John_R

at least the second fuse down is properly insulated.....🤨

Hmmm, No expert here, but years ago I had a couple of machines that used resolvers. If I recall they were not like encoders as they did not have a pulse output, but rather they had a two or three phase AC output and the PLC (old Giddings & Lewis) had special resolver modules. My understanding was that the controls compared the phase differences to "resolve" the rotational position of the device. I mainly remember what a pain they were to keep calibrated. I always thought they were pretty "old school" technology. JohnR

And I find that I like to use the Jump to Display with a touchscreen for repetitive use touch buttons, like an EXIT button or Arrow button. For instance, I make an EXIT button assigned to MB40, I can re-use that button on any display, but it only Exits from the current display to whatever display the jump is assigned to it for the particular display it is on. JohnR

Thanks Flex, I guess I really have not paid attention to that option on the Links & Jumps tab, but it makes sense. JohnR

Hey All, I'm in the process of converting a project I originally did in a V570 into a V1210 Along the way I have been revisiting logic I did several years ago and cleaning up some bad habits from the past (multiple lines in a net, conditional sub calls, etc). I ran the Project Optimizer and it came back with this suggestion for a few different "HMI Display Loaded" calls that I have, and says to use "Bit to Display" instead. I looked in the Help section but do not see "Bit to Display" Anyone know what/where/how ? JohnR

my experience with true "gaffers tape" goes back about 30 years or so when I worked in pro audio (concert sound), and the "gaffers" used "gaffers tape" to tape down cables and hang scrim cloths and such on stage for the concert. it was cloth tape that was more tacky that duct tape but it pulled off without leaving adhesive residue. so far as the snap I/O, I've made a little drill template to drill holes in the four corners and screw it down to the nice little screw bosses that the creators started putting on the V280, V560 ,V570's a few years back (why they have not followed through with holes in the snap I/O beats me, as they redesigned the PCB to have clearance in these corners). JohnR

Yep Flex, that's the way I'm looking at it, in my 30+ years of industrial control I've not run across that term either, and like you say "doesn't mean it doesn't exist"..... Somehow I get the feeling the guy I'm talking to is more "sales" than "engineer"....... I'll figure it out when I get the device in my dirty little hands, just thought perhaps I was being challenged with some new technology

Hey All, The boss has made arrangements for a "try before we buy" test of a Mass Flow Meter to monitor liquid nitrogen usage on one of our cryogenic freezers (if the test goes well, there is a possibility that we install these on eight freezers at which point I'll build something to accommodate). At this point though, I plan on doing some quick and dirty logic in the existing V570 I have on this freezer. The "sales engineer" sent me a blurb sheet that tells me this device can output an analog 4-20 signal, or a pulsed output via HART or MODBUS RTU (note the attached screenshot of the blurb sheet "output signals"). I figured for this test (since the flow meter will be 10 feet from my V570) that I would just take his 4-20 into an unused analog input and scale (linearize) it into whatever they want it to be. A couple weeks went by and the "sales engineer" called me to verify something else for him, so while I had him on the phone I questioned him as to whether they had a starting point for the scale factor (based on pipe size or something) or would we just have to do some trial and error to get it close. He responded that the signal would be "direct reading" (and as he is saying this my head is saying "no, I'm feeding this into a 14 bit analog input and 4-20 is going to give me a range of 3277-16384"), and then he said something about it was "pulsed analog", so I just agreed with him at that point to regroup my thoughts. Now, I have heard the term "pulsed analog" before, but I was thinking that it had something to do with digital audio (pulsed digital simulation of analog audio signals). I can see the pulsed output via HART or MODBUS, but pulsed analog clearly has me stumped. Can anyone out there clarify this for me? Am I missing something obvious? Regards, JohnR

