Joe Tauser

Yep. Subroutines are the way to go. You're on the right track. Joe T.

I have a customer that uses hydraulic cylinders to raise and lower a security gate at an electric utility transmission station. There' s really not much to it. Joe T.

I did some experimenting in UniLogic with this question and reached the following conclusions: 1. You can't change the size of the HMI screen. Therefore there is no "pop-up" window functionality at this time. You can't drop a Custom Control onto a new display that is only the size of the Custom Control. 2. When you press a button one of the options available is "Message Box". This is like a Visual Basic dialog box asking a basic Yes/No question. You can't really change it. 3. You can add a Custom Control to it's own Layer, and then play with the Visibility property to make it appear and disappear. Those are my observations. If anyone has concrete experience on this feel free to chime in. Joe T.

What you've posted looks like a good start to me. I'm guessing you've verified that your "Message" tag is the same length as your "Vklop10" tag. If it doesn't work I'd add both tags to a Watch when you're online with the PLC so you can actually see what's going on. Joe T.

Contact Official Unitronics Support at support@unitronics.com. Since the Great Hack of 2023 all previous versions of UniLogic that did not have mandatory security measures have been removed from the Unitronics website and are only available by special request. They should be able to get you the interim versions you need. Joe T.

There is not. There are quite a few functions in Vision that don't exist in UniStream. PWM and Linearize Array immediately come to mind. The thing about a function in Vision is you don't know what the assembly code looks like under the hood to get that function to work. We got spoiled by some of that stuff. Here's the RTC to ASCII udfb I lifted from the example programs. Looking through it gives us an indicator of what kind of somersaults the Vision programmers performed for that function. You can call it overkill if you wish. But it does work. Joe T. RTC to ASCII V2.ulle

Have you tried setting up an Aperiodic Batch Operation? Joe T.

The three second recovery probably has something to do with your Retry count setting. My experience has been that the specific modbus error codes you describe above don't always get set they way you think they should. I spent a huge amount of time trying to simulate errors between the PLC and another device and then trying to figure out the timing and value of the error codes, just as you have. Are you experiencing errors when trying to communicate with a device or are you just trying to interpret what the PLC response is when firing commands to a dumb terminal? If you're just trying to observe PLC behavior with a PC, I'd Google "free Modbus simulator" and put that on your PC. If you're just trying to get a more real-time monitor of the communication status between your PLC and the actual device, I'd abandon the Status column in the Modbus Table and go straight to the source - the Modbus Remote Slave Status word. It changes its value to 2 or 3 pretty quickly when communication is lost and will reset itself back to 1 when communication restores itself. Joe T.

No. What I meant was you need to replace the PLC. Or find another unit and swap out the main board. Unfortunately, Unitronics does not sell any replacement components - you'll need to find one on eBay or something. Joe T.

They have a commercial V1210 system that does exactly that. I helped them develop it. You'll need to figure out how to do what's called a "bubble sort" in ladder logic on a Data Table. This is not trivial. I'll have to give some thought to that one. Joe T.

Um... the PC is not a PLC. How would you connect the wiring of your equipment to it? All Remote Operator does is mirror the graphics in the PLC to another graphic display device; your monitor in this instance. Remote Operator does not turn your PC or your phone into a machine controller. Based on the PLC information screenshot above your PLC has had it's memory corrupted. You need to replace it, and you will need to somehow get the program to load into a new one. Joe T.

You can't "force" the PID algorithm. You can intercept the CV output and copy it to your control device, and when the PID block is off you can continue writing that same value, but when the PID block is activated again it will do its thing and come up with whatever value based on the tuning parameters. When you remove power from the PID block, the Integral value is retained unless you reset it using the Reset Integral function. The control value consists of P, I, and D components. If the PV -SP error is the same as when you turned the block off (so the P component will be the same) the block should pick right up where it left off. Joe T.

You have O57 and O59 assigned to duplicate coils. This is very bad programming practice. Unlike Set, Reset, and Toggle, you should only use a regular coil once in your program for a given output or bit. When the ladder scans, EVERY rung is evaluated. The last coil assigned to a particular memory location wins. While O57 and O59 may be ON in Net 4, In Nets 9 and 10 they will be turned OFF if MB 9 and/or MB10 are not on. Put an intermediate MB in place of O57 and O59 in Net 4. Then OR your intermediate MB with MB 9 and MB 10 in Nets 9 and 10 to turn the output on. Joe T.

Were you able to get Remote Operator working over the serial port? Ethernet is added with a card you install in the V350 - part number V100-17-ET2. Then you have to add a rung to your program to initialize it and assign an IP address. This is documented in the Help - search for "Ethernet" and then look at "Using Ethernet" and in that topic scroll down to Ethernet: Card Init. You'll have to assign a PLC name and depending on the version of Visilogic you're using there may or may not be a mandatory access password. Versions prior to 9.9.00 do not require a password, but they are less secure. You'll then need to connect your V350 via cable to a network that has WiFi Access if you want to use the phone app. Otherwise you can set up Remote Operator to run on a PC and change the connection from Serial to TCP/IP (Call). Joe T.

You can also download the Remote Operator program to your PC: https://downloads.unitronicsplc.com/Sites/plc/Visilogic/Download Software Utilities/Remote Operator Version 1.0.95.zip Remote Operator is similar to Remote Access. Remote Operator is Remote Access with some features removed like Data Table transfer. Both will allow you to run the equipment from a remote screen. Joe T.