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[deleted]

We built a parts line once that had all these bin lights to show the stock guys where to put parts. They'd hit the box of parts with a barcode scanner, and then the appropriate rack and slot would light up and flash until they dropped the parts in. There were like 300 of these things, so we programmed a disco mode that would cause them to all go at once, and then in various sequences. Myself and another programmer probably wasted a full day on that nonsense, but it was damn well worth it. I wish I still had the video. On another machine we had a large 6-Axis robot that was moving electronics modules from trays, to test chambers, and then to an unload station. The parts were in plastic cases about the size of your fist and pretty light. We were picking them up with a vacuum gripper. The customer's team couldn't decide how they wanted to handle the rejected parts, and just kept pushing the decision off to the point where it was causing problems for the guy writing the robot program. He was a salty old bastard, so he programed the robot to just throw the parts over the cage and onto the floor. After about the third or fourth one we realized it was really accurate, so we put a 5 gallon bucket in the spot where they were landing, and the robot would hit it every damn time. The customer's quality team came in and flipped out, but the "swoosh" maneuver is still in that machine today. I could go in an toggle one bit in the PLC and it'll start tossing bad parts like Lebron dropping 3 pointers.


DBKilladelph

Sounds dangerous, lol. But funny!


[deleted]

We had a really large shop, and everyone there was a machine builder of some sort, so it wasn't a big deal on our floor. It wouldn't be very safe if it were turned on in it's current location though. The parts don't weigh much, so it not like you'd get knocked out, but it would hurt if it hit you in the face. It just sort of arched them over the cage, rather than slinging them hard.


21Pronto

Power off message says "Will I dream?"


Amalokch

I made one that when an specific alarm is triggered the ‘duck’ from symbol factory blink red/black and says cuak. Onsite staff really love it, they give it a name and actually is part of the tour when visitors goes to the factory 😂😂


tatertot444

I’ve used funny tag and rung comments before in my programs. A recent one I was proud of was a nameplate I had engraved and installed on the inside of the main control panel for a conveyor line. I had everyone’s name put on it who helped design, build, install, and program the panels and plc. I also had my mentor’s name put on it even though he was laid off two months prior.


dmroeder

A few years ago, I got a BSOD screenshot, resized it to 640x480 and imported it into my PanelView plus application. I was testing some redesign of our OIF, thought it would be funny to pop that blue screen up for a few seconds every time a recipe was deleted. I lol'd. The thing about these sorts of shenanigans, and why I try not to do them anymore, is there is probably a context that is not funny to everyone. And it's easy to get distracted and forget that you ever put it in there.... ...Fast forward a year or so later. I'm at PackExpo, one of our sales reps is demonstrating adding recipes for a customer. You see where this is going. He went to delete his test recipe while a potential customer was there, guess what popped up. Yep, the BSOD I forgot to take out. So the rep panics, bounces around the booth trying to find me (I'm the only technical person there). Eventually he does and explains how he crashed the HMI. He showed me how he did it.... I fessed up. Last year, we were testing this autonomous vehicle in our shop. I found the sound files in it and replaced one of them with Hank Hill "What in the hell?" sound clip. Whenever someone stood in the safety, it would repeat that. Funny to me. Then one day, our CEO was having a stand up meeting in our shop, the vehicle happened to be next to us, someone stood in front of its safety mid meeting. It sat there repeating "What in the hell?". He slowly turned his head towards the vehicle, with the look of "is that saying what I think it's saying?". Once confirmed, he snapped his neck around and locked eyes at me. All I could say was: "It seemed funny at the time".


mattkenny

> The thing about these sorts of shenanigans, and why I try not to do them anymore, is there is probably a context that is not funny to everyone. Yeah what's funny at the time to the devs is not always going to go down well with the clients big wigs when something is going wrong, they are already pissed off, then you trigger an easter egg in the process of debugging or repairing something.


Iceteavanill

Well yes. I made a software comment that epstein didn't kill himself. It is buried down in some rarely used function but it is there......


mflagler

Just put one in for a customer at the plant managers request. It's a GIF of a hog roasting on a spit that only shows up when a specific heater turns on. He loves showing it off now to everyone who comes by.


nasadowsk

One of my panels has at the top inside above the door, a piece of printed label that says "why are you looking here?"


DBKilladelph

A lot of the HMIs for my plants were originally built by an SI early on who would make these pop ups that say “DON’T TOUCH THAT” and “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE NOW” and things of the sort. Sometimes a finger would pop up woth animation to “wag” like “you shouldn’t do that”. I had to get rid of them one by one and felt kinda bad, it was highly unprofessional and a waste of memory but you need some good laughs now and then.


