BJR

Thank you. But I've already read all of that and understand it. The project does not have anything filled in when you open SETUP/RECIPE so it's a bit of a mystery where else you could setup the recipe. I understand now why I could not get to the recipies with HMI Tools but I also don't see where they are setup in the first place.

Oh. That part was not clear to me. I see the problem between the two machines now. The second machine is not setup to use FTP. So if I just set it up like the other machine I can attach to download the recipies. And while I was in the file for the first machine I now see the definition for the user name and password. It is in a popup window that I saw before but didn't realize there were other options I could edit beyond placing a check mark to use each feature or not use it. I don't need to know, but if I could now just find the setup of where the recipie is defined as D1200-D1220 I'd have full understanding. Sorry if I wasn't clear but I didn't understand what I don't know. I had no idea a FTP network had to be setup. I thought the HMI Tools was just another simple connection reserved for recipies. That must be in another more detailed manual for HMI Tools that I haven't found yet. I'm pretty sure I can do this now. Thanks everyone!

That part would not be a problem but setting up a new recipie to take the place of the old one would be a problem for me. Where is it defined that when a recipe is loaded that it fills in D1200-D1220? And what else might I miss or mess up? I'll keep working on all the other ideas for now. So are you also suggesting that somehow I cannot interface to the recipies that are in there and I would start over by making new recipies to upload so they are visible by the FTP software again?

Something like this could be causing me trouble. Learning this for the first time, I tried the other software for serial connections and never got in. I tried the FTP a couple of times with no success then found another laptop we had laying around and it worked with the FTP. The comm settings on it were already setup from a previous user that worked on these machines: FTP Connection setup (setup windown under connections) Name AD6 URL/IP Address 192.168.1.1 user name anonymous password guest proxy(no cern) (left blank) type binary Passive FTP Syntax is check marked filed separator selected as semicolon he seems to have saved several comm setups but they only seem to differ by the name and the ip address. All other settings are the same and actually don't see a setup for this particular machine I'm trying to connect to that I can tell. 1) is the passive FTP what you are referring to? I will still look around and see if there are other settings I can try in case it is not. 2) is the user name and password required or could they be blank? Is this something that is setup inside the HMI or in the offline file for the project or is it a default user name/password? There are 4 dip switches on the E1101's and read about their functions. Didn't sound like any help at the time but could be worth investigating. A few of the settings would prepare it for firmware transfer or wipe out all of the memory so I have to be careful! Will try a few things to see if it helps.

When I hook up to the second machine this is what I get (nothing). I am sure that I am hooked up because the bottom left corner of the screen reports OK. I know that if I disconnect the Ethernet cable or change static IP address on the computer and click CONNECT I get an Error message at the bottom left corner of the screen. So then, once I am attached I see nothing. And both of my machines seem to work exactly the same in regards to recipe control. I tried to describe how the recipe settings were and how the SAVE and LOAD buttons were setup in my other post above but I will be happy to provide any other screen shots that anyone wants to try and help me through this.

When I hook up FTP Client to the first machine this is what I see. There are so many recipies that I took one shot then scrolled down to the bottom of the list on the left and took another shot to show how many different folders are in the Terminal.

After production goes home I could get a screen shot of both machines with HMI tools hooked up. Maybe someone can catch something I did not see. Thanks for the response.

ML1100 Thanks. I'll take a look at that and see if I can get it to work for me.

I'm sending a status command to a device and the response I get back is 87 characters long! Is there any way to deal with a string that is longer than 82 characters?! If the buffer is reporting 87 I guess it's possible to store it into two separate strings but the process I may use is just not coming to me right now... What are my options?

It also just occured to me while thinking of the trail of events, that all of this may have been transparent to me if in the download utility the choice for Drivers (where the radio buttons say Always, Never, Automatic) that it was on Automatic. It could be possible if I experiment with this and see how Never works, that I can isolate this problem to the one machine. The software does seem to compare drivers in the project file to what's available in the software. If for some reason I can run the software with all of the latest drivers and I can open the file and it doesn't magange to change the driver the file wanted to use, but then it doesn't compile it to the download that may work too. It may be one way to manage it but I'm not sure how that will work out...

