Henny

Hello Flex727 /Sgull I fully agree with both your opinion that Unitronics is reliable and as Sgull already mentioned I never had to exchange a Unitronics device. It’s also amazing that you can do a firmware upgrade without losing the program and the contended of the MB,s and MI,s?? I have never seen a website from a plc manufacturer with so much support as with Unitronics. When someone has problems with code or whatever moderators try to help as much as possible. Of course my opinion about Unitronics will not change because of one posting on another forum. Only people who have also worked with Unitronics share the same positive opinion about the system that I have and all others in my environment seems to be stuck on big S no matter what they have to pay for soft and hardware. Managers talk about the installed base and how much knowledge there is available and then big S seems to be always favorite. You can get a official "certified Siemens TIA Programmer" but there is now official certificate for "UniGuru" at least not that I know off Do you not run into this kind of issues when you come up with Unitronics for a project? Kind Regards Henny

Hello Sunit Thanks for sharing the foto,s and videos from your application! Why did you not build V130,s in the cabinet doors instead of mounting them on the din rails? Now for reading info on the Unitronics screens you always have to open the cabinet. Basic problem where not the Siemens PLC,s but the communication between them using a bus system (MPI?) over the cable trolley system? Now the system is working perfectly and once again unitronics proves that it is the best and most user friendly PLC. If you read this topic in another plc forum you will see that not everyone agrees with your statement. http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=100127 I fully agree with you that Unitronics is a cheap system and easy to program. Also the help file in Visilogic is very clear in how to set up communications and with some effort you will succeed. Another very positive feature is the info screen that can be used to see what kind of data is send over the available communication ports, serial and or Ethernet. This is really a very helpful tool when programming and testing communication. Unfortunately Unitronics is according to competitors not very reliable when used in noisy industrial application with for example frequency drives. You will also find topics in this forum about this kind of behavior. According to competitors this is because cheap not isolated print plates are used in a Unitronics plc?? We have about 20 Unitronics PLC,s in use for controlling small applications and the first one came in our plant at about 2005. M90,s , V230 , Sambas , V350 and V570 are in use. Never experienced problems but it can be because they are not mounted nearby frequency drives. My opinion about Unitronics is very positive I just quote what I hear and what is written about the system. Kind Regards Henny

Hello Sunit You did a good job! It suprices me every time what a unitronics controller can do compared to Siemens,Schneider en Control logics and far more cheeper. Kind regards from the Netherlands. Henny

Hello How about using a formula in combination with a divide operation? It lets you enter two MI,s and for the Result a MF that you can use. Don,t know what the result is because I did not try it with a controller so it can be that the result is still 0. Kind regards Henny

Hello Cara Why not offer an OPC client interface for the Unistream like most scada systems already have? With the Vision systems Unitronics offered an OPC server so that scada systems can communicate in that way with Unitronics PLC, s. In practice al major OPC server manufacturers have a OPC server that can communicate with all important brand plc,s If for example Unistream could act as a OPC DA client it would be quit easy to interface it with all kind of other brand plc,s and make use of the Unistream as kind of a scada system that also has the advantage that it can run plc logic. The Unistream has the potential to be used as scada especially in combination with the intergrated web server and in this way it would not only compete with PLC manufactures but also with scada manufactures. This is just a personal Idea. Kind Regards Henny

Hello As a note on what Keith says about Profibus. The V130,V350 and the new V430 can act as profibus slave but not as a profibus master so it,s not possible to connect I/O of other devices directly to one of these controllers using profibus. Another protocol that is more commonly used in europe besides profibus is profinet. So if Unitronics controllers will be considdered in plants in Europe to do small tasks and theirfore have to communicate with Siemens controllers esspecially the Profinet protocol should be considdered I think? Regards Henny

Hello Eyal Thanks for the PDF. Tested the link with different pc and google chrome and onfortunatly it didn,t work! Got a code like http:// www.unitronics.com/plc-hmi/32d1cb38-21aa-4441c-a5df-91dc569eb9db when clicking the "specification"link for Samba SM35-J-T20 but the specifications links from the other Samba products are working just fine and open the correct pdf file. Kind Regards Henny

