Jeff164

Hello I have an application that I have built already in Unistream that I need to replicate but also to expand. The system primarily controls valves uisng discrete off/on outputs via transistor outputs through isolation relays. There are some other functions but the lions share of the outputs are valves. The smaller version only has 10 valves but there is a larger system with 46 valves; so as you can imagine there's allot of hard wired relays. I need to condense the panel footprint as well as reduce labor to build; so looking to use Ethernet I/P addressable solenoid valve manifolds to eliminate relays in the panel and the labor to wire same. Have reviewed the information from my SOV mfg's details on their Comminication module interface; and they support Ethernet TCP/IP. I've never worked with ethernet connected field devices that are 3rd party however so this is a bit murky just yet. Have looked at the COM: EtherNetI/P functions blocks from the drop down menu off the Ladder Toolbox, reading some of the help files; but as yet I havent found perhaps a sample program showing how they get implemented; perhaps I'm overlooking. thanks for your pointers !

Thanks Joe, my desktop is ugly...I generally dont use it for a place to open files or programs from; I typically use the start menu. Periodically I go in and peform desktop housekeeping and remove the litter. I guess I need to create a folder there for these things.

Sorry to dredge up an old thread .... but I have just installed the latest version of Unilogic 1.35.227 I did use the right click; "Run as Administrator"; the Unilogic installer showed that it was going to keep the old version (was previously running 1.33.373 So how do I go about launching the previous versions ? When I go to the Windows start menu, it does not show options to select other versions. I can go to the Program Files (x86) file menu, and indeed the program files are there... I suppose I need to pin a link to an executable to the start menu somehow...but which file? thanks much !

You arent the only one having issues getting hardware. I've had to resort to buying some components from 3rd party resellers found on eBay and the like. Hardware is trickeling in through normal channels but its a struggle and I'm unfortunatly having to look to other platforms for new builds as I work for an OEM mfg; we need consistent supply.

Just a follow up note: It seems I found my own mistakes and it was more related to not having good seperation & step mangment in the structure of my state engine. I did play around with the Click / Tap option on the button press functoin and it did not seem to help, only made things worse; so I'm back to the Set on press and Reset on release. If anyone has good kowledge of how this function works it would be great to hear.... it would be nice to have less mouse clicks involved in building these systems. thanks ! Jeff

Hello I'm getting some inconsitent results with the button press functions within the HMI. I'm using the State Machine Button, and within the List of Texts, have actions set to Set and Reset a bit on the Press and Relase respectivly. There are some instances in this code where I will want this these buttons to also drive a screen change, other instances just need to load a new value into the State Machine integer memory. This seemed to be casuing a conflict so I pulled the screen change function off to the ACTIONS section of the solution explorer. It seemed to resove the issue but I still get occasinoal errant hangups where the function isnt happening. I was wondering about the "Click / Tap" function as opposed to the Set / Reset. I tried it but it didnt seem to work at all, perhaps I was not using it properly. I didnot find anything about Click/Tap in the help menu. thanks

Hey Joe - thanks for this note - seems that my last windows upgrade courtesy of my IT partners changed my default settings and I had no idea why I couldnt find the image library anymore! I know this is an old thread but its still good information ! Jeff

@kratmel - Thank you for your reply, I truly do appreicate it. I will need to dig into this further. Is it possible for you to cite the appliciable code reference? Our existing Push / Pull start-stop device is one device, IE while it has 2 functions, its one device, one panel cutout. The manner in which you operate it defines the outcome. The issue we are currently having is that the original MFG we used has discontinued the line, and our current supply has some QC issues, IE we get switches that fail to make contact on the NC side and sometimes or fail to open the NC contact. It has been brought up to the distibutor but beyond credit for faulty product there doesnt seem to be any resolution. I started exploring this solid state switch as a means of addressing that issue. The solid state switch has an integral LED that is color configurable, so the red and green lights in my solution were to drive the green light as in a "ready to start" mode and the red when the switch would function as a stop switch. The contact output of the solid state switch is a single pulse out, irregardless of how long you hold the switch so a longer press would not help in this instance. We do have a seperate, maintained contact Emergency Stop mushroom head type pushbutton on all machines and this will always be a hard contact switch. Again - I thank you for pointing this out - I've been workign hard to improve our products and I'll not knowingly skirt safety regulations.

Thanks ! I had played with the toggle coil but I belive my mistake was setting up 2 toggle coils, one for each of the two states.

