Ray – that’s why I said based on the current design there actually is space for current station status to be showing. Here’s my suggestion in detail.
- Keep the segment display as is for the “overview” station status. Scroll through this based on active stations. In other words if any of stations 1-8 are currently running it shows the MC station status. If stations 9-16 are running the it shows the station status of E1 and if stations 17-24 are running it shows the stations status line E2. These are static displays and show you what is actually running. In the situation that stations running span multiple groups, then automatic scrolling would happen say every 2 seconds or so.
- Then, I propose we add data to the stations status line.
- If more than one station is currently running just display a “M” for multiple in one of the last three spaces (which is currently open) of the station status line.
- If only one station is running, then display the station NUMBER in the last three digits of the station status line.
Reasoning: With a quick view of the the display you can see what the actual status of the system is. What station is running and how far along it is in the process? Has it just started and it’s running station 1 or is it midway through say at station 9.
More info: I had an older irritrol and it has a VERY minimal display. It simply cycles the display to show the current station running and the time that stations has been running. So if it’s on station 12 that is programmed to run for 25 minutes and it’s run for 10 minutes, it cycles displaying (12 15:00) then (12 14:59)…and so on.
And while we’re on this topic, having the functionality to program the buttons on the side would be helpful as well. I know your goal is to have as much functionality within the gui as possible, but simple control from the unit is a very useful aspect as well. I would program one of the buttons to be “interrupt current program and pick up at the next program”.
Thanks,
Andrew