Flex727

Also, is the rj11 cable 4-wire or 6-wire?

Has there been any testing of VisiLogic with Windows 10 yet? Anyone planning to give it a try? If so, please report your results here.

Does the PLC correctly sense when the card is removed or replaced?

Click on your screen name in the upper right and choose "My Content". If there are other images there, delete the ones you're no longer using to free up space, then you can upload your picture.

Thanks, Walkerok. In this case, the PLC was already updated with new firmware and I was trying to install a clone file from an older PLC. That seemed to work okay in a V570, but crashed my V1210. I need to try it again to confirm it wasn't some other weird glitch. It really would be useful to know what firmware versions are associated with each VisiLogic version.

Is there a table somewhere that lists exactly what firmware files are associated with each version of VisiLogic? I have a clone file for a V1210 that was programmed with VisiLogic 9.4.0. When I try to load that file from the SD card into a V1210 that has had the firmware updated with VisiLogic 9.7.24, it just crashes. Will I be successful if I revert the V1210 to the firmware from 9.4.0?

I use Replace Operand often and have never had this occur. One thing I do avoid, however, is replacing operands that are part of a vector. Might MB3 be included in some vector operation?

It's too quiet here in Unitronics-Land, so I'll add this... A young Programmer and his Project Manager board a train headed through the mountains on its way to Wichita. They can find no place to sit except for two seats right across the aisle from a young woman and her grandmother. After a while, it is obvious that the young woman and the young programmer are interested in each other, because they are giving each other looks. Soon the train passes into a tunnel and it is pitch black. There is a sound of a kiss followed by the sound of a slap. When the train emerges from the tunnel, the four sit there without saying a word. The grandmother is thinking to herself, “It was very brash for that young man to kiss my granddaughter, but I’m glad she slapped him.” The Project manager is sitting there thinking, “I didn’t know the young tech was brave enough to kiss the girl, but I sure wish she hadn’t missed him when she slapped me!” The young woman was sitting and thinking, “I’m glad the guy kissed me, but I wish my grandmother had not slapped him!” The young programmer sat there with a satisfied smile on his face. He thought to himself, “Life is good. How often does a guy have the chance to kiss a beautiful girl and slap his Project manager all at the same time!”

Try the "Project Optimizer" under the Build menu.

Not a complaint - programmers can usually deal with any of these kinds of issues once known (there's no such thing as a perfect product). Is this issue understood by the developers? Is it something that might be addressed in the future?

It seems like 1.5 seconds is more than a slight delay. Is there something else going on here? Should this be the expectation for all sound execution that I, as a programmer, need to take into account for all projects?

Also, make sure the Com Port selected in VisiLogic matches the Com Port assigned by the software in Windows (go to Device Manager to confirm).

Thanks, Alexander!

Are you putting the SD card directly into the PLC, or are you using an extension of some sort?

Thank you, sgull. That's very valuable information.

Is the reason you can't easily cycle the power because your application can't allow the PLC to be offline for 5-10 sec, or because you can't easily access a power switch? If the latter, you can use SB 300 to re-boot the PLC without having to access power.

Great question - and the answer I expected. On that same subject, subroutines run in the order they are called in the Main Routine. Where does the "While Displayed" routine fall in that order - at the beginning of the Main Routine, the end, or somewhere in the middle?

Thanks, Cara. Unfortunately, the projects don't exist anymore as they were when they weren't working properly. As soon as I can break loose I'll see if I can re-create the code as it was before.

I have to backtrack on my conclusion here. The MODBUS Read Registers was working all along, but often took several minutes to update. After eliminating all the Read Coils operations by packing the bits into registers, I ended up with 7 lines of Read Registers - all but one was an array. The total number of registers being read was 33. This should be a very simple and quick operation, but one or more registers would fail to read for random periods of time, up to several minutes. I solved this problem by moving all the data in the V1210 to be sequential then made a single read from the UniStream with a 33 register array. It all works perfectly now, but I'm wondering if there isn't some bug in the MODBUS Read Registers function in UniLogic. Is the function trying to execute multiple reads simultaneously causing a collision, or is it something else?

I may have solved my immediate problem, though I'd still like to understand exactly where the limitation comes from. I performed a "Bits To Numeric" function on some of the coils in the V1210 and then performed the reverse "Num to Bits" in the UniStream. That worked by reducing the number of coils being read while increasing the number of registers. It looks to me like there is an absolute limit in the number of coils that can be read using MODBUS in the UniStream. I've never noticed a similar limitation in Vision, and when I did hit a MODBUS limit, I would just initiate an additional read. I have one project that has 5 MODBUS reads of over 100 registers each. Even with the reads being initiated simultaneously, all of them execute flawlessly. Is there a similar way to initiate multiple reads in UniStream?

I upgraded to UniLogic 1.13.09 but there was no change. By the way, upgrading UniLogic is a major pain. I cannot find a way to successfully upgrade the PLC to match the requirements of the UniLogic software without writing the whole thing to a DOK (a very time-consuming process) and then inserting the DOK into the PLC. If I try to upgrade the PLC directly from the UniLogic software I get this error when I try to connect via USB: "The selected PLC needs to be updated." That's fine, but when I try to update the firmware from the UniStream Manager I get this error: "No compatible version found for update." This looks like it's because the project file residing in the PLC is, of course, from the previous version and won't run until it get's updated in the new version of UniLogic. Updating feels a lot like chasing one's tail. While I often have the need to transfer a LOT of data between PLCs, the above isn't that much. With Vision PLCs I would normally pack all those coils into a few registers with the Struct function. Since in the above I am reading 411 coils, that could be packed into 26 registers in the V1210, then reading would be easily done by the UniStream. The problem is that I don't know how to unpack that Struct array in the UniStream. Is there a way to do that?

s.pratt, thank you. I've never been able to connect with a UniStream by USB - I always use ethernet because of that. Your procedure worked!

I've run into some sort of communications limitation and I'm hoping someone can help me sort this out. What I'm trying to do is read and write some data between a UniStream 7 and a V1210 using MODBUS IP. The UniStream is the Master and the V1210 is the Slave. I set up the MODBUS configuration to do the following, which works perfectly: COILS: - Read an array of 48 coils - Read an array of 64 coils - Write a single coil - Read an array of 104 coils - Read an array of 195 coils - Write a single coil - Write a single coil REGISTERS: - Read a single register - Read an array of 2 registers - Read an array of 2 registers That's a list of every line in the MODBUS Slave configuration. All are active. This works perfectly with no problems, but I found I needed to read a bit more data. When I added any additional read coils, one or more of the read registers stop working. Is this a limitation of MODBUS or the UniStream? What can I do to overcome this issue? By the way, I'm using version 1.12.20 of UniLogic on a Win 7-64 PC. Perhaps upgrading UniLogic will help?

Keep in mind that when you go online in VisiLogic it's really only reading the state of each memory location and highlighting it in the ladder (at least that is what it looks like to me). It doesn't check anything about the logic - in fact it doesn't even care if it's the same program in the PLC as what you're looking at on your PC. In VisiLogic, never assume the power flow logic represents reality in the PLC. All of that is changed with UniStream (and improved).

By the way, Cara, you guys should definitely develop a modest UDFB of this nature for us to use to wow customers and potential customers. Give it some thought.