TIME VALUE range in NI configurator 3.1.1

[Ghita]

    Hello !
 
    I think I might have a problem related to the maximum value for Device Decription data type "time value".

In NI Configurator if I want to write to a time value parameter it let me to choose for the year in the 00-99 range. The start point as to the spec must be minimum year 1972 (how one introduces time in the past, before 2000, by the way) but I don't know what is the maximum value because the undelying  data type of  time value  is a 64 bit number (huge)

I am asking this because I have problems introducing years > 2030 ( yy= 30 ) and I don't know why

Thanks for your help !

George

 

[Vince Shen]

Hello George,

The start date is 1972-1-1.

In Configurator, if YY is less than 72, the year is 20YY. Otherwise, the year is 19YY.

Currently, the year range that Configurator supports is 1972-2037.

[Ghita]

   

    Thanks a lot for your help Vince,

    My only option would have remained to look with the bus analyzer on the transmitted NI Configurator telegram to see where the problem arisen.
    I will now explain in detail this "problem ": when I sent 40 (year 2040) I saw in debug mode that the value was a huge unsigned value, but after looking into
    the DD "time value" spec I was surprised that this is allowed to have a sign bit also (probably to be easy to make arithmetic operations with this data type)
  
    What I got from NI Configurator 3.1.1 I think was a signed negative value that was the offset from the year 2037 (I am not sure at all about this now)
  
    How do you suggest I should approach this non-limiting check of Configurator for the time value range between years 2037 and 2072 ?
    I should somehow decide if it's a "malformed" "time value" value to reject this value when the user is trying to write to this parameter. The only indication of a non valid date
    would be then the presence of the sign bit, in order to overcome this problem with NI Configurator ?

[Vince Shen]

Hello George,

In Configurator, if the year value is outside the range (1972-2037), the input date values will be cleared to zeros. The negative value will be ignored instead of being regarded as the offset.  So, the date range between 2038-2072 will not be accepted by Configurator.

We have noticed this and will try making improvement in next version. Thanks for informing us this problem.

[Ghita]

"In Configurator, if the year value is outside the range (1972-2037), the input date values will be cleared to zeros. The negative value will be ignored instead of being regarded as the offset.  So, the date range between 2038-2072 will not be accepted by Configurator", Vince Shen
 
    It's nice to hear Vince that this will be solved in next versions of Configurator, but just to clear out an issue: I have noticed that the NI Configurator 3.1.1 cleared the value to 0 after     entering a value higher than 2037 but what I actually received on my device (processed by the FF protocol stack) was a "negative value" (sign bit set) as I've said in my last comment.
   Considering than this current issue with NI Configurator,  to be on the safe side I would have to reject this value based on other considerations. At this moment from what I saw that's being received for date higher than 2037 I would have to introduce as a limiting "maximum value" check inside my firmware the date 31.December.2037 (any negative value that will be sent by NI outside the 1972-2037 range will be seen as a huge future date and will be rejected )

    What I would expect in the future will be of course, the check for all invalid range to be made by the Configurator and NO write request telegram to be sent to the field device if the   check is not valid ( all this conditions seems to be true in Configurator 3.1.1, except range 2038-2072 )

   George