PanelView 800 – Language Switching

As we have looked at language switching in the PanelView 5000 and View Designer recently, I wanted to follow-up on that article with this one in which I’ll implement the same feature in a PanelView 800 using Connected Components Workbench.

PV800 Settings – Language Tab

The initial setup of languages is all managed from one location. In the general settings of the PV800, select the “Languages” tab.

Here you can access all the needed features to manage languages in the project. All added languages will show up here in columns where you can translate words or phrases manually.

Adding or Removing Languages

To add or remove languages from the project, select the “Manage Language List” button and the pop up shown below will appear. Here, use the arrows to select the languages that you wish to have in your project. Select “OK”.

Note that each language has a code (ID) number associated with it. English is 1033 and Spanish (Mexico) is 2058. This value will be important when changing languages at runtime.

Export or Import Language Lists

Just as you can manually make the language translations here, you can also export the language lists to excel by clicking the “Export Language List” button. This can make copy/paste of use and can be a little faster when having to do a large project of translations.

After making the changes in excel, save the file and use the “Import Language List” button to import the file back into the project.

Switching Languages at Runtime

I learned that you can change languages a couple of ways.

You can use a numeric input object and change the code to the appropriate language. That is not the most user-friendly option for an operator, but it does work.

The recommended method is to use the “List Selector” object, as shown below, so that an operator can scroll through the languages and select the language of choice.

No matter which graphical method that you use, you will write to the “$SysCurrentLang” parameter as well as use it as the indicator (read) tag. As shown below, you will also want to disable the “Write on Enter” parameter on the list selector, because with a touchscreen, there is no ENTER key.

By double-clicking on the list selector, you can modify the colors, text and other attributes of the list selector. You will also assign the language code (ID) in the “Value” column of each language.

This looks simple, but there are also other color modifications in the “properties” column on the right side of the CCW window. I worked for nearly an hour trying to make the list selector look like I wanted it to, change colors how I wanted it to at runtime and for the most part, never did get it to look exactly like I wanted.

However it did work, and does change the languages as needed. With 20 years of HMI experience, that button is too complicated for me.

At Runtime

English

Spanish

Conclusion

As far as language management, translations, export and import goes, the PV800 is as easy and straight-forward as any other system I have used. All the parameters and management is on one page and easy to set up.

The only overly-difficult and time consuming task was configuring the list selector to work properly at runtime.

Also, the fact that there is no HMI simulator means that after every change I had to download to a PanelView to see the changes. This took a lot of time and I am not personally happy spending a lot of time on things that shouldn’t take that long.

At any rate, I hope you were able to pick up something here today and language switching in your PV800 is successful.

Written by Brandon Cooper
Senior Controls Engineer and Freelance Writer

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Brandon Cooper

Brandon is a freelance writer for The Automation Blog, as well as a husband, father, writer and angler. He spends his days working as a Sr. Controls Engineer in the Pulp & Paper Industry

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