Walkerok

Hi Tim, I meant to respond to this some time ago, but forgot about it. The easiest way to go is a GSM modem because some of the work is already worked out for you. But like you said onlt ATT and T-Mobile are GSM in the good ole USA. If you issue is that you can not get a usable signal with either of these companies then CDMA will be required. However, if your experience is like ours that ATT has no idea what a modem is, what M2M is, and what a static IP address is, then act like they are 3 year olds who no longer understand the english laguage then I would suggest that you go to a third party carrier of their data. We use T-mobile for all of our modems, but we do not use T-mobile (this will make sense in a moment). Both ATT and T-mobile have contracts with third party companies that do know what they are doing and the tech is used nationwide for oveland trucking companies to keep track of truck data. The 3rd party companies will also be cheaper on the monthly plans. There are several, but we use a company called Jazz Wireless. If you put in a google search for m2m provider several companies come up. We personally stay away from ATT since they are much more expensive than what we have gotten from third party groups that use T-Mobile. The good news is wheather you pick one or the other you can use towers from both. So as long as one of them is available you will be ok. Now onto the CDMA. Techinically, there is no reason whatsoever why a CDMA modem will not work with a Unitronics once it has been set up. You can get CDMA modems from many places (Multitech makes a very nice one). The CDMA modems are only able to be for one provider and before you buy you MUST gauranteee that the modem you are looking to buy is "approved" on the carrier network you are wanting to use and that the carrier will allow M2M connections. You can not switch carriers on CDMA modems ever and even if hardware says that it is "open" or "broken" the carrier will refuse or be unable to use it if it is not "approved". The hardest part is the setting up, and the carriers are all unprepared to correctly make M2M data connections because no one ever asks for them (or you can never find the one person in all of the carriers employee base that knows anything). It will take a fair anount of work between you and the modem and you and the CDMA carrier to make it work, but you can make it work if you must. It will not be easy, but once you figure it out one you will be able to use the information over and over again. If you must go with CDMA I would start with a Multitech modem (they have units that are approved for Sprint, Verizon, and Aeris and specialize in M2M and may be able to help with the setting up process. They may have other carrier approvals but we don't use CDMA so I have not gone very far with this analysis. Good luck Keith

Very nice installations on both your small and large boiler projects. Weishaupt burner have allways been very attractive and you did a great job with the artwork repsenting them oun your screens. I did not see a flame safeguard in your control panel I assume that it is inside the Weishaupt housing. I was curious what type was used. I think I see Siemens servos for an LMV51 or LMV52 but I could not really tell. I am really impressed by how professional your valves, burner, and vessle art is done. I try, but when it comes to artwork I have no capabilities and all my stuff turns out looking cartoon looking. Congratulations on a great set of projects. Keith

You do not say what frequency you are wanting to take temperature readings and store the information, but data tables are not the correct place to store large amounts of data. How we handle this situatuon at my company is to use a data table for local decisions and on screen annunciation of short term data only. Every time you record a temperature store this to a data table (just before you store copy the entire data table and then paste it one row down so that you are not overwriting older data in your table). Yes you will eventually lose the oldest data as it gets pushed out the end of the dta table. Then you would have data from the newest to the oldest for the 32,000 + readings to show on screen locally and manipulate as to what was happening now and in the near past. Then after this store, save the same information as a delimited line into a .CSV file on the SD card. In our case we change the file name once per day making the file name of the file to be limited text and the complete date so we can locate data easily for an event based on the day/month the event occured. When saving files in a .CSV on an SD card you are not bound by the file number limitation that is published in the help files and I have had upwards of a thousand(s) files in a single folder. (PS. I screwed up and made a new file name every 24 minutes and not every 24 hours so this was completely by acident I would not chose to have 1000s of files in the same directory on purpose). At this point the customer can remove and replace SD cards as needed to get their long term storage of data or you can send them the files if you have the communications capabilities (and speed) to get the .CSV files to the custoemr over ethernet or modem. Keith

We have used a custom programmed controllers to be the master in serial connections, but not ethernet to a couple of different versions of Yaskawa VFDs in the past. You did not say what model of Yaskawa you are trying to control so I will have to talk about this generically. The Yaskawa VFDs have parameter settings to where your Speed reference comes from and where your start/stop sequence of events comes from. First you need to set up your V130 correctly to set it up to be a master device, but you also need to set up the Yaskawa to allow you control. My first steps would be to just read data from the yaskawa. The typical piece of data we would start with is the DC bus of the VFD since it is a known value when the drive is powered up and easily verified without any motor connected or running. Once you are able to read the DC bus you will know that you are at least making a connection, then you can progress to control which would require you to set up the VFD to accept "Option PCB" control. This should be one of the items selectable in your list of parameters for both the "Frequency Reference" and the "Run Command Selection" For example in an F7 Yaskawa drive these would be parameters B1-01 and B2-02. That is about the best I can come up with given the very limited information. Sorry Keith