Hello The link to the "specifications" from Samba SM35-J-T20 doesn,t work and gives and HTTP error. It seems to be the only link that causes a problem because the other links to the specifications from SM35-J-R20,SM43-J-T20 and SM43-J-R20 are working as expected. Tested with IE9 and windows 7 ultimate 32 bit. Just a minor detail Kind regards Henny

Hello Alexander Perhaps this is something to put into the knowledge base? Thanks in advance Henny

Hello Exouxas I think that copy paste from Hmi elements to the webpage Could Also save a lot of time. Now if for example you have a I/o field in a Hmi screen and you want to add this same I/O field to the webpage you have to make it Again.I can understand that this maby difficult for unitronics because the technique behind the webpage is totally different then the hmi screen but it would be very nice. I find the web server a very good feature and my compliments for the Unitronics team because on the market it,s very difficult to find a plc + hmi in one unit that has so many features as Unistream has for the same price. Regards Henny

Hello Flex 700 I don’t agree that your problem is related to a double assignment from output coils O0 and O1 in the program because the logic seems to work when the manual bit is on. To test this you could use two spare MB,s or XB,s instead of O0 an O1. Although power seems to flow through these two compare boxes you will know then if the problem is related at that point. According to the help file if you want to start this action for example at Friday from 6:00 AM to 6:10 AM MI10=600HEX(1536 DEC) and MI11=610 HEX(1552DEC) and at the second box Friday should be highlighted as already is in your example. Anyway assigning spare MB,s or XB,s instead of the outputs or add an extra network with the same two time compare boxes and use a spare MB or XB as output and you will know where the problem is. Kind regards Henny

Hello If the system works well and the drive is running above minimum speed you should see a value in the output MI between 0 and 4095 when in a normal situation the drive runs maximum when the output is 4095(perhaps you can show this to your customer?) and in the problem situation you describe the output MI is also 4095 but the drive is not running at max speed and the output value is 0 V then this is definitely not a program bug but a hardware(EMC) problem. The V200-18-E2B has two analog outputs so perhaps if the second analog output is spare then perhaps you could project the value of the analog output1(the one that goes to the drive) to the spare one(assign a MI to it and copy the value of the MI from the first output into this one) and see in a problem situation if this MI has 10 volt. Don’t know how if this not connected output would also be affected in a EMC situation but if it’s not then this would be a second proof that it’s not a software bug. Regards Henny

Hello You probably also tried(some) the suggestions that where stated in the old forum topic where you refered to? Found this stated in the installation guide of a V350 perhaps you should check this out and see if it helps. The 0V signal of the analog input and output must be connected to the controller’s 0V Regards Henny

Hello Difficult to say if your problem is related to EMC but perhaps the attached files that I got from our local Unitronics supplier may be helpfull? Regards Henny Minimizing EMI - System Design Guidelines.pdf

Hello Also a simple test to see if MI20 is not overwritten somewhere else within the program is to just change it,s value online with Visilogic and see if it keeps the value that you have last written to it. If so then at least you know that it,s not overwritten and that the problem is within the linearization function. Regards Henny

Hello If you are trying to communicate to the controller with Visilogic to monitor or download a project then the comport inits are not necessary. Otherwise how would you download the first time a program to a new controller? I think that the problem is between the pc and the usb to serial converter cable. Perhaps you have another serial device so that you can test if the serial communication between That device and the pc with usb to serial converter works? Then you will know if the problem is in the V1210 and/or MJ10-22CS25 cable or the usb to serial converter cable. Another thing that you can try is to go into info mode with the V1210. Touch the screen in a free area and maintain contact for several seconds. The controller enter information mode and requests for a password that is default 1111 Then you can navigate to serial and to comport 1. After this try to setup the serial connection with your pc using the usb to serial cable and the MJ10-22CS25 cable by for example using Visilogic and trying to download a project or from Visilogic=> Connection=>communication & os=>Get oplc information. At the V1210 screen you should see RX of serial port 1 incrementing indicating that the controller receives requests from the pc. Regards Henny Regards Henny

Hello Dave Atached is a Visilogic example that I tested with a V350. Today at 20-9-2014 it gives me a result of 263 into MI2 and if I understand you correctly that is what you want to accomplish? The only thing that has to be taken care of is that the controller has the correct date and time and the logic will do the rest. Hope it helps you? Kind regards Henny Julian Date.vlp

