Instructions

UM-0085-B09 DT80 Range User Manual Page 61
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Part D – Jobs
What is a Job?
A job is a collection of related schedule definitions and commands which together configure the DT80 to perform a
particular data logging task.
Several different jobs can be stored on the DT80's internal file system, but only one can be active at any one time. Each
job has its own separate data/alarm storage area. Jobs are identified by their job name, which is a user-defined string of
up to 8 characters. If a job name is not specified when the job is entered, the default name
UNTITLED is used.
When the DT80 is first started or reset, there is no active job. The logger is idle and No current job is displayed on
the LCD to indicate this.
To make the logger do something useful, you need to either:
• enter a new job, or
• run (load) an existing job.
Once a job has been entered or loaded successfully, it becomes the currently active job and its name will be displayed
on the LCD. If you then enter or load a different job, all schedules and channels defined by the original job are cleared
and replaced by those of the new job.
Entering a Job
To enter a new job you send the required commands and schedule definitions to the logger using one of the
communications ports (USB, Ethernet or RS232), or by placing the commands in a file on a USB memory device and
plugging it into the logger. Once the complete job has been entered, the DT80 will automatically store the job in its
internal file system and activate it.
To begin entering a new job, the
BEGIN command is used. This command:
• causes the currently active job to be cleared. All defined schedules will stop running.
• specifies the name of the new job, e.g. BEGIN"GOOSE" indicates that the new job will be called "GOOSE".
(Just BEGIN by itself is equivalent to
BEGIN"UNTITLED").
• places the DT80 in "job entry mode". After each line of the job is entered the DT80 will output a job> prompt,
rather than the usual DT80> prompt.
As each line of the job is entered the DT80 executes any commands or immediate channels that it finds. Report schedule
definitions, including their constituent channel definitions are recorded but they are not activated just yet.
The
END command marks the end of a job. At this point all schedules defined within the job are activated, and the DT80
is no longer in job entry mode. If an error occurs during job entry, the DT80 will clear all schedule/channel definitions and
ignore the remainder of the job, up until the END command is seen.
Note1: In some circumstances the DT80 will not allow a new job to be entered:
• if the "fix schedules" switch (P262) is active (
/F) – this prevents any change to the currently active job. (Use /f
command to allow the current job to be changed.)
• if a different job with the same name already exists, and it has been locked using the
LOCKJOB"jobname"
command – this prevents a stored job being accidentally overwritten. (Choose a different job name, or unlock
the existing job using UNLOCKJOB"jobname".)
• if a different job with the same name already exists, and it has logged data or alarms – this prevents data from
different jobs (which happen to have the same name) from being mixed up in the one data file. (Choose a
different job name, or delete the existing job's using
DELD).
Note2: An error message will be returned if you attempt to send more than 1023 characters on a single line.
Single Line Jobs
As a shortcut, it is also possible to enter a job simply by entering one or more schedule definitions all on one line, e.g.:
RA1S 1TK
The above is then equivalent to:
BEGIN"UNTITLED" RA1S 1TK END
that is, it will create a new job called "UNTITLED".
Note: entering just a schedule trigger (with no channel definitions after it), e.g.
RA2S
does not create a new job – it simply changes the trigger condition for the currently defined A schedule (if any).
It is recommended that, for clarity, BEGIN and END are always included explicitly when entering a job.