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Maple's Silver Series 550 and FX3U talking faster

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any chance to make Maple 550T hmi communicate faster than default 9600bps with FX3U? The FX3U has programming port as well as 232-BD module. I tried different settings but so far no luck. According to manual BD module supports up to 19.2kbps but GX Dev seem to also use 115.2k with it. Anyway 19.2 or anything higher would be appreciated. regards,

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The problem is that Mitsubishi use special handshake commands at startup, where they use the control pins (RTS/CTS++) to negotiate the transfer speed for the specific session. The possibility of 115.2k exists only for the CPU(Programming) protocol, and not the MC protocol. Therefore, if your HMI supports CPU protocol then the supplier should provide you with an updated driver. If your HMI only supports MC protocol then you're stuck with max 19.2k. BTW the programming port has a DMA channel and can therefore also respond even faster than any BD/ADP/etc. card....

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Hey Panic, We use Maple Systems screens all the time and I always have them communicate at 19.2. Are you getting an error if you try and select that speed, or does it just not communicate? Make sure you have the newest version of the EZWare 500 program (Should be version 2.7.3) They make a lot of driver changes and this problem might be solved if you're using an old version. I always use the programing port of the PLC to communicate with the touch screen (unless it's an A series then you need a serial communication card) but the FX2's and FX3's use the programming port with no problems. Should be set to RS-485 4Wire in the system parameters screen on the HMI software. Hope that helps some!

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thank you both, Duffenator can you give me more details (screenshots)? what cable you use (should be this one: http://www.maple-systems.com/1023/10230024.pdf) btw. software I have is 2.7.1 panic

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Sure, Here is the location for the cable information: http://www.maplesystems.com/1023/10230024.pdf Here is the setup information: http://www.maplesystems.com/1033/10330005.pdf You can download the new version of the Maple systems software for free, I think you just need to create an account with them to sign in.

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just checked it, the demo version is free but it can't download...

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Try this and see if it works: http://www.maplesystems.com/cgi-bin/downlo...f=ezupgrade.exe

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thank you, it downloaded ok, i'll check it out...

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I rechecked the settings and I can't find anything special that you have to set. The Maple systems screens use the same port as GX Developer so if you can program the PLC at 19.2 then you should be able to communicate with the touch screen at 19.2. The only difference is that the SC-09 cable has a built in RS-232 to 485 converter and the touch screen communicates 485 directly with the PLC. All you should have to do is set the baud rate at 19.2 in the touch screen settings.

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no luck here, all of this is ok but for 9600bps. the PLC side port settings need to be changed too or the HMI needs firmware upgrade. normally setting comm like this is dead simple (just set both devices to use same settings) which i've trying but so far it didn't work for anything but 9600 (regardless if Ch0 or Ch1, 485 or 232 etc.).

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talked to Maple technician, they suggest using 9600 because this is all they have ever tested. He didn't know what is difference between three FX drivers listed in EasyBuilder nor which of them is using what protocol. Quote: "if the faster comm speed is desired, just keep trying other drivers and settings. you may find one that works faster, maybe modbus or something else for example".

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That's some awesome technical support. I don't know, I've never had a problem getting them to communicate. I use 19.2 for all the fx2n's and 115 kbps for the q-series PLC's they all use the programming port to communicate. I'm not sure why you're having an issue with it. I was playing around with one I have here and even at 9600 it still updates pretty quick, how come you need the faster speed? I don't see much of a difference in update time from 9600 to 19.2.

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I'm also a bit curious, why do you need that high baud-rate just for an operator panel? Edit: By the way, the "technical support" don't seem to know what they are talking about! 1. Doesn't matter which protocol you use as long as the baud rate is the same (doesn't matter if you use Modbus/FX/MC protocol or others as long as the bit-rate stays the same)! 2. All the FX-series use the same CPU protocol. The only difference is that some areas has been expanded over the years (e.g. FX2N/FX3U you have M1600+ as opposed to the old FX, in the FX3U you have R devices (R0-R32766) and so on.....). However, the protocol itself is exactly the same! Edited by kaare_t

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unfortunately the 9600bps doesn't cut it because of too slow updates (it's limping, this is 10" unit with screens packed with numeric parameters). both PLC and HMI are capable of much higher speeds (115.2kbps for example) but I'm not even asking for that. some 38.4k would probably be perfect, 19.2k will be ok but 9.6k is not good. btw. what is so strange about wanting to go above 9600bps? it may have been decent speed some 40 years ago but c'mon... today that may be fine for bar code scanner etc. not for real time update. i don't have access to FX2N at the moment but just for kicks i will try that too within week or two. actually this was an FX2N job (bunch of machines). I wasn't involved from begin but supposedly Mitsubishi was unable to provide the ProfiBus DP cards for FX2N (supposedly only manuals exist, no actual hardware - at least that's what i was told). the bottom line is now the FX3U is used as replacement but there is problem with HMI comm speed. i don't agree about protocols not being important. it has to match too. if one sets PLC port to use one format but HMI uses another, they will not talk. format, terminators, checksum, baud rate etc are all to be specified when setting up plc port.