I'm curious to see if someone else out there has had a need to do this and if there is a cleaner way to accomplish it. Many of our panels use a single mechanical switch housing that we call a "Push / Pull". It combines the function of a momentary NO Start button and momentary NC stop button, and pilot light, into one physical housing. You pull it to engage the NO start and push it to engate the NC stop. Used to use an IDEC product until they discontinued the line. Currently using an alternate brand however its much more expensive and we are having QC problems with it. So my vendor gives me a sample of a Solid State Switch with an integral LED pilot light that can be configured to different colors. It only has 1 switch contact, however there are no moving parts and seems quite robust. The sample has both red and green LEDs. Since the unit has to drive a PLC input anyway, I wrote a basic test program to evaluate its functinoality. Here is a screen shot, took 4 lines of code, not very complicated. Bascially on first scan the PLC sets 05 and lights the green LED in the switch, could be considred a "READY TO START". Press the switch and its pulse output resets the GREEN LED output and sets the RED LED output. Cosnider this a "On" state. Press again while its RED is lit and it functions as a stop button. Works fine but I needed the two short fractional second timers to keep the PLC scan time from running faster than the pulse transtions. While that in of itself is an issue, I would like to avoid the timers, especially since the Samba platform is limited to 32 timers. Anyone have a better idea? thanks ! Jeff

Thanks much. I knew it was a combination of keystrokes but coulnt remember what they were. I suspected that it might be a windows thing more than a Visi thing but Visi is the only place I have the issue, ATM.

Hello I've run into this a couple of times before and there seemed like there was a workaround that involved a combination of keystrokes to restore it, cant remember what they were. I searched the board, this seems related - its close but not exactly my issue and there dosent seem to be resolution as yet. https://forum.unitronics.com/topic/8604-visilogic-popup-windows-dont-stay-on-correct-multiple-screens/#comment-36104 Working in visilogic - I always run 2 screens when I'm at my desk - but on the shop floor in the field its just the notebook PC - when doing somethign that causes a pop up window such as searching for an element - that pop up window is somewhere off screen - I have no idea where it goes - but until I can find it & click on its response button Visilogic is locked up. There was a kestroke combination that forced the pop up back onto the main screen visible but for the life of m eI cannot remember what it was. thanks much !! Jeff

I can see value in being able to change properties of several (font characteristics, background colors etc.) elements at once as well.

Thanks Aus For the record I didn't mean my reply to be percived as a slight against @AlexUT and my apologies if it came off that way. I work for a small OEM mfg & we do all our PLC work in house. Our systems change too much for us to outsource this work; as we do a high degree of customization. I'm currently dealing with 4 differnet PLC platforms (actually 5 when you consider that VisiLogic and UniLogic are different). I also get involed in a fair amount of hands on field work so it keeps me a bit scattered. I'm really liking some of the features that UniLogic offers and it seems to be a very capable platform. I hope to exploit some of these features further in the future if I can steer more jobs into this package.

Thanks - I do appreciate the reply Yes, in fact I had looked at the help menu and I have already been moving the "tiles" or boxes around, and as well I have been using the "auto-hide" feature. Auto hide is usefull when working from the smaller notebook computer. The Toolbox however does not seem to have the autohide function that most of the other windows have. I can move it around, resize it etc, but I cannot make it hide unless I'm missing somthing. The reset to default button is something I have had already had to to use several times to recover functinoality after I seem to have "broken" it. From what I can see: The Toolbox can be repositioned and resized - however the relative layout of the components within the toolbox and selection of same is still confied to the its current format. IE they are arranged in a vertical stack, with a navigational tree that can be expanded and collapsed. The expand all / collapse all icons are usefull, but From my perspective if the toolbox could be displayed as an optional ribbon IE - horizontal arrangment (keyword optional here) it would be helpful when using a smaller computer screen. This ribbon could then have the major element groupings staged horizontally instead of the vertical stack as shown here. Some consolidation of groupings; IE one group for COM, one group for Data Tables. etc. could possibly reduce the number of groups needed. Please note: I did not think I was saying or implying that this was a 'requirement'; even after rereading my original post - quite honestly I'm not sure why you read it that way. I saw it as just a request for an alternate functinoality. As I see it this forum is created and sponsored by the manufacter and there are MFG reps as moderators, so it seemed a logical place to post such a request. My apoologies if this is not the case. If there are alternate / more proper channels to interact with the MFG reps please advise. I undertand that perhaps there may be some techincal limitations to the GUI and how it interacts with the source code that drives Unilogic; that might make it difficult to implement this and to have have multiple formats to be able to display and interact with the software. thanks again for your consideration. Jeff

I'm new to UniLogic - have been working with VisiLogic for a few years now but for this project (wanting features as well as better hardware avaiability) I went with Unistream product. So this is my first Unistream / UniLogic experience. One thing that I belive woudl be valueable would be if we had the option of making the the Toolbox optionally be a ribbon with drop down menus across the top of the screen instead of a block off to the side thats in the way all the time. When I'm at my desk and have a nice 27" monitor, its no big deal. Often I'm working remotely, either from home or a hotel room and I only have the small screen of my notebook PC. During these times the toolbox is somewhat annoying. I have learned how to Auto-Hide the Solution Explorer and the Properties Window. Properties Window could be a pop-up that auto hides until you click on an element to edit it, as an alternate to the or the auto-hide / dockable function that't there now. Having the Tookbox be a ribbon with drop-downs would make working from a smaller screen much easier - just my thoughts after fiddling with this for a couple of weeks. This feature could be selectable, IE for those in-office days where we have lots of electroinc real estate it could be the way it is. Much of this depends on the aspect ratio of your project PLC and of your PC screen, but it would be nice to have the option. thanks ! Jeff

OK disregard - I just fixed it by restoring default system images !