If you build it, they will come The first "wireless phones" (radio telephones) were developed in the early 20th century, which evolved into cell phones by the late 20th century. My brand new cell phone would ring, I'd press a button and say Hello? It was a brave new world, and you felt pretty special to actually have one of these devices.... By the turn of the century we started using "smart phones", not only could I talk to someone, but I could send my friends text messages when I didn't feel like talking, even take pictures, how cool..... 20 some years later these smart phones have evolved into do everything mini computers/cameras/you-name-it, and we can't live without them... (I accidentally left mine at home one day, and I actually felt lost at work without it). Now we are living in a cloud world where everything has to be able to talk through the internet, whether it really needs to or not. What worked well 20 years ago in industrial control, still works well... and while controls have been refined over the years, life without IIoT is still possible, but then we would all feel left out on the new technology..... So they are building it... Here we come...... My 2 cents..... JohnR

Or 120V for us folks here in the US

well, this of course piqued my interest, and I had to google it seems to refer to a little backpack motor/prop used by para-gliders to power their flights, perhaps this is the reason the OP used the term piloted? and it seems Samba is a brand of ultra-light aircraft.... my search also brought up an interesting read about the Papp engine. things that make you go Hmmm...... https://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue51/papp.html

Yep Flex, yer probably right, I didn't think about the Keypad Variables, the U90 logic is so basic I usually use them when I just need a simple control with minimum user interface, for anything with user entries I usually step up to a V120. The repair part is tough to get, although I do have some of the M91 membrane keypads (M90-KEYPAD ?) that JoeT managed to get me a few years back when I had a M91 in an awkward location and it kept getting damaged. I'm thinking we paid around $30 for the keypad, a lot cheaper than $400 for a new T38 Johnr

just add your external "enter" input in parallel with the existing enter key

I just tried this on an M91 I have sitting on my bench. although I tried assigning a different SB key to trigger the Enter that did not work.... I imagine the same would hold true for an input...

Well, I got a chance to play with this over the weekend, mounted a separate breaker & power supply before the lock-out disconnect that only powers the V570 and the snap I/O module. Power to the remote I/O stuff shuts off with the lock-out disconnect. but, I find that when I power it back up, the remote I/O does not connect comms back to the V570. I've found that I can bang SB 300 (PLC Reset) on power up of the rest of the panel and reset the V570, which then connects to the remote I/O. But, I was wondering if there was a better way to re-establish comms between the V570 and remote I/O? JohnR

I know this takes us out of the realm of Unitronics-Land, but there is company called AdvanceHMI that offers free software to build an HMI in VB, and run it on a PC/Tablet/industrial Panel PC. It includes drivers for different flavors of A-B comms as well as others. https://www.advancedhmi.com/ JohnR

Thanks for the input Flex.... It seemed a reasonable thing to do, but sometimes I do catch myself doing "old school" stuff that just wont fly under todays rules and regulations. Choice of modules? it's what I keep on the shelf for other panels I've built here.... JohnR

Hey All, Trying to resolve an issue that's got me thinking outside the box. Looking for opinions as to whether my idea is acceptable. We have a machine that I recently upgraded from relays to PLC. I'm using a V570 with all remote I/O, EX-D16A3-TO16 IO-DI16 IO-RO16 With the exception of an encoder that comes straight to a V-200-E1B snap I/O. Our management is on a Data Collection kick and they want runtime info spoon fed to them. I've accommodated their needs by writing things to a data table, and retrieve it to excel using DataXport. All is good so far... But the machine has setup changes a dozen times a day where the operator must power down and LOTO. I cannot control nor predict when the machine is powered down, and obviously I cannot talk to the PLC with no power. You all with me so far? So, my thought is to supply power to the PLC only, from a source before the lockout disconnect. Everything else is safely locked out, 480v to motors, control power to other devices, etc. just power to the PLC for communications I'll have a relay that monitors power after the disconnect, and when it turns off it will give an input to the local snap I/O where I'll switch to an HMI display with a black backround and the phrase "Power is Off" dancing around like a screen-saver. Anybody out there see a safety issue with this? JohnR

Hey Aus, No, actually the battery was my first thought, and I changed it last Friday , and SB8 = 0 any other mind numbing ideas? JohnR