Pretty much all of the manufacturers of motor contactors do not include diodes (and a majority of DC relays are also without diodes). They generally do this so that that polarity does not matter. If they include the diode and a user connects positive and negative backwards bad things happen and and there is a huge quantity of "waranty" claims. If they leave it out and polarity is reversed everything will work fine with the customer being none the wiser. They are expecting those people who know what they are doing to just add the 3 cent diode. And if they are smart enough to add the diode, then they are probably smart enough to get the diode band going in the right direction to the positive side as well. It is a pain for those of us that would typically add diodes to everything, but thats just the way the world seems to be put together for now.

+3 Dito

I guess my question is on the laod cell hardware. Not knowing what it is. Is there any possibility of drift due to a mechanical reason or an expansion and contraction issue due to materials changing temperature over your time frame? I use the load cell modules myself on several things and I have never experienced waht you are talking about. except when there was a mechanical reason. In my case I am working with large metal containers and thee is a hysteresis when a container is pressed down on and what level it retunes to. But the effect is completely mechanical in nature and not electronic. For you to have an electronic drift I would think that is an indication of an moving resistance in the strain gauge curcuit, while possible I suppose I do not have a good enough understanding of how that mechanics would actually work and how to prevent it. I will say that in my calibrations my first point is always the zero weight position. I do this because the zero position is not the load cell with nothing on it. It is the strain gauge with the measuring bins installed so the zero I want is actually the strain gauge with a few hundred pounds of metal bin weight on it. Keith

Maybe I am not understanding what you are wanting, but the V130 has a "toggle" coil under the boolean listing. Isn't this what you want?

You place the "Spark Quencher" accross the thermostat contacts. So accross terminals 1 and 2 on your thermostat. Keith

You should never mix 120VAC signals between different neutrals (unless all neutrals are all bonded to the same earth ground point). The inputs in this module are all isolated from each other so that you could take all 8 inputs from 8 different devices with 8 different control power transformers as long as you bring in a neutral and hot signal input from each of the 8. or if you are reading from one device then you will need to bring in the one neutral and jumer it to all 8 N terminals and then bring in your different 120VAC signals into whatever quantity of L inputs you need to use. Keith

At first blush this may sound a little off the wall, but in a VFD system you need cooling. If you have fan(s) that are going through a thermostat there is a much more intermittent issue that comes up where the bounce accross the thermostat contacts will cause an electrical noise problem, but it will be extremely intermittent. We sell a very large quantity of VFDs (mostly FUJI but also a fair number of ABB ACS800s and for years we experienced no particular issue until our main fan supplier changed a very small aspect of their fan design and simultaneously the mechanical thermostat we use also had a change that we were unaware of. The manifestation of the issue was that the VFD would spontaneously fault (say one out of 50 times) when the cooling fan(s) were activated. We investigated the problem believing that the fan was the issue (because the fan manufacturer had a publicly stated change). Communications was also affected at the same time when the fans activated. We went round and round the problem and then under careful testing we were seeing instances where any fan design could be made to exhibit the issue and narrowed the problem to the thermostat. Since the fans are 120VAC we had not taken their affect too seriously. We have since added a spark arrester product made by OKAYA (specifically we buy the XAB1201) and our instances of noise caused by cooling fans has been reduced to zero (in the last 2 years) http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/336742/OKAYA/XAB1201.html The parts are purchasable from a large number of online sellers and they are very inexpensive it is at least possible that you need to adress this type of issue. Keith

Adding my 2 cents. I agree with Joe on the regen of a VFD. If your VFD is set to have a controlled stop ... don't.... set the VFD to coast to a stop instead of a ramped stop. I find that for many VFD models coasting to a stop isolates the VFD from the regen and can help because when it tries to control the stop the VFD will be using dynamic braking to prevent the regen and the dynamic braking can creat whole new noise front. History has shown that if regen is the cause of the problem (on going to a stop) that you will not experience the commuinications loss until your motor speed gets very low (10hz or less) and many times occurs between 1 and 3 Hz. Many VFDs will also have an overvolt condition in a controlled stop causing and over volt fault of the VFD. You did not mention what type of compressor it was, but if it is a piston type there is a potential for a last second kick of the piston stroke to create a high regen spike when ramping to a stop. Coasting to a stop generally takes away many bad things and you get to avoid adding the braking resistors. The inertia of compressors is generally not bad unless there is a large flywheel involved like you would find in a salt water disposal pump. What brand and model of VFD are you using? Keith

