Leopard II manual Table of Contents

5Application Notes

This manual section contains instructions and tutorials designed to help the reader learn some of the more complex features or procedures that can be done with the Leopard II. Some of these are referred to in the previous sections when a detailed explanation would have been needed to fully understand the specified feature. The following application notes are included:

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  Formatting variables that are embedded in screen text objects and ASCII messages.
  

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  Creating and using icons on Leopard buttons.
  

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  A sample C-Max application, creating a two stage heat and cool thermostat
  

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  The procedure for auto-addressing expansion modules.
  

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  An example of using expansion modules
  

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  List of controller configuration parameters
  

5.1Formatting Variables in C-Max 2.0

One of the many new features in C-Max 2.0 is the enhanced formatting now available for variables. This new capability is available in two distinct areas of “variable” usage: in embedded screen text objects on a Leopard screen and in ASCII strings, where embedded variables were not even possible before. This second possibility also means that Ocelot users can take advantage of this new feature. In the case of ASCII strings, embedded variables and formatting can be used with the master controller’s serial port, a slave’s serial port, and the serial bobcat. Note: A serial bobcat needs to have firmware version 6 or higher to support embedded variables.

5.1.1Controller Variables

What exactly do we mean by formatting variables? To help you better understand we will start by a short description of your controller’s variables in their natural form. You will then understand the formatting capabilities more easily.

5.1.2Formatting Options

Here is a complete list of the formatting options available for screen objects and ASCII strings (Fig 57). If you are familiar with the “C” programming language and the printf statement, then these options will already be familiar to you.

Fig. 58

5.1.3Screen Display Example

This first example will be of a Leopard screen display showing various types of information using formatting to optimize each type of data presented. Let’s create a general information screen that will be displayed when the Leopard’s home control menus are not being utilized by the user. We will show the current time, date, inside and outside temperatures, and relative humidity (these last three values obtained from temperature and humidity bobcats). Let’s examine each type of data and the formatting that will be applied:

Temperature – This is a more classic format string using text with the variable format specification inserted at the appropriate location. For the inside temperature, we use “Ins. Temp:%3d F.” for up to three digits (if it gets really hot...). For the outside temperature we use “Out. Temp:%+4d F.” because we want up to three digits as well as a “+” or “-“ displayed, which uses up one digit space.

The C-Max program used to produce the various data values displayed is shown below (Fig. 62). Only the relevant program lines are shown, omitting the other screens and buttons used to switch to the information screen:

Fig. 62

Fig. 63

5.1.4Formatting Variables in ASCII Strings

Our second example will show how we can use variable formatting in ASCII strings. As previously stated, embedding variables (in any form) in ASCII strings was not available prior to C-Max 2.0. This example will show an application where we want to log a temperature reading from a temperature bobcat every half-hour (along with the date and time of the sample) to the serial port of the controller. It is assumed that the controller’s serial port will be connected to a PC or other device capable of recording serial data in a file for later examination.

We will create the format definitions and C-Max code necessary to produce a text log of the temperature readings with the following appearance (Fig. 64):

Just like format definitions are entered in screen text objects for Leopard screens, we use the “ASCII Messages” editing utility to first define each string along with the formatting information for the embedded variable. This utility is found under the “Serial Messages” heading after attaching to the controller. The ASCII messages are defined as text strings with a maximum length of 32 characters, and up to 128 such strings can be defined. Note that characters such as carriage return are entered as “^013” and this counts as 4 characters in the ASCII string. Since we cannot have more then one embedded variable per ASCII string, we will need to define several such strings which will then be output in succession so that they concatenate to form one long string in the log. Only the last string will thus have the carriage return and linefeed characters to end the line. We will define the following five ASCII strings (Fig. 65). The quotes shown are to help you see the spaces in some strings and not actually entered:

“%02d/” used for the month and day (with leading zero if 1 digit)

“%02d “ used for the year and minute (with leading zero if 1 digit)

“%02d:” used for the hour (with leading zero if 1 digit)

“Outside Temperature: “ literal text

“%+4d F.^013^010” temperature always with sign and line end chars
Fig. 65
Here are the strings as they are entered into the ASCII strings definition utility (Fig. 66)

Fig. 66
Once you are done entering the strings, you download them to your controller by selecting the appropriate module and then clicking on the “Send To:” button. The Controller Access utility window will show the strings being downloaded in the status window. Once this is done, we are ready to create the C-Max program that will use these strings. Here is the program text used for our example (Fig. 67). If you looked at the preceding example with the Leopard screen, you will find that the first program lines are quite similar, since that example also involved obtaining the current date and time into variables:

Note that any single triggering event could be used as a trigger, such as a received X-10 command, Leopard button press, SECU16 input turning on/off, etc. You could also have several types of events in the same program, each one re-using a copy of lines 29 to 33 to transmit the date and time followed by their own customized ASCII string to identify the event or value. You could keep track of events like when your alarm system is armed/disarmed, HVAC run times, etc…anything that translates to a single event. Here is an example where you would want to log when your alarm system is armed and disarmed, supposing that arming produces an X-10 M/1 On command and disarming an X-10 M/1 Off. We added messages 5 and 6 to the ASCII messages with the following text (without the quotes) (Fig. 69):

Message #5: “Alarm ARMED^013^010”

Message #6: “Alarm DISARMED^013^010”

Then line 36 (the END statement) of the program in Fig. 67 was removed and the following code was added (Fig. 70):

11/12/02 21:14 Alarm ARMED

11/12/02 21:30 Outside Temperature: +60 F.

11/12/02 22:00 Outside Temperature: +60 F.

11/12/02 22:30 Outside Temperature: +58 F.

11/12/02 23:00 Outside Temperature: +57 F.

11/12/02 23:30 Outside Temperature: +55 F.

11/13/02 00:00 Outside Temperature: +54 F.

11/13/02 00:30 Outside Temperature: +52 F.

11/13/02 00:41 Alarm DISARMED

11/13/02 01:00 Outside Temperature: +49 F.

11/13/02 01:30 Outside Temperature: +47 F.

11/13/02 02:00 Outside Temperature: +47 F.
Fig. 71

As we have seen by these examples, variable embedding and formatting allows the creation of customized display and serial data that can be optimized for many user specific applications where visual appeal and/or proper organization can make the end result look really professional.