IamJon

My brother-in-law is an electrician for a utility. He's learned to repair the boards in their PLC's because they won't buy new ones. I think management sees more risk than benefit. The cascading cost of replacing the PLC causing a need to replace other parts, the unknown of what will and won't be compatible, bugs due to the conversion. We are going through that right now. Lots of software bugs cropping up simply due to the decreased scan times of the new PLC's. Of course we no longer allow scan based logic, but it can't be helped when converting old code unless you want to spend to time to re-write. Also, replacing a PC isn't really a fair comparison. PLC's cost much more in hardware, not to mention labor. You're looking at a couple thousand vs tens of thousands up to hundreds for PLC replacement. Of course, the PLC is controlling something that generates a lot more profit than the PC.

Not sure how different the layout is between 200 and 300, but in S7 manager, you click through the project in the left window and you'll get to a section called "hardware." Double click this to open the window that shows your rack layout. I've never used 200 or S7-Micro, but I hope this helps. I only responded because I know the Siemens forum can be slow here.

Currently using this: http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-search/en?vendor=0&keywords=spru5021s28 but it keeps failing on us. Can anyone recommend a good drop in replacement? Want the same form factor so we don't have to redesign what it's going in. Thanks.

I have an IPC 677C and my software is Wincc Flexible 2008. When selecting my device type, none of the IPC panel pc's show up. How do I select the correct device?

I turn on a contact, and it's off in the next rung. Tags are addressed in STAT memory. Mult Instance FB with Instance DB for STAT memory. I've never seen anything like this. I can't change the title... but I changed the content of this post. Same problem as the IA but this is direct addressed.

Once. I failed to regenerate my DB after adding STAT variables. Once I did the regenerate, the DB became corrupt and had to be deleted and recreated.

Is there a way to use two pointers for indirect addressing? I tried it using AR1 and AR2 as separate pointers, but it screwed up my data. I had to define AR1 before each indirect address. For example, if I wanted to load and transfer to and from an indirect address I had to: Define pointer AR1 Load from IA Redefine pointer AR1 Transfer to IA This is with two IA's that have different offsets. Like the first is an array of a udt that's 50 bytes long, and the second is an array of a udt that's 10 bytes long.

A client of mine has a Cutes drive installed. The manual is all wrong and poorly translated from Chinese. I can't find any contact info in the US. Does anyone here have any experience with them? The issue I'm having is that when I set the drive to read an internal preset speed, it runs. When I set it to read a 4-20mA external speed, it won't run. I'm sure the speed is getting there as you can see the Hz change on the front of the drive. The start circuit is working correctly. Some setting internal to the drive won't allow it to start in Hand or Auto when looking for an external speed. Thanks in advance.

Thanks guys. Light pipe is it.

What are these things called? Like you have in your car, or keyboard etc. There's an LED behind them, but all the part is that's mounted on the surface is a plastic window that catches the light to display to the user? I need to purchase some, so if you have any idea what they're called or where to buy them, I'd appreciate the input. Thanks.

Lens or cap maybe. What I want is more than just a cap, I want it to capture the light from below and direct it to the top.

It was a brand new PLC. I connected and set IP before I reset the PLC.

I find that sort of odd for an engineering co. You should speak with management to get the engineers admin capability on laptops. Firewalls and antivirus frequently need to be turned off for PLC comms.

From Siemen's help file: Element Type Data Type Y BYTE W WORD X DWORD I Integer D Integer B BOOL C CHAR R REAL You will need to break it down to fit one of these. STL is a lot more lenient - it doesn't do type checking. So it won't matter what data type it is, as long as the bit length is the same as what it's looking for. Apparently, you can also turn type checking off in Ladder, but I haven't done that. The other option would be to create an FB that does a string compare, with IN and OUT parameters. Then all you have to do is call this FB and pass parameters to it instead of retyping the same code over again.

That seems accurate enough. Why do you want to know this?

Page 4: http://cache.automation.siemens.com/dnl/TQ/TQ2MTUxNwAA_7302326_FAQ/7302326_Speicherkonzepte_bei_SIMATIC_S7-300_e.pdf Basically WORK memory is what is used during runtime. Load memory is ROM and RAM that that holds the program. That's my interpretation anyway.

It was. It's not a problem now. Once I initialized the IP, I've had no problems connecting to it. Well, until now. I think it's broken. Waiting to hear back from tech support. ETA: Did a memory reset and the CPU's fine.

That's what I tried - it didn't work. IP address would not get assigned to Edit ETH Node. Had to use the PST for that. I'm using Windows Virtual PC, and it's networked properly.

Just to update - I had to disable my virus protection and wireless. The funny thing about the wireless is that if I enable it then disable it, I need to reboot in order to browse to the MAC address. I could not assign the IP in S7 at all. I had to download PST for that.

How about with a new CPU? How do you know what the subnet address is? How do you know what the IP address is? I did an arp -a and got the IP last friday, but still could not ping it. For some reason, the arp -a is not working today. My PG settings are on my ethernet card (auto). When doing this, do I need to set a static IP address in my network settings or leave that on auto? Do I need a crossover or standard cable? Thanks. ETA: Direct connect, no router.

I seem to remember that it is not a good idea to install XP service pack 3 on a pc running rockwell software. Does anyone know the specific reason for this, or if maybe I'm wrong and SP3 runs fine? Thank you.

A little embarassing... I guess I didn't realize the "byte X" part was the length. I'm good now.

I have an array of data, with each type being a UDT of let's say 120 bytes. What is the best way to transfer all this data? I'm trying to avoid moving one byte or double word at a time. So basically I have my offset within the array defined, but need to know how I can set the length and grab all the data at once. Has to be in STL since I'm doing indirect addressing. Although, if you don't know STL but can do it in Ladder, post in ladder and I'll translate myself. Thanks.

Is there a way to indirectly open a DB? OPN "DB_Source" L DBD 0 OPN "indirect DB" T DBD 0 ETA: Found it OPN DB [DIW 4] //this is for STAT memory OPN DB [MW4] //for regular memory

Thanks, I'll check it out. ETA: Found this http://www.automation.siemens.com/WW/forum/guests/PostShow.aspx?PageIndex=1&PostID=46427&Language=en Can it be done with indirect addressing? Depending on the data, I will need to pull from different areas of the source DB and place in different areas of the destination DB.