This tech tip is part of the Red Lion Basics Series. This will be an ongoing series that provides concise, easy tips on ways to manage, display and interact with data from your Red Lion equipment.

In this tech tip, we’ll look at the inbuilt functions provided within the Crimson environment regarding ‘tag scaling’. Scaling is a process which takes data from equipment for the purpose of displaying or working with values, allowing us to easily read and manipulate the data for many different applications. In this example, we’ll take a 4-20mA signal and scale this value 0-100 respectively.

Please note this is different to using scaled values within a data block.

The generation of two tags will be required, one for the raw data (4-20mA) and another for the scaled value (0-100). We can begin by editing the tag properties.

The raw data value has some strict data limits set. Although these limits are not required, they can prove useful in knowing data outside the defined values will not be accepted. For demonstration purposes, tag values can be entered manually, therefore these limits help to keep entered data within valid limits.

Figure 1: Raw Analog Value Data Limits

After the analogue data tag has been generated and appropriate limits applied if required, we now move onto the scaling. Scaling is performed under the data tab of the tag. As this scaled value requires the raw tag source, you can drag and drop the tag from the resource pane to the source option. Enter the data (4-20) and display ranges (0-100). An example is provided Figure 2.

Figure 2: Scaled Tag Data Values

After this is set, the scaling within the tag is complete. To visually demonstrate this, a display page has been generated to confirm operation. The value for demonstration is user input via the Actual value tag. A value of 10mA has been entered and scaled to display 38, which confirms scaling for this application.

Figure 3: Scaling Test and Confirmation