I'm working a project that is bein implemented into a Samba 35. SM35-J-TA22 to be exact. I'm running the latest VisiLogic program 9.8.95. When the PLC first boots up, instead of the normal Unitronics Splash Screen, I get a blank red screen and thre is a a narrow gray rectangle in the upper left corner. It clears itself in about 2-3 seconds, about like the normal Unitronics Splash screen and then goes to my Company Logo which is my normal startup and then the program runs normally. None of the screens in my program have anythin glike this. I looked in the "SYSTEM IMAGES" folder under Project drop down, and I do not see anyting that looks like this, and the normal Unitronics Logo (the normal spash screen) is there as file # 13. Not sure if its relevant but the code I'm using was originally developed for a similar application that was used on Samba 7. They wanted to save some coin on this job and we went with the smaller footprint, so I had to change the controller in Hardware Configuration and re-work most of the screens. thanks for suggestions!

Yes, I know this is a Unitronics forum. And I have really learned allot here and prefer using the Unitronics product; however... My employer (we are an OEM Mfg) has been using another brand (Mitsubishi) heavily for over 10 years and all our top tier product is built on either the FX5 or Melsec Q platform. We also use some Automation Direct Click product for compact, simple machines. While I prefer to use Unitronics as I know it the best, I need to learn the Mitsubishi platform to provide ongoing support for legacy systems. Those of you who use the Mitisbishi prodcut / GX Works 3 - is there a forum or other tech reference you use for guidance / learning on these? It seems Mitisubshi used to support one but it seems locked / shut down. thanks ! Jeff

Oh - and to be constructive to the thread - when I've need to do something with having objects change state / color that I coulndt do simply with a binary image, I have replicatd the images in photo editor and then eported them as bmp files in different colors. Then set up a "List of images by pointer" and select with the state engine - thank you @Joe Tauser - this has become an invaluable tool for me. Some items within Visi's sofware you can edit the color whthin the program.

I'm in the middle of developing my first Unilogic application. I was pleasantly surprised that the cost wasnt prohibitive, and the availalbity of components much better. I have Vision / Samba product that has been on B/O for many months. So far I like Unilogic, but I belive I'll always have applications that will run a Samba 3.5 or 7; simply due to the price point.

Thanks for reply. Inputs 7/8 & 9/10 will be set to Thermocouple input. Input 5 & Input 6 will both be analog 4-20 inputs 3 & 2 respectivly. I got confirmation from the vendor of my 3 wire transmitter about their equipment as well, so my impressions about the Sourcing input were correct. It through me a curve initially, wasnt expecting to see the "option" of setting a sinking analog input & I didn't want to leave anything to chance, lead times on everything is just crazy anymore I cant risk a burned input channel becasue I made a mistake.

Transmitter is a Honeywell XCD. below is a screen grab from the manual, but I've included a link as well. Based on this, I'm anticipating using their "Source" diagram and what I'm planning at this point 24 volt power to pin 1 of transmitter from instrument power supply. 0 vdc to pin 2 of transmitter and pin 2 (0V) of Samba input terminals 4-20 mA signal from pin 3 of transmitter to pin 10 / I5 of Samba All Samba jumpers will be set to B except 11. I have a dialog open with transmitter tech rep as well, wasnt sure which way to approach this. Honeywell XCD Tech Manual

Maybe this is a dumb question...but I'd rather ask than make an even dumber erorr. I'm familliar with discrete inputs, and that they can be sourcing or sinking. Typically I use a Sourcing input and the modulating analog signal (postive voltage, current flow going into the PLC input) is then dropped across an internal load in the PLC and is shunted to the 0 volt reference on an internal buss of the PLC. I've never heard the term applied to an analog input before - but to me, they would also be sourcing inputs, and function in a similar manner. I have a new transmitter to work with and its a 3 wire 4-20 signal. Tech literature with the transmitter shows that it is selectable to be configured for a sourcing or a sinking analog input. I dont see anything in the installation guide of the PLC other than the jumper 12 for selecting sourcing / sinking discrete inputs and the other jumpers for configuring the analog inputs. The diagram in the install guide to me looks like the analog input would be termed as "Sourcing" and that the load resistor is internal to the PLC. I've wired these sucessfully before - Just never came across anything describing an alalog input with these terms. PLC in question is a SM70-J-TA22 thanks

Thanks much - I’ll look into SB 300. Its not that its much a problem to power cycle- but knowing my typical customers- if I can make that part of the alarm circuit self-reset after they press an acknowledgment button it could alleviate a support phone call.