Hello I currently used a Samba controller for a small project. It’s really good value for money but one analog output would even create more possibilities for the Samba I think. In a lot of control situations with PID an analog output is required so if the development costs are not too high perhaps it’s an idea for the future? Kind regards Henny

Hello Andres I’m also currently working on a project with a V350 with profibus card connected to a CTI2500 PLC using a 505-7202 FIM module(500 series Texas Instruments). In my situation de profibus communication is running well and I used the Bit_recv_1 128 bit and the Bit_send_1 128 bit. On the CTI side these are mapped to 8WX inputwords 16 bit (8*16=128) and 8WY outputwords 16 bit(8*16=128). I installed the profibus card in the V350 and after that supplied it with 24V=. Then when trying to download the first time my project in visilogic I got a warning that the firmware of the V350 has to be updated before profibus could be used and I did so. Then in the Visilogic project you have to use the Profibus configuration block as a power up task. In this block you fill in the slave address and al send and receive areas,I used XB,s,XI,s and XDW,s for this purpose. If everything is correctly configured on both in your situation Visilogic V350 and Simatic manager (or TIA portal) for S7300 then the communication should run and in Visilogic you should see a value of 32 at the status message and the DW,s configured for counter reads and counter writes should be incrementing. If the status message shows 0 or 16 then it means that the configuration is wrong at the S7 site. Hope it helps? Kind regards Henny Henny

Hello In the attached program output 49 exists in “subroutine” and “subroutine 1”. You have to call one of these two subroutines from the main routine otherwise the won’t be executed. Regards Henny

Hello You could check if your slave devices(also called server devices in ethernet terms) support UDP protocol and if Yes then you don,t have to use the connect and disconnect blocks and would only need one socket. Regards Henny

Hello Eyal Is profinet Also on the roadmap for Unistream controllers? Could be intresting for the European market. Regards Henny

Hello Rob In the meantime you could also use a protocol gateway to set up communication between Allen Bradly and Unitronics plcs. Here are some links. http://www.prosoft-technology.com/Products/Gateways Here you can select the ethernet/ip protocol one one side and modbus master slave at the other site. and here is another one http://www.moxa.com/product/MGate_5105-MB-EIP_Series.htm The disadvantage of this solution is that extra hardware is needed to set up communicaton but it can work wel if propperly configured. I have succesfully set up communication between a CTI plc (used to be Texas Instruments 555 plc) and Unitronics V570 using a agilicom profibus <=>modbus rtu gateway. Kind regards Henny

Hello David Thanks for your reply! It’s not a big issue with the V230 but I run in to this and learned the trick about retriggering the Modbus config FB from our Unitronics supplier in the Netherlands and that is a good workaround. On the same V230 is besides the Modbus ip UDP protocol also Modbus RTU over comport 1 running using RS232 and this connection is automatically reestablished when dis en reconnecting cable. The V230 is also Modbus master at the Modbus RTU connection. With a spare V570 and some Wago remote I/O I also tested as you suggested with Modbus TCP but therefore the logic is a bit more complicated because you have to make use of the socket init and the socket connect functions. Also SB147-149(depending on socket number in use) has to be used as a condition for the Modbus reading or writing FB,s.I learned this from the Unitronics Ethernet webinars. When repowering the remote wago I/O for let’s say 10 times 6 times communication was automatically reestablished and 4 times I have to repower the V570 to reestablish communication. With some extra logic added it worked always but then the advantage compared with modbus udp regarding this particular issue is completely gone so I leave the communication at modbus udp for this moment. Don’t know how this behavior is with a V230 because I don’t have a spare one for testing this. I find the Unitronics great plc,s with a lot of value for money when compared to leading plc manufacture companies like Siemens,Rockwell etc.Unfortunatly in my country almost every plc programmer knows the Siemens and Rockwell plc,s but never heard of Unitronics and everyone seems to be used to paying a lot of money for programming software? Regards and thanks again. Henny

Hello David Thanks for your explanation! Will the communication between your inverter and the V1040 automatically be reestablished when your repower your inverter? I ask this because we use Wago remote I/O (Modbus udp protocol) with a V230 in one installation and in another installation a V570 is used for this purpose. If the Wago remote I/O is repowered with the V230 then the Modbus config FB has to be retriggered before communication will be established again. The V570 has no problem in such a situation and only the SB2 bit is needed before the comport and protocol setting. Kind regards Henny