AlexPLC

5069-SERIAL, Changing serial settings while PLC is in RUN mode

5 posts in this topic

Hello AB gurus,

I am truly grateful for the help from the forum recently on ASCII communication and now I have another general question.

In my application the machine is physically mobile and connects to different customers several times a year. In almost all instances the customer is reading in the data from the machine via  serial communication using ASCII characters, but in some cases they cannot or are unable to change their serial settings such as baud rate, data bits, parity, etc. On some other PLC systems in my experience, they allow you to change the serial settings on the PLC without having to go into the settings on the PLC program, change the settings, and then re-download. In other words, any user can go to the HMI and change the serial settings to accommodate different situations; you don't have to get the programmer involved just because you moved to a new customer and they need to read in their data.

For the CompactLogix 5069-SERIAL I do not see any way to do this. I do not see them under the "built in" tags under Controller Tags. The only place I see where they can be modified is under the properties of the module itself and of course you have to have Studio 5000, and the PLC will go into STOP mode during this change.

Does anyone know that for serial communication in general does the CompactLogix system or possibly ControlLogix system have a serial communication option where the settings are configurable while the PLC is in RUN mode? I have contacted our local distributor's experts and they were unaware of a solution.

Thanks

 

Edited by AlexPLC

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That is... a great question.

Many other A-B I/O modules like the 1756 series have a Configuration Assembly as well as the Input and Output assemblies.   Those configuration assemblies are written to the module every time it re-establishes a connection, and you can programmatically use a MSG instruction to Reconfigure a module and send them on demand.

But not this module.   It appears to get its configuration objects from the Add On Profile, which makes a lot of sense because there are so many operating modes with very different configuration data.

I don't know if the module includes a standard Serial Port object similar to the one on an old 1756-L1/L55/L6x controller.

So... gosh...this is going to take some more research.

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Is there a way to use GSV/SSV to check/change the settings?

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I don't know of any way to use SSV to change those settings;   the Serial Port object isn't available for SSV.

I think that this is possible if you get a full description of all the objects in the Serial Port object as implemented in the 5069-SERIAL module.   My old definitions I pried out of the 1756-L1 won't help, they're too different.

What you're looking for is the structure and values that would let you programmatically send a message to set everything in the Channel 0 menu and maybe also the Receive and Transmit tabs.

If I were trying to reverse-engineer it I would be running Wireshark and clicking the "Apply" button while online with the controller on the Channel 0 setup menu.  

RA Commercial Engineering might be able to help you, but I would not expect this to be in the domain of Technical Support.
 

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well looking at the Wireshark stream is something I haven't thought of, definitely something to try and take a look at. 

I appreciate the responses and suggestions so far..

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