First CLICK PLC Project for a Client

Hi Guys. I have long since wanted to use a CLICK PLC on a project, and now i have my chance.

I have a Client with Rental Sewage treatment skids for small sized work camps. Their first Skid they insisted on a Relay Logic Panel even though we wanted to get them setup with a CLICK (I Designed and wired it, it works as intended but they have already had me change operation once which was a few hours of rewiring...) Now for their 2nd Skid, they are willing to try a PLC, and compare costs and such.

I have just completed wiring the control cabinet, and building the initial program. I will be bench testing the program come monday, and then it can get installed in the skid, Just kind of proud of myself, Because up till this point I have build HMI programs from scratch and changed existing HMIs, made alot of changes on PLCs (Allen Bradleys) But i have not done a project completely from scratch (***on a PLC. I have done RTU Logic and configuration from scratch)

Not really looking for Help yet, unless i cant get it to work monday LOL

The Click is pretty amazing for the price. I am going to deploy my first Click in a couple of weeks. I got one with ethernet interfaced to Phoenix Contact radios to control I/O at five remote sites and Red Lion G306 as the HMI. I did run into a quirk with the messaging (24 messages for all the I/O) but found a workaround.

Mine is a standard Click 120v with 2 120v cards. No HMI just a couple indication lights. And for now no scada. But that is a work in progress. Once they have a few skids scattered throughout we can really push the benefits. And incase Diat150reads this, this is actually a new client than the one I was talking to you about in january. I now have 2 seperate clients doing the same thing (sewage rental skids for smaller work camps). They each have a Slightly different process though. Lol

I like the click so far. I found it interesting that they have less instructions but is still fully functional. For example the math and compare functions are very adaptable.

If there's a possibility the customer will need to do a program update, consider the Ethernet model.
Click software package is a free download. Send them updated program, or a loader file. They probably don't have a programming cable and USB to RS232 adapter. With the Ethernet model, all they need is an Ethernet cable.

I really like the click. its unfortunate that they dont have a 12 volt model or a c1d2 model.

diat150 said:

I really like the click. its unfortunate that they dont have a 12 volt model or a c1d2 model.

Click to expand...

They have many 12vdc to 24dvc converters available on their website

I do like the idea of c1d2 but that would that cause the price to go up a lot,
and since I do gas measurement, then I'd want it to have a flow computer with industry canada certification.... these all cost money, that's why the RTUS out there are so expensive

keithkyll said:

If there's a possibility the customer will need to do a program update, consider the Ethernet model.
Click software package is a free download. Send them updated program, or a loader file. They probably don't have a programming cable and USB to RS232 adapter. With the Ethernet model, all they need is an Ethernet cable.

Click to expand...

Chances of needing an update are slim but I will.keep that in mind for the future. Thank you.

Cool for you. I've used a click for maultiple projects, with most intense being running some diesel fuel immersion heaters in the winter on some bull tanks.

Rental sewage skid seems like something you would not want to have to go to site for.

I'm not sure I can trust one of their regular technicians to upload a program. And usually the skids are clean. Just not the tanks and a bit smelly. Worst case I am sitting in my truck just like I do at well sites so no smell other than to go plug in my cable. Lol. In the future I will consider it but I have already purchases and installed a standard cpu for this cabinet. None the less for this client it is only skid#2 and we are improving the design each time.

Here are some.pictures. pretty basic but still fun.

the click is amazing!
I had 1 click as the main PLC, 2 clicks as remote IO, along with 6VFDs on modbus.
the main had an 8" hmi, the remotes had 4" hmis...cool little project.
anyways, I love the clicks.

OkiePC said:

I did run into a quirk with the messaging (24 messages for all the I/O) but found a workaround.

Click to expand...

I don't need to do this currently. But may I ask what it was?

DwSoFt said:

I don't need to do this currently. But may I ask what it was?

Click to expand...

The messages would just stop cascading after the first one errored. The next send or receive command would be triggered but never return an error or success bit. I tried quite a few different things and then finally set the click for a fixed scan time of 25ms and the problem went away.

The port SC bits didn't seem to reveal anything. At first I thought maybe I was overfilling a buffer, but I have the messages cascading so that only one can be enabled at any given time.

Keep in mind that I only had the master and one slave radio working on my bench, so I was expecting 5/6 of my messages to fail and I wanted to see what the longest overall polling cycle looked like.

Anyhow, I am okay with how it is working now.

Just last week I got my first ClickPLC with the Ethernet. I was surprised how easy it was to setup the Ethernet. For a long time I was curious as to whether one of these could not only be used as a PLC, but also as "dumb" IO. So one of the first things I did was to put a program in it that had no logic, just an END statement to clear the error light. I then created a simple HMI application using a ModbusTCP driver. The HMI screen showed the status of the inputs and buttons to control the outputs directly. It all worked quite nicely. I then set the refresh speed to fast as possible and it actually responded to HMI requests in 2-5ms, which is quite fast. So for some ModbusTCP IO, this is cheaper than any other that I have found so far.