Hey All, Here's a strange one, anyone have an answer for this? I have a V570 project that I built a few months back, all seemed good until the middle of last week. seems that every morning when the machine is powered up, we find that all saved settings for the machine (stored in MI's) are at zero, as though the PLC was Initialized. luckily I have all these settings hard coded into a subroutine so it is just a matter of "loading default settings". but, still annoying... I'm about ready to put a new PLC in and see what happens, but thought I'd reach out to the masses and see if anyone has experienced this. JohnR

Hey, Thanks Flex....... I knew there had to be a more elegant way, I actually looked at the vector find earlier, but wasn't sure what to do with the trigger (A), I always forget about using things like SB1...... nets may be free, but it's always nice to do things in a cleaner, less cluttered way..... Regards, JohnR

Hey All, I have a project I did a while back with a V570, revamping an older relay logic machine with PLC/HMI controls, and as I've done with some other retrofits I am saving runtime data in a data table which then gets retrieved using DataXport, then some Quality Control type person uses that data to document performance. On this machine, I have been asked to implement "downtime" reporting. If the machine has been off for "X" amount of time, the operator must enter the reason for the machine being down before he can start it back up. The logic of this was not too difficult, after "X" amount of time the "Start" button becomes a "Go to downtime screen" button", where the operator selects one of sixteen predefined downtime codes, then it returns to the main screen where the Start button is now the Start button. So far, so good..... Now in my logic for selecting the downtime code, I have a screen with sixteen buttons that will be labeled with their predefined codes, these buttons are assigned to a block of sixteen MB's, and I am using a Bit-to-Number function to decode which button was pressed, then storing that number fur use in my report. But, the Bit-to-Number gives me the decimal value of the binary sequence of the block of MB's; 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 and so on up to 32768 Which I can deal with, but I'd rather just give them the numbers 1-16 on their report.... Now I know I can whip up 16 lines of equal-to/store to accomplish this, but I was hoping to find cleaner/neater way of doing this. Anybody got a better way of doing this? JohnR

Hey Flex, I will check out those AP's when I get a little deeper.... I've made a little headway, seems the used PLC I'm playing with has an issue, I did some wiggly-jiggling on the ethernet card connection and my comms popped up (both straight or crossover cables). Still not talking wirelessly, but also not sure of the integrity of these AP's, but I think at this point I'll back up and start with just two AP's as a single P-P bridge (instead of four configured as Multi-point bridge), baby steps...... JohnR

Cam, thanks for the input...... This is an experiment at this point, if I prove to myself that it is doable then I will buy some industrial grade AP's. Right now I'm just playing on my test bench. My main issue at this point is why the PLC wont talk to the AP, and since you mentioned a crossover cable (although most devices are auto negotiating these days) I did try a crossover from the PLC to AP, but still no connection. I'd prefer hard-wire for reliability, but it is a movable machine in a harsh wet environment and just thought a wireless link might be a good route to go. Anybody else out there have any thoughts on this? JohnR

Hey All, I'm working on a project with a couple of V570's that I would like to connect to a wifi network, mainly to avoid running cables to them. I'm no IT whiz, but but it seems like this should be pretty straight forward. I have 4 old Access Points from a different project, which I have setup as wireless bridges, with each having the MAC address of the other three loaded as their contact list. The LAN IP's have been set to the same subnet that I use for all my wired PLC projects that connect to our network (all of these I can connect to from my workstation. My thought process was that I can connect one of my AP's to the network, and an AP to each of my PLC's, and through some computer magic they would all be happy and talk to each other. One thing I am seeing at this point that confuses me is; In info mode on the V570, on the ethernet screen, there is a box telling you if you have communication, when I plug into a computer it shows "communication established 100baseT", but when I plug into one of my AP's I get "no link for tcp communication". I know the AP LAN ports are good as they have all been plugged in to configure. Anyone have any suggestions? Or have experience making this work? Or a better way to go about setting up something like this? Regards JohnR