# What am I doing wrong to log Motor Runtime?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-am-i-doing-wrong-to-log-motor-runtime/110165>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [August 26, 2025, 4:20am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-am-i-doing-wrong-to-log-motor-runtime/110165 "2025-08-26T04:20:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ptrickj5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5e9695/32.png) [@ptrickj5](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/ptrickj5)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 4:20am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-am-i-doing-wrong-to-log-motor-runtime/110165/1 "2025-08-26T04:20:04Z")

</div>

I have transaction groups set up to log my motor runtimes but not actually logging everything and it restarts the “active” source value when motor stops, sharing pictures if you could please help me, I would greatly appreciate it. “VFD\_PRS1\_1\_TotalTime” is a memory tag not present inside the PLC project but I did create it under the tag browser section and it is writable. No errors present in the transaction group

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/c/6/c64cdc907b2a69c8d914465d3221822757fdd1ad.png)

This is the expression item in the Run-Always:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/9/c/9c90ff23e3d9462e42fa58b18a80dc5124e0985c.png)

This is the expression item in the triggered expression:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/d/6/d62160a6950098807c752ad30a9af54f405b82fd.png)

Trigger tab is all disabled/unchecked

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 12:10pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-am-i-doing-wrong-to-log-motor-runtime/110165/2 "2025-08-26T12:10:17Z")

</div>

Tracking time by incrementing in a tag is poor approach in an event-driven system like Ignition.

The most robust approach would be to log the boolean changes to your motor running bit, and then using those timestamps in a query with `lag()` to develop the durations.

Numerous similar discussions here:

[https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/search?q=uptime%20downtime%20order%3Alatest](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/search?q=uptime%20downtime%20order%3Alatest)