TonyK

Absolutely! Certainly invaluable when you have 1000's of tags going, and a decent tag convention. As I understand it, it's saved as part of the application, and yeah the last filter is the one shown first ..

Thanks for your replies Peter and rammin48. Since I am having problems primarily at the very beginning or end of a spool (depending on where it is tuned - there is some play in the meachnical setup) it sounds like the plan of attack is to ascertain three sets of PI parameters and use them based on an ultrasonic distance measurement or the like. Thanks for your help.

Hi fellow PLC gurus..... Here's the situation - I have a piece of machinery that unwinds product from a spool to be processed. THe tension on the product is maintained by a dancing arm setup that is attached to a pivot point. The angle of this pivot is the PV of a small PI loop, which controls the speed and direction of the spool motor. ie. angle changes in the pivot indicate changes in tension. The spool motor then incresae or decrease speed and direction to compensate for this change. The problem is - as product is unwound from the spool, the weight of the spool changes. THis leads to unstable control at either completely full spools or almost fully unwound spools. A potential solution is to have more than one set of PI parameters and swap in as needed depending on the current weight of the spool. Someone must have encountered this type of situation before - any help???

I have myself an old project here - its a couple of old TSX 47 series CPUs with PL7-3 programs, running to the old Schneider M77 "Maestro" package. I don't really know anything about this particular software oddity, but I am trying to use a much newer package (eg. Wonderware) as a replacement, and upgrading the PLC programs and CPUs It makes things a lot easier if I was able to access the tag database (or whatever is used in the Maestro) so that the Wonderware package can be re-built correctly. It appears to run under OS/2 though. Does any one have any ideas or experience with this package? I have the Application backup and the Maestro Install floppys. Cheers

I have managed to run LSS using DosBox successfully.

As a word of warning - CxOne 1.1 has been known to disable the Ethernet service of FinsGateway 2003. On the plus side, this can be fixed by a re-install of FinsGateway, so it's not all bad news - just watch for it!

If I've understood your question correctly, the standard TIM operates at 100ms resolution. You can use the TIMH function to get 10ms operation. Problem with usign these in a high accuracy application is that you only see the expiration of the timer in the scan after it expires. As far as counters go, not really an accuracy issue? I'm not quite sure what you mean here.

It sounds like a quirk of Virtual PC. I have had some success with the older software using DosBox, with the D-Fend gui interface. Its a free alternative that could be worth trying: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ The software was mainly designed for playing old DOS games, but I have used it with old NT DOS software with no obvious issues. The D-Fend interface is worth getting just for ease of use.

It is also a good idea to 'lock' in the DM and CIO configuration into the PLC code. The documentation for the AD081-V1 (for example the DTL) will give further information on this. Sounds like you are using Unit 0, so from memory I'd recommend the following: MOV #0000 2000 (peak hold) MOV #00FF D20000 (input usage) MOV #AAAA D20001 (4-20mA for all 8 inputs - don't forget the switch) BSET #0 D20002 D20017 (don't use unless you want average values) You can also use D20018 for changing between a resolution of 4000 and 8000. Don't remember the specific on this - I think the upper byte as 16#00 defaults to a resolution of 4000. Note that configuring the module through CX-Programmer is the same as this - this just locks the configuration in the code, just in case you get a processor failure or the like.

My advice is to do the communications in the PLC instead, and direct any commands (pan, tilt, zoom or just feed change) from the SCADA to the PLC. This is assuming you have access to the PLC and have a spare 232 port. This will be alot easier to maintain in the long run though.

Hey guys. Just wondering - I noticed a CANBus unit for the CJ1 series has been released recently. Has anyone had any experience with it yet?

Forget I asked - by Ethernet we can add devices to the same channel. The 8 limit only applies to serial connections.

Hi guys. Bear with me - this'll be my first post. I have a client that has a heavily vested interest in OMRON and iFIX. Previously, the system was reasonably small, just an iFIX system using OMF (6.2 I think) with FinsGateway and ControllLink to 4 PLCs on the network. They have decided to invest in using Ethernet as their main mode of communication. I have added that to FinsGateway etc. and have had no issues. Problem is, the OMF driver only permits 8 channel connections. Plans are underway for up to 30. Clearly the standard OMF driver will not cut this particular mustard. I am looking for other options. I will still need to communicate by ControllerLink and Ethernet, though in the future the ControllLink connections will be redundant. I have looked at using the OPC driver for iFIX, and using Cx-ServerOPC, though I find the process of tags to be tedious and time consuming at best. And so I ask - is there a better way? (Besides not using OMRON )