicates that the data was collected (for example averaged) between 08:00:00 and 09:00:00.

Spreadsheet Operation
The reporting functions of this HMI object are very rudimentary and are really only designed to give you a quick look at the data. It is expected that you use a spreadsheet to format your data for viewing, graphing and printing. Therefore the primary function will be to transfer data from the ICON to a disk file for importing into your spreadsheet. To import into Excel:

1. For usability name your file something like "Sitename_filedescription_date". For instance "home_houly_12_02_07" to indicate the data came from your "home" ICON that is recording hourly data and it was created on 12/02/2007.
2. From the Excel "File" menu select "Open...".
3. Locate your ASCII file and open it.
4. A text import wizard will appear informing you that it is a delimited text file. This is correct so just click the "Finish" button.
5. The ICON data has now been imported into your spreadsheet.