Customer needs a change to SLC5/05PLC program. The change is to a single instruction only.
Customer is in Europe
Customer has zero PLC skills and no programming software.
Application use RSView and RSLinx on PC over Ethernet. I am not sure about RSLadder.
Options
Get on plane and head over the pond. I've done this many times but this is a single instruction change.
Send customer RSView screen with RSLadder active X embedded to do the downlaod, if it can be verified that RSLadder is installed on the RSView PC. The RSView app has a few blank screens in the project so customer would only need copy in the new screen over one of the blank screens.
Get RSLogix for customer.
Third party download utility. This is the way I am leaning but I don't know of such a utility, so does anyone know of such a utility? Or can you suggest another option?
Does the customer have Internet available? Could they hook up the 5/05 Ethernet to the company network temporarily (if it's not already) so you could connect and change the program? We have an OEM in Italy that is able to connect over the pond to one of our machines. All they'd have to do is open the appropriate ports.
This is the exact situation I created the AB utilities for. If you have a SLC with the program loaded with changes, you can use my utility to Upload the program and save it to a Text file. Send the file to the customer with the utility and they plug their laptop into the SLC with a null modem cable, then click download.
And problem is solved as long as customer has laptop and null modem cable.
If you are interested, I can strip out everything except a download button and send you the program to pass to the customer. It will even auto detect baud settings.
Yikes Archie, I must be getting old. I knew about at one time but completely forgot it.
Does it work over ethernet or is it only DF1? I'm sure the customer could get a laptop out there, but there is already a PC in place.
What is the text file format? Is it hard to convert a .SLC file to the format? I don