Red Lion Productivity Station to PLC 5 over DF-1 Help

I am setting up a Red Lion Productivity Station to log and display some data from a PLC-5/60 over Rs 232 / AB DF-1 and need some help configuring it.

I have the DF-1 driver created for the RS 232 comms port and it has the option of SLC /PLC 5 / Mircologix so I chose PLC 5.

When I select create data tags it has check boxes for Data file and offset and symbol and Description field 1-5 and only symbol is checked by default? Should I check all of these? Can someone help me understand these options?

Then it is looking for a .csv tag file? Am I supposed to export that from RS Logix 5? I don't remember an option to do that in RS Logix 5 only o export the comments and such? I need some guidance please on the correct way to make this export and what theses options in red lion are.

Is any of this firmware dependent as in firmware in the PLC 5?

The Symbol and Description Lines 1-5 are text that is associated with each Data File element in RSLogix 5. That information never gets loaded into the PLC-5 controller itself; it's strictly on your computer.

As I understand it, the "Create Tags" feature in Crimson 3 creates Crimson 3 tags with the Tag Name = RSLogix 5 Symbol and the Data Source Address = PLC-5 Address. The Description data is loaded into the Tag Label Description field.

This is just based on what I see in Crimson; I don't use this bulk method to create a bunch of tags. My programs seldom have enough useful Symbol names to make this useful.

If you do want to use this method, then yes, you have to export the data tables from RSLogix 5 as a *.CSV file. Crimson 3 can't go read a *.RSP file natively.

The addressing of PLC-5 data tables over the DF1 serial port will not be firmware dependent.

Be sure to double-check the DF1 data rate (it could be as slow as 1200 or 2400 !) and the error-checking method (PLC-5 defaulted to BCC, but Crimson defaults to CRC) in your serial port configurations to be sure the PLC-5 and Crimson both match.

Ken I got comms working and made some tags and have data now. I got the.csv method to work but it was so many tags I would not use and as i was trying to delete what i did not need it kept locking up Crimson so I went back to an earlier file and got DF1 working and made just the tags I need.

Thank you for helping me.

Tim Ganz said:

Ken I got comms working and made some tags and have data now. I got the.csv method to work but it was so many tags I would not use and as i was trying to delete what i did not need it kept locking up Crimson so I went back to an earlier file and got DF1 working and made just the tags I need.

Thank you for helping me.

Click to expand...

What I normally do is massage that csv file before importing it into Crimson. Delete the tags you know you won't need, edit the symbols to make them into more fitting tags for Crimson, etc. Be very careful you don't duplicate a symbol name (assuming you choose the tickbox to import them) and be sure your finished csv file format stays intact (no extra columns or commas).

Another method that works for me is to import or create one or two tag folders with at least one tag inside each, then export the tags in Crimson csv format. Then work with the two csv files side by side to get all the tags you want into the crimson csv format. The advantage here is that you can create tag folder structures and populate a lot of the other fields properly for use by your application. And have all the autofill and mass copy and paste operations of M***cel at your disposal.