Time Channel¶

The Time Channel popup allows users to configure time-based schedules for the selected object. Each day of the week can have up to two active time periods defined by Turn on and Turn off times. It only appears in the Tab menu when the object has a signal matching the _TK suffix.

Save and fetch¶

The Save and Fetch buttons allow Time Channel configurations to be stored and reused across the project.

Save stores the current schedule including all weekday and special day time slots to the database under the object's tag name. This means each object stores its own configuration independently, making it possible to maintain separate schedules for different objects.

Fetch opens a popup listing all saved Time Channel configurations. Select a configuration from the list to load it into the current object. This makes it easy to apply a previously saved schedule to a new object, copy schedules between objects, or restore a known configuration after changes.

Profile storage¶

Profiles are handled by the scTimeChannel script and stored in the TimeChannelProfile table in the Config database.

A profile captures every day type in one record: both time slots for each weekday, for Holiday Eve and Holiday, and for the three special days, together with the three special day dates.

Channel status¶

The top right panel displays the current status of the Time Channel, whether it is active or inactive.

Weekdays¶

The Weekdays section displays a schedule for each day of the week. Each day supports two independent active periods, each defined by a Turn on and Turn off time in hhmm format. The Run time column shows the total active time for that day. A Total runtime row at the bottom shows the combined runtime across all weekdays.

Special days¶

The Special days section allows different schedules to be defined for specific dates. The following special day types are available:

• Holiday Eve — the day before a public holiday
• Holiday — public holidays
• Special Day 1, Special Day 2, Special Day 3 — custom dates that can be defined by entering a date in MM-DD format

Each special day supports the same two-period schedule as weekdays.

Holiday classification¶

The Holiday and Holiday Eve schedules only take effect if something tells the PLC which days are holidays. The Calendar module supplies this. A day is marked by creating a calendar event on it with the HOLIDAY or HOLIDAYEVE colour, and the scHoliday script publishes the resulting daily classification to two internal variables, isHoliday and isHolidayEve.

WideQuick only reports which day type applies today. The PLC's own time channel firmware still owns the schedule evaluation itself.

To enable it, connect isHoliday and isHolidayEve to the PLC the same way as any other value, and mark the days in the calendar. The classification is a property of the day, so one pair of variables serves every time channel rather than each one carrying its own copy. See Calendar — Configuring.

Hand ctrl¶

The Hand ctrl panel allows the Time Channel to be overridden manually:

• Auto — the Time Channel follows the configured schedule
• Hand — the Time Channel is controlled manually, ignoring the schedule

The current output status of the Time Channel is also shown:

• From — the Time Channel output is currently off
• Till — the Time Channel output is currently on

Default suffix aliases¶

The Time Channel popup uses a large number of suffixes to map each time slot to a specific signal. The key suffixes are:

Each day and time slot is mapped to a dedicated suffix following the pattern _TK[register]_[index]. All time slot suffixes are writable.