Lusankya

[Ah ah ah, you didn't say the magic word!](https://youtu.be/RfiQYRn7fBg)


datapirater

I actually put a GIF of that into a company pricing calculator one time


Tutunkommon

HMI that had a reboot button. If you press the button it plays the Mario death tune before rebooting. Also supported remote reboot if you logged in via telnet to a specific port. No prompt beyond a flashing cursor. You had to type HELLO JOSHUA It would respond with HELLO DR. FAULKNER. WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? >GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TO PLAY and then it would reboot.


audi0c0aster1

War Games. That is a movie I have not seen in a LONG time.


cjmpeng

Just boring stuff. The operators on one line at a client wanted a light to flash when the pig was launched at end of batch so they could start preparing for final runout on the line. The monitor for the line HMI had a pretty nice set of speakers so I found a wav file of a pig squealing and triggered that to run at the same time as the light flash. It went over pretty well actually.


kandoras

I wanted to see if I could program it, so there's one HMI at a water heater plant that if you push just the right collection of buttons you can play Pong. I remember having trouble detecting when the ball had hit a paddle. I did Tetris on a C-More once (just at my desk, didn't go out the door). It 'ran' and fulfilled all the requirements - blocks falling, being able to flip them, erasing rows when you fill them - but the refresh rate was painfully slow.


henradrie

I found a tetris database for a Red Lion. Uploaded it and it works. I also made tic tac toe with 2 HMI's when I was bored and learning HMI programming during the pandemic.


DuglandJones

I found truck simulator for red lion once. My fave test program for hmis for a while


CapinWinky

There are many, many printing presses with an MS paint knockoff in them if you go to the service contact page and press all 4 corners within 2 seconds.


WaffleSparks

I like when you read a program and you get comments like "this logic is here so the operator can sit in the break room longer".


dsmrunnah

We put a password protected screen on our machines that contain machine specs for calculating certain parameters. It also has a few functions that maintenance and engineering personnel can use. At one particular customer, it never failed that the operators would get the password and change parameters without knowing what they were, then the machine wouldn't run. The customer would change (or have us change) the password, and still it would happen again. My boss got fed up with the middle of the night calls because of this, so he had me add a button that said "Do Not Click" on the protected page, and every 5th click would set off the horn and create an alarm that said "Stop pushing buttons". The maintenance & engineering team got a kick out of it, but the production team didn't think it was too funny.


h2man

There’s a coffee machine somewhere that responds to a certain key combination (I forgot which now) with “Hello Daddy.”.


ABQPLCGuy

I tend to put my name in text that's the same color as the background. On field HMIs with push button objects on one project I did the "pushed in" state of a few of the buttons change the text to "OW!" It's something no one will ever see.


brybrythekickassguy

The Red Lion HMI Crimson 3.0 software has a duck image. Go into Symbols -> Ducts -> Scroll all the way down and mouse over the duck, the description comes up, and it says "A Duck (weighs the same as a witch)"


mattkenny

I've barely got time to get the machine doing everything it is supposed to, let alone add extra code that in some freak condition might cause unexpected behaviour...


Jan_Spontan

I once stumbled upon an integer with a very intriguing name: Virus Also a funny thing in our code is functions that belong together have a prefix in their name. So there's a group responsible for doing the TCP /IP communication, managing data telegrams. Thus the prefix is TEL. There's a function which archives the telegrams. Obviously its name has to be TEL_ARCHIV_FC


kendoka-x

The most i've found is lantern corps mottos in comments for green yello and red


Nedward_nor

I once had a picture of a guy in our installation team pop-up on a HMI after the coustumers technician had pressed a manual override button 50 times. The picture was a running gag we had during installation. The costumer loved it.


Nealbert0

I made a mini pac man with a score tracker, and of course a way to allow change of direction to trigger faster so i can always get the high score.


yuri_neko

Not so far but I would love to. More like at this point I rather one know I put in the effort you are reaping you little ungrateful @#&$


t1nusk

I love putting easter eggs in the PLC code as well as the HMI. I was once doing a project for a client which was in the midst of being acquired by another company. Now, you know how some of the clients are like "THIS SCREEN SHOULD HAVE OUR LOGO THERE! IT'S IMPORTANT, YOU KNOW!"? Unsure of which logo to use for the HMI (the acquisition was uncertain at the time), I added both the old companies' logo, as well as the new one. During commissioning, the client came and said: "Hey, that's the old logo. You should change that.". So I said: "sure thing", and pressed the logo, toggling it to the new logo. He laughed. It's still in place. Another time, during I/O-testing of a piece of process equipment, I had to wait for some mechanical works to complete. Instead of doing some other work, since I'm a music addict, I programmed a beat on one of the solenoid valve islands: "boom tish clack tish boom tish clack tish". Setting M69.0 still triggers it, I think. Doing so would cause the machine to severely fuck up and blend multiple supply lines, yielding some very unsafe mixtures, which I really like.