I have a micrologix 1400 that I'm trying to get to communicate with a Cognex 5400 camera. I can pass values back and forth using th ethernet port, but I want to do the same using the serial DF-1 port on the ML1400 & the cognex breakout module CIO-1450 serial port. When I have everything connected, the TX & RX lights flash on the breakout module so I thing the connection is correct. I just don't know how to use the WriteSerial tool in the In-Sight Explorer, and how the message instruction in the ML1400 should be setup. Any advice is greatelly appreciated.

I dunno if this will help but have you seen my Cognex Article to a Robot? It might show you some stuff in there that might help.

http://www.mrplc.com/kb/index.php?article=72

Thanks for the link, it's a very interesting article. This gives me an idea how to prepare the serial string in the In-Sight software, so now I need to figure out how to get the message into the PLC and disect it so I can get the relevant information from it.