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I agree with you about the transfer speed issue, there's no reason they can't use a much higher rate as the standard with communication. I guess most stuff is going to ethernet now anyway though. Just a thought but in the future try and use the Silver Plus series of screens, they are much nicer to program and have better communication options, built in ethernet port standard as well as usb ports and 3 comm ports all for a few hundred more. They also have faster processors to better handle many updating variables, as it sounds like that's what you're doing it might be a better option for you in the future. We are changing all of ours over to the new silver plus series ourselves. Just a suggestion!

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Sorry if my english isn't the best in this post! Let me know if anything is "not understandable"....!! SPEED: I do agree with you too, it's 2009 and of course 9.6bps is 'bad', but if your HMI supplier supports FX3U CPU protocol, then they should also support 115.2kbps! The reason I'm asking about the speed itself is that a HMI panel (with a human reading the numbers) would have time to update about 570 16-bit words in one second (exactly 600, but when you remove the overhead protocol bytes you'll end up with about 1140 data bytes), or appr. 57 16-bit words every 100ms! My point is that for the human eye, a "real-time" update doesn't have to be super fast, and very often the problem might be the processor speed of the panel itself, and not the protocol/bit-rate. PROTOCOLS & SPEED: Modbus at 9.6k is pretty much the same as FX-CPU at 9.6k which in turn is pretty much the same as MC at 9.6k! So if the maximum speed on any port is 9.6k, it doesn't really matter if you use Modbus-, CPU-, or MC-Protocol, or most other serial binary protocols (if you were to run Profibus or CC-Link at 9.6k they would also be slow)!My point is: The Maple guy don't know what he's talking about. If you are sure that you need the speed, I would indeed push Maple further since they should support FX protocol even for the new FX3U! Btw. You can't choose any other protocol than the FX-CPU protocol on the FX-series programming port! SUGGESTION: In any case (slow processor on the HMI, or slow baud-rates) it's always best to group all the variables in each "screen". The HMI usually only updates the variables in the selected "screen" (the screen that the user is looking at), and if they are wide-spread the HMI will have to use many but small requests to the PLC instead of one large batch read! Many and small requests are not good, since they require more processor speed in the panel, and many requests means a lot more overhead! PROFIBUS & FX2N: The FX2N don't have a ProfibusDP master, but you can indeed get a ProfibusDP slave - FX0N-32NT-DP!

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thank you both, kaare_t, sorry i misread your post, i see now what you mean and i completely agree. that's exactly my position and i already have done what i could to group memeory to reduce the overhead so now it's out of my hands and it's still sluggish. the tech guy was offering to use different model and that would be just fine for new installation but the cost of changing all of them is prohibitive (which now may happen anyway as i doubt that Maple would spend time or effort to fix this). at this moment i will leave it to customer to live with it or go any other route. agreed, at same baud rate this makes no sense, i'm guessing that he knew that too and suggested that port(s) may be able to use higher speed with different protocol. the thing that disapointed me is that they expect customer has to figure out how to make their product work better. i don't have time to do their RnD work, i just want to use what they say their product can do and they do mention optional speeds of 19.2k and 38.4k "as long as all settings match pc and HMI side". but when i ask whatthose settings are, they have no answer. Duffanator did have success at 19.2k and he posted his settings (HMI side) but i could not reproduce that with this PLC and HMI even after installing upgrade he posted earlier.

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Profibus was mentioned, and I just wanted to add something. While FX2N does NOT have Profibus master capabilities (slave only as previously mentioned), the FX3U does offer a Profibus master module, FX3U-64DP-M. It can't be used on the older FX2N, but is a good option for FX3U. The highest you can set the ports is 19,200. GX Developer can handshake with the ports up to 115,200, but that speed is only available to GX Developer, not to third party HMI products.

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Well, let's hope the customer is satisfied with the present situation then, or wants to spend some more money..... Just a note: E-Terminals (E1000) are able to use 115.2k, and they are not produced by Mitsubishi (they are branded). Mitsubishi's own GOT terminals are also able to use 115.2k.

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i don't know what exactly is the default configuration of the port. how to set port to 19200 bps and leave everything else exactly as it is? (like writing H0090 to D8120 instead of H0000)

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If you use a BD card, and you use the CPU driver in the HMI then you have to set D8120=0! If you set D8120 to anything other than "0", then you will disable the CPU-Protocol and enable one of the other possibilities like MC/Computer Link/No Protocol depending on the number you insert in D8120. E.g.: H0090 -No Protocol(b14 = 0) -19200bps -7N1 -No Header/Terminator

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Panic, You can also change the PLC block pack parameter in the HMI settings page to a number higher than 0. The block pack parameter will change how the HMI gets the information out of the PLC. For example: If you have the block pack setting set to zero and you are reading D0, D1, D2 and D3 out of the PLC then the HMI will sent 4 commands to read data out of the PLC but if you have the block pack setting set to 4 then it will only send one command to read data. If you are reading D0, D1, D10 and D16 and the block pack is set to 4 then it will send 3 commands to read. One for D0 and D1 and two seperate commands for D10 and D16. You already said that you optimized your D registers in your PLC so this could definatly make an improvement on your update speed. You may want to try this too.

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can any one help me ? I have a profibus communication using FX3U-64DP-M to access a profibus slave the only thing I want is to monitor the slave outputs can I use it as one way communication ?

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