I use have this method to talk to 8 devices simultaneously with 3 reads and two writes each for a total 40 reads and writes and it works well. Post your program and lets see if we can figure out what is going on. I have never uses a Jazz to do communications, I find the Jazz way too limiting. I generally would not use anything less than the V130 when I am doing Modbus comminications personaly. The cost of the Base V130 is not different enough from the cost of a Jazz combined with the required port hardware to make the communication possible. Keith

The ability to communicate with multiple decies can be done in several ways, but one was is like the picture (I hope) from the gallery. Use an array method where each read/write line is executed based on if a memory integer equals a particular value. At the end of each net increment the integer by one and after you have gone through all of the read/write lines you want implemented then reset the memory integer to zero so the process can start over again. You have decisions to make on what to do when communication fails for one or more of your devices, but I do not have the time to gothrough all of that here. There was another forum question just earlier this week on that subject and some discussion was made in that line. Keith Yay the picture got put in !!! Thank You Cara

In my programming world I am 100% serial connections and not Ethernet, but looking at your nets it looks to me that you have the same status integer that a serial modbus connection would have, so just compare that if the MI296 or 297 = 5 then you will know that communication has timed out and stopped. This communication will auto resume since it tries to execute the net on every scan (provided you pres your read/write bit you have in the top line of your net) If you were wanting to press the button once and then periodically retry automatically until a connection was made then auto re-execute your read/write then I would make a couple of nets that say: If MI296 = 5 then start a timer and put in that the line is only active while the timer is not true (use a set bit on this timer)(example once every 2 seconds). Every time the timer becomes true then re-execute net 4 in your program (bypass MB126) also every time the net executes also reset the timer. If the com has not been restored then the cycle will repeat with the timer becoming true again in 2 seconds. The timer will time out again and again until such time as MI296 no longer equals 5. In this way you will allow your main program 2 seconds of unburdend scans (skiping the timeouts of failed communication), but will retry once every two second until the comm is restored. Ultimately, reading your data automaticaly while not slowing down your scan times on every scan but a single scan once every 2 seconds. Rinse and repeat for MI297 and the write command line. Keith

Just a geuss. Is it possible that your flow meter 4-20ma input and your ultrasonic are self powered analog outputs? If they were self powered and you connected them like you see in the installation examples I would think that you will not get a complete signal. If they are self powered then connect the negative of your two external devices to 0v and the positive of each of your devices to the AN0 and AN1 inputs and see what happens. If they are loop powered devices then the installation connections shown in the V130-33-R34 paperwork should work just fine and I don't know what to tell you. Can you post model numbers of the devices so we can see how they are constructed? Keith

Hello, When I first read your post I thought you were talking about having multiple modules. After looking at it differently, I believe you have the following. V350-35-RA22 only You have two RTD inputs two analog inputs two digital inputs Your jumper settings look correct, However looking at the V350-35-RA22 installation manual it could have been written more clearly. Looking at the RTD inputs diagram it shows visually that the RTD connect to terminal 5.6.7.and 8 with terminal 4 as the common for landing the third wire. The text right beside it says that it is "INPUTS" 7,8,9, and 10 with terminal 11 as the third wire landing location. Both of these statements are correct, but it would much more intuitive if the documentation keyed the inputs to the terminal numbers. I believe that your physical wiring is not correct. You said in your post that you had connected T+ and T- together and this would be incorrect. You should have "terminals" 7 and 5 jumpered to "terminal" 4. So one of your RTD should have its negative going to terminal 8 positive going to terminal 7 and a jumper wire between 7 and 4. The other RTD should have its negative on 6, its positive on 5 and terminal 5 and 4 are also wire jumpered together. On your 4-20ma sensors (assuming they are 2 wire since most seam to be 2 wire) the positive should be connected to "terminal" 1 and the negative connected to terminal 10 for one of them and the positive connected to terminal 1 and the negative connected to terminal 9 on the other. You should not have 0V connected to terminal 4 in any way and your post says that you do. This should leave "terminals" 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11 open to be used and digital inputs (Inputs 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4) Take the 0V wire off of termianl four and correct the RTD connections and see what happens. Keith

I tried to make an album so I can post pictures, but it says I do not have permission to make an album..........A little help please Thank You Keith

Dang you Joe...... Why didn't you say that could happen two days ago

Yes this is able to be done. You use the store function blocks to "load timer/ counter preset" preset value value as a ML then you can compare the double word to your minimum time you want. If the value of the doubleword is less than or equal to the minimum number you have set then direct store the minimum value into the ML and then "store counter/timer preset from your ML" into your timer. So whever your customer enters a value less than your minimum you will compare and see that it is less and then rewrite the entered value with the minimum value you will allow on that particular timer. Keith

