Slow response between E1101 panel and PLC

[Jiial 1]

I am using an E1101 panel with Mitsubishi Q04UDEH PLC. I have done the manual drive forward and backward buttons to the panel and I am using those buttons to control the machine movements on manual drive. Problem that appears yesterday is that when I am driving a movements manually from the panel the bit that I am controlling with the panel changes it state in PLC very slowly. This happens both ways, when I press the button the controlled bit that should go on immediately goes on after a little while, same thing happens the other way around, when I lift my finger from the button the controlled bit goes off at PLC after a while. This feature makes the manual drive a bit tricky, because the machine doesn't response immediately. What there is that I could try to do to make it faster.

[Bryll 31]

I suppose that you are using MC Protocol between the panel and the PLC via an Ethernet cable. From the MC Protocol manual: -- Group controller devices consecutively The devices from the controller are read most rapidly if all devices are consecutive. If the devices are spread out (e.g. 4, 17, 45, etc.) the updating is slower. Packaging of signals When the devices are transferred to the controller, all devices are not transferred simultaneously. Instead they are divided into packages with a number of devices in each package. To decrease the number of packages that have to be transferred and make the communication faster this number has to be considered. The number of devices in each package depends on the used driver. To make the communication as fast as possible the number of packages has to be minimized. Consecutive devices require a minimum of used packages but it is not always possible to have consecutive signals. In such cases the so-called waste between two signals has to be considered. The waste is the maximum distance between two signals you can have and still keep them in the same package. The waste depends on the used driver. Note! ASCII Strings and arrays are packed into one package for each object. --

[kaare_t 155]

This is extermely important to remember; every ASCII string goes with a separate package/telegram, so don't use this in the same screen as the manual button...

[Jiial 1]

Thank you for the reply, it explains clearly what causes this situation. Now the problem is how to fix it. Name list in the panel contains 2350 rows which are spread on a large area and to fix that it means too much work compared to time I have.

[kaare_t 155]

No problem, this issue is valid for each screen, so just be careful what you put into the "manual-screen"... Keep it as small as possible. The HMI only reads the tags that are active in the active screen, not all screens at once...

[Jiial 1]

I made a test screen to the panel that only had those two manual drive buttons but even that didn't help. PLC still replies very slowly.

[kaare_t 155]

How are you communicating with the PLC?

[Jiial 1]

Ethernet

[Crossbow 295]

Check your network traffic level. Are you using a 100MB switch?

[Jiial 1]

Switch is 100Mb. I don't have any previous experience how to scan the network traffic.

[kaare_t 155]

Do you have a lot of other equipment connected to the same switch, or is it just the panel and the controller? Do you use UDP or TCP (you should use UDP between the HMI and the controller). Could you post a screenshot of the HMI settings for the controller, and the PLC settings for the communication?

[Jiial 1]

Attached are the parameters.

[Bryll 31]

I normally use the E1000 panels together with FX3U-ENET. There do I have to specify the "Transmission target device IP address" to "255.255.255.255" to accept any IP address. Same thing with the "Transmission target device Port No", it's set to "65535" to accept any incoming port.

[kaare_t 155]

@Bryll: Q-Series are slightly different, you only need to specify which incoming port to accept. @Jiial: You should update to the latest driver version. Then make settings according to your controller in the new driver which looks slightly different.

[Jiial 1]

I downloaded the latest drivers but the driver in "MC protocol driver" stays at 5.02.02 even if I close the E-designer and start it again.

[kaare_t 155]

Ahh, you have to run E-Designer as administrator (right-clik and select "Run as administrator") when downloading new drivers or else they wont come into effect. So run as administrator, download drivers and restart.