BJR

EDesigner 7.5 drivers

9 posts in this topic

I've been supporting vintage equipment and recently caused myself some grief. I have Edesigner 7.5 build 312. Don't know what year this is from as it was here before me. What I have done is updated all of my drivers through the File<From Internet pull down menu and now cannot deal with my old machines anymore. This has to do with the notes in the revision levels of 5.00 through current for the A series PLCs that in some versions the X addresses were inverted. Basically I have old enough hardware that it should not be inverted (or is ) and now since the HMI is up to the latest version they end up being inverted if that makes sense. My question though is if I have another laptop that is supporting the same machines and was basically a mirror image of this laptop where are all the old driver files located? I have already found in the help section that all should be in C:\program files\common files\Beijers shared\opc drivers I have transfered everything in that folder and when it didn't correct things I also copied all other folders in \Bejier shared from the "good" laptop. I have missed more files somewhere pertaining to PLC drivers. When I start a project on the "good" laptop and pick a driver for MELSEC I can choose A Series, FX3, QnA/Q Series. For some reason even after trying to make the "bad" computer like the "good" one I can only select FX3 and QnA/Q. Anybody know something about this? Note: I had updated all of the drivers to determine if I could upgrade a machine and mix some brands of PLC and keep a E1101 HMI. When the AB Compact Logix file I imported only included half of the tags that should have been there I determined that we would not be doing this anymore in our plant even though we were successful on one small machine with one of our contractors. Just FYI on the reason I was updating anything. I updated all of the drivers off of the INternet and now wish I had the older drivers from years ago becuase I've ended up in a mess on this one laptop.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I've never heard of an 'inverted X' issue with the driver updates. I have all the latest drivers on my laptop. Hard to get Beijers to support this product, that's why I only use GOT anymore.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm a little confused on this, so I downloaded the A Series CPU driver and checked the release notes. As you say, V5.04 "corrected inverted X bits for some models" and was released in Sep 2011. The latest version is V5.07 and was released in Dec 2011. The information would seem to indicate that the fault was noted and corrected in V5.04 and that V5.07 should be fine, so I can't quite see why you have the problem now. Regarding the copying of files, I'm not quite sure how it works, but I get the impression that as E-Designer downloads drivers from the net, I think it "installs" them by writing information to the windows registry. If you run REGEDIT and search on Beijers, you will come across quite a few registry entries that give the information on the drivers. Haven't done that much research to work it out When you install drivers from the net, they definitely do go in the OPC Drivers folder ...... but I also found V5.01 in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Beijers Shared\Micro Drivers ..... More questions and no real answers I'm afraid ...... Edited by Colin Carpenter

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
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 Edited by BJR

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
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. Edited by BJR

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
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...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Be careful that you know the differences between firmware and drivers .... I've never yet come across a firmware update for a Mitsubishi A Series PLC (or any other Mitsubishi PLC for that matter.) By that I mean the firmware in the PLC CPU. They are what they are and will always be as far as I know. The driver is the communications software that resides in the HMI only and is used to communicate with the PLC and display the values on the screen etc. You can upgrade firmware on the HMI but be very careful here as I managed to turn one into a doorstop the other day. You are right in that you can select NEVER on the "download driver" option, in this case, E-Designer is comparing the driver on the laptop with the one on the HMI and will update the driver on the HMI if there is a newer one on the laptop if you select ALWAYS or AUTOMATIC. I tend to use NEVER when downloading screens onto systems that are talking to old PLCs ... based on the principle that it works now, it ain't broke, so don't fix it. I assume that the issue with inverting the X addresses works something like this: The PLC knows it's addresses and the programme runs fine. When the HMI driver asks for those X addresses, the PLC hands them over, but then the HMI reads them backwards. So if you put X0 on the screen, it may well show the XF address, or something similar .... but only in the older driver versions? Logically, if you are now using the latest driver (V5.07) and the bug was fixed in V5.04 then it shouldn't happen now. The only way it should happen now is if the latest driver works fine, but the screens were written in a way that reversed the bug (the programmer would have put in XF rather than X0)? But that does seem like a long shot .....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I go to lots of Beijers HMI's and always use this priciple. I have never updated anything that I didn't have to. Edited by Goody

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As an update to this thread, today I had to find out how to make sure that the PLC comms drivers in E-Designer were identical across two laptops and after a lot of head scratching and searching, I finally managed it (both laptops running XP Pro.) Below is how to do it.

1. E-Designer makes a lot of entries  in the registry telling the software where to find the drivers and what the driver names are.

2. The actual names of the driver files seem to be consistent and do not change. Only the contents of the files changes with the versions.

3. The driver files and information are stored in  the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Beijers Shared

4. On the second laptop (the one you are trying to update) rename this directory as Beijers Shared Old ( or something similar)

5. Copy the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Beijers Shared directory from the laptop that you want to clone and  paste it into the C:\Program Files\Common Files directory of the second laptop that want to be identical to the first, then reboot the second laptop and they should be identical.

Worked for me anyway, and the problem I was having was that all my screens were using a Q/Qna E71 driver (v8.0) that is no longer available as it has been superceded by the MC protocol. But I am a huge fan of the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" ...... especially on running plant that cannot afford any down time.

Edited by Colin Carpenter
clarity

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!


Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.


Sign In Now