PanelViewPlus switches to Config Screen

Hello everyone. A customer called me and said he had a power outage and when his PanelViewPlus600 powered back on, it was on the configuration screen. So, they loaded the application and ran it. A few minutes later while they were navigating through the application trying to start the machine back up, it switched to the config screen again without warning.

There is only one "Goto configuration screen button" in the application and it was never pressed. The button isn't even on the same screen they were currently operating. They have had many outages in the past and this has never been an issue; the application always runs on power up. But what bothers me most is the terminal switching to the config screen while in operation.

I am thinking maybe a hardware issue; possible damage as a result of the power outage (could have spiked, brown out, etc). Another piece of info is that I just upgraded the firmware on this terminal a few weeks ago from 3.1 to 3.2 to make some changes. Maybe an issue with the firmware?

Anyone have any comments, ideas, or other possible explanations. Thanks for your input.

rstech said:

I am thinking maybe a hardware issue; possible damage as a result of the power outage (could have spiked, brown out, etc). Another piece of info is that I just upgraded the firmware on this terminal a few weeks ago from 3.1 to 3.2 to make some changes. Maybe an issue with the firmware?

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Sounds like its hitting a bad piece of code and rebooting. PV+ actually run executables for the applications so the internal storage could have gotten scrambled after the power outage. I would re-download the .mer file.

How did you upgrade the firmware? Ethernet? Flash card? There are some issues upgrading the firware through Ethernet. Always use the flash card for firmware upgrades.

I upgraded using CompactFlash without any problems. The terminal has ran for approximately 3 weeks with the new firmware without any issues. The problem only occured after the power outage.

I had my customer try a couple of things this morning to get a clearer picture of what is going on.

I had him cycle power to the PanelViewPlus and it came up to the CONFIG screen. At the top it didn't show that an application was currently loaded. Keep in mind they were just in the application and only cycled power. Under application settings, the system is configured to automatically run the loaded application, not to go to the CONFIG screen. He loaded the application again (it is saved on the terminal) and ran it. He cycled power again, two more times, and this time it ran the application like it is supposed to instead of going to the CONFIG screen.

It seems to me that for some reason the terminal intermittently loses track of the application it is supposed to run (i.e. There is no application loaded after cycling power). But they have also seen this while in the application (no power outage). Any other thoughts. Thanks.

What is the full version of the latest firmware you upgraded it to?

I loaded Firmware version 3.20.01 because it was the only one I had on my computer at the time.

I will be upgrading to RSViewStudio version 4.0 within the next week so if I go back to the customer site I will probably try upgrading their firmware to 4.00.00

Do you have any datalogs setup on the terminal? Since the problems started happening after a power outage, the terminal might have been in the process of writing something to the log file (datalog or other) when this happened. Go to File Management and delete all the log files and reboot the terminal. That might fix the problem.

No, I'm not doing any data logging with this terminal. If this just occured once after the power outage I could probably live with it and cough it up to a "glitch/spike/brownout/whatever". However, the thing that really bothers me is the terminal did it again after we cycled power, and it even did it once while they were in the application. Unfortunately the customer has a lot of power outages, especially in the summer, and they don't want to have to worry about this every time the power goes out. I'm going to try a fresh firmware and application download when I'm next on site and go from there. Thanks for your suggestions.

rstech said:

Unfortunately the customer has a lot of power outages, especially in the summer, and they don't want to have to worry about this every time the power goes out.

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Although this is a secondary issue to the original problem, I'd put some kind of power conditioning on the supply line, perhaps even a UPS. No one can tolerate glitches like this. Besides, UPS's are cheap if all you are powering is the "smart stuff" like the PLC and PanelView.

Good luck.

I'm not sure if this would help or not, but in the Config Screen does the Application Log show anything unusual that might tell us why it is doing this?

I don't know if this would log this scenario or not, but it might!

OG

In the RSViewMe Station Startup menu, there is a selection for how the unit behaves on Startup,

either:

Configuration Mode

or

Run current Application

you should check that selection

Yes, I am aware of the selection and it is set for run application. However, even if it wasn't, this doesn't explain why it went to the config screen while running the application. Thanks for your input; it was the first thing I checked.

I went to the customer's site today and upgraded the firmware to 3.20.05 and reloaded the application. I cycled power to the terminal a number of times and everything seemed to work fine. Time will tell. Thanks to everyone for the responses.