Because from what I remember, when I open most of my old files, most of my HMI files were created when the PLC driver was only 4.xx ! I don't want to flip any X addresses. I pre-date that issue on all of my machines.

I guess that if I use the latest PLC driver in the HMI and the actual PLC is dated and before the release then it is opposite of what the new driver compensates for? Keep in mind the PLC firmware is still "old." I updated the HMI software for the reasons I stated for a possible brand new project, then made a couple of additions to the main HMI screen on this old machine and it applied the new drivers, mixed with the old PLC hardware and X addresses are now mismatched. Not sure how to think of it exactly but I can imagine it being a problem with mixed revision levels/firmware revs. Was hoping it wouldn't go into the registry but that makes sense why it's deeper than just some driver files. Not sure what I am going to do next to try and fix this... BTW, Here is a copy of the driver sharing document that lead me to believe this might be a simple fix since I have an identical laptop with the same software... Tip-of-the-week-No-73-12th-Nov-10-How-to-find-E1000-HMI-driver-files.pdf

Got a new laptop to support my machines but having one problem I can't get around yet. If I have my LAN setting on my laptop configured for a static address and am connected to a PLC I cannot figure out how to get my wireless to connect to the wireless network in the plant so I can get to the internet at the same time. In XP I could just manually enable it and force it to connect. Can't figure out how to do multiple connections in win7. I can get connected to the wireless first and get to the internet then as soon as I plug in my ethernet cord to the machine it disconnects from the wireless. Only allowing one network connection at a time LAN or wireless. I did find that you can put the preferences/bindings in different order but that didn't seem to help me any and I can't find any other help yet. I figured only this group of people would understand since I didn't find any help by doing a Google search and reading about people's problems with their home network challenges.

Ken, You nailed it! I've got a HP EliteBook 8560p which I guess I should have mentioned, but I believed this was a windows setting not hardware. I'm connected to my PLC AND talking to you right now! Just what I always wanted. Thanks for your help. Brian

This is on the same network that has one of my AENT adapters crashing sometimes. http://forums.mrplc....showtopic=22158 I think it could be related and also could be a clue to both problems in general. The HMI has started to randomly not update. By that I mean that you can push a momentary push button and have it not react to touch. I pushed one button (momentary PB with a bit address to PLC) 12 times this morning and it did not respond until the last time. I had to push one of the screen change navigation buttons 4 times to change the screen. I've already checked the calibration of the touch areas. It is accurate pointing when it works but sometimes does not respond. Also, sometimes a button will respond to touch but then when you release it, it will hang on to being pushed for several seconds before it updates that you released it. Here is my question. Is this normal in the attached pic? Why are there more than one occurence of the same address? 192.168.102.50 ( i understand that will show up more than once as the target)is the plc, .3 is the PV1000plus, .20 is the SQL server. 10.11.1.121 is the real connection to the corporate network. IT created a VLAN of 192.168.102.x to keep machine traffic from crossing over to the regular 10.x.x.x corporate servers.

I definately understand your point. This was not very well planned out. It started as a PLC, HMI and maybe 7 Point I/O cabinets (one "machine"). Hooked that up to a data collection server and they are using a gateway and VLAN to keep it out of our email, file traffic, etc. Then we added 3 more machines to the data collection with more point I/O, HMI. Wish I knew a lot about Ethernet to help IT manage it better. I'm sure we could have done a better job even without your suggestions on segregating. What is puzzling is the amount of time it appeared to not have issues. I think the company that wrote the SQL software may have the capability to analyze what is going on when they come in next month. Hopefully they will see it right away and it won't be too costly of a lesson to learn. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Thank You. That was bothering me. I won't let that distract me now! Are there any diagnostics on those web pages that you know WILL help me? Very few of them have detailed information in the manuals. Not seeing anything obvious, I am in my gut still suspecting that the server is really busy because they are not archiving data. Someone is supposed to evaluate and archive that in January, so maybe this will all go away. IT has told me that without knowing exactly what traffic to target and study that in general they can't really evaluate the Ethernet network. Any easy way to sniff out the whole network effectively?