V570, V1210, and a V1040 using Visi 9.4.0 build 0 and all of the latest firmware installed on any of the 3 I have an issue that came up because I have to write a program that will communicate with multiple VFD units, but I never know exactly how many and this necessitates a user enterable number of how many VFDs we will be talking to at the same time. In this case I made two lines for modbus reade (function code 3 with 98 reads per execution). On line one I let the read happen and in the first case I added after the read FB that if MI242 = 2 (two VFDs being read) then set MB 298. On the second line I have as a pre condition to execution that MI242 must equal 2 and imediately after the Read FB I reset MB 298. Each line is preconditioned as to wheather or not MB 298 is true or un-true. This seemed simple enough but on line one the setting of the MB 298 coil at the end never occured. If I forced the setting of the bit the second net would correcly reset the bit after executing the read to the second VFD. The only real difference between the lines was the camparison after the function code 3 read. I surmised that imediatly after the read the read is no longer true so that by the time the PLC got around to checking the comparison of MI242 the line was no longer true and the bit was never set. (Ok, I am mentally ok so far) So I removed the compare but I did not move the set MB 298 and just drew a connecting line to fill in the now empty spot. The result was unexpected in that the bit was again never set. Since line 2 worked correctly I decided to removed the line space between the read FB and the set MB 298 coil on net 1. Now the set coil workes correctly as needed. The result that the net did not work correctly till I touched the set coil to the read #3 FB was unexpected and I think indicates a bug in the compiler function of How Visilogic translates the graphical programming on screen to code that makes the PLC work. Just an FYI Thank You Keith

Contact your Unitronics seller. I beleive you need a replacement unit from reading some of the other posts in the forum. Keith

You never actually said it, but I am taking as a matter of faith that you are actually using a modulating valve and not a simple on/off valve. Your description of instantaneous valve changes makes me suspect that you do not have a modulating valve because modulating valves always have a time to full open and a time to full close and the fastest I have ever seen a modulating valve move from any supplier would preclude the description of "chattering" So assuming that you have a modulating valve then in a PID loop if you set P to a value and leave I and D equal to zero then you would get the exact result you are describing. (when you get to to your set point the valve suddenly only opens and closes). This would be because your PID is actually putting out only a minimum and maximum signal out to your analog output. To stop this effect you must put some "I" into the equation. With "i" put in (leaving "D" at zero) you will be allowed to not position correct so instantly and there will be some time lag to changes. For example set your P to 50 and your I to 20 You should have a more gradual change when approaching and leaving your setpoint. If you do indeed have an on/off only valve then the tactic needs to change, but I am not going to go through the time to write all that down not knowing what you actually have. Give some more information on your system. You have a sensor that ranges fromn 0 - 1000mBar What is your valve control input? What is your valve main power voltage? What is the time of travel for full open and full closed (spring return motors will have different times for opening and closing)? What is it you are actually controlling Boiler, Compressor, Injector, ....Etc You gave the MI for the pressure sensor what is the MI for your analog output to your valve? and anything else you think we might need to know to help Keith

I have tested this function before. The battery low bit can be set at any time and is completely dynamic on the turning on part of the function. To get the bit to turn off you must cycle the power to the PLC. I tried to make an "I have changed the battery" button that would reset the bit (provided you really did change the battery with a good one), but the reset is constantly eing overwritten by some other decision the PLC is making and will not reset. I also tried to reset the bit by going online with the PLC with the same negative result. So long story short....The low battery bit can only be reset with a power recycle and it is not a glitch with just your V570. Keith

Hi Leon, Im sorry but you did not give enough information to give you an actual answer, however I can give some things to look at. You said you have a JAZZ are you using the "JZ-RS4" com port kit" You have to make sure you set up for the required node ID, com speed Ect.. see the help files on Modbus. As far as the HEX indications in you Omron manual. Hex is decimal and decimal is hex You just have to use the corect decimal value to equal the hex value you need. For example lets say you wanted to write a max frequency to Omron data location 124Fh (on page 312 of your Omron manual) is 4687 in decimal (use your windows scientific view of the built in calculator to make the conversions if you need to) So if you needed to write this you would use lets say Omron function code 10h = decimal function code 16. I have never used a JAZZ for communications so I am assuming that it will allow a code 16 write like the vision controllers. but assuming it does, you would use a function code 16 write to location 4687 and if you wrote a decimal value of 6000 to this location you would be setting the max frequency value to 60.00. Sorry I can't be of more help but if you are not talking at all, follow the help files and get the com speeds, parity, stop bits, node number, and packet size to match before any communication will be possible (asuming the physical wiring between the two is correct) Keith