Just because from the manual: POINTBus Status LED Flashing red = Recoverable fault occurred: <BR>1) At cycle power the number of expected modules does not equual the number of modules present . Recommend - configure chassis size<BR>2) A module is missing Recommend - check for missing module and reinstall as needed<BR>3) Node fault (i/o connection timeout) occurred Recommend Check for I/O module failure and correct as needed.<BR><BR>The PLC and 7 AENT cabinets are on a NTRON managed switch - however nothing custom was programmed or setup in the switch. It is my understanding from the manual that there is some optimization in traffic going on automatically. There is a VLAN network server on the switch for data collection in the room on a very large scale but each device is using a gateway address so hopefully that cuts down on problems as well. If the network is being flooded by the data collection system wouldn't some of the other 6 AENT modules fail from time to time? <BR><BR>If I open up the AENT webpage and check on diagnostic information what types of information am I looking for to check on anything being flooded? Some of it is Greek to me since I don't have a huge knowledgebase about servers/PC Ethernet networks, etc. I'd probably focus on the wrong item by just how the description sounds...<BR><BR>Some other machines were put on the same server but don't remember if that was before or after the problems started. Can my IT dept. monitor network traffic with any focus on this problem?<BR><BR>Yes. I did just pull the power connector on the AENT and put it back in to re-boot the "rack." Comes up working just fine.<BR>

I haven't heard anything from my local AB support for a month on this so I want to run it by a bigger audience. Here's my problem... I'm having some trouble with an Ethernet panel lately that has been in production about 1-1/2 years no problem. In the last week it has "crashed" three times. 1734-AENT qty 7 1734-IB8 cards then 1734-FPD then qty3 1734-OB8E then qty5 1734-OV8E then qty1 1734-OW4 When it faults, the AENT Flashes a red light on POINTBus Status and every single one of the i/o cards flash red on their Network Status light. So when I read through the fault charts in the owners manuals and try to figure out what could be wrong it is pretty vague but at least I know it's not my Ethernet connection. It sounds like local hardware in that panel. I ordered a new AENT, a couple of i/o cards and a FPD just to start swapping out things since a "module missing" or a "node fault" could mean any piece of hardware in there. I've checked that everything is still tightly assembled and locked together but had no chance to stop production and take all of the bases apart and reseat them all. Is there anything I can do to help pinpoint or troubleshoot this instead of swapping out modules day by day?

It failed again this morning. I guess when production goes home I will swap out all of the bases for new ones as my first step towards solving this.

I had wanted to do this on one of the days it occured but didn't want to stop production. I took everything apart today and put it back together. There were two bases that seemed to have some dust between them and some of it accumulated on the copper. It didn't seem like enough to cause a problem but who knows. It has actually been fine since the last incident a few weeks ago but I would expect it to happen again in the future if I had not done anything to it. I think this is a good first step and may even help based on what I found. At this point I will wait and see what happens so I am only trying one thing at a time. I've got a few packs of bases on hand. If the problem comes back I guess they would be the next to be replaced and if that doesn't work would the AENT adapter be the next item to try?

That was it! Thanks. I am lucky that my screen showed that other network.

It is very clear. Thank you very much. This will come in very handy in the future!

The help file is a little vague on this one. I see in this program that the model they are running in D1 is being moved to Y57-Y5A. This is for a binary select to another machine. What I don't understand is exactly how the MOV_M command is being used to only write to certain outputs. All other outputs on that card are cylinder motions and should not be written to. I imagine it has something to do with the K1 in the destination(d) part of the command but don't quite get it yet. Shown attached is the variable declaration for D1 (looks like just one "regular" size word). Other pic is rung 55 which writes the model number directly to binary weighted output wires. Y57 is 1, Y58 is 2, Y59 is 4, Y5A is 8 I understand the binary part from doing this my whole life but not familiar with the Mitsubishi command structure writing this word directly to the output table. Can someone explain a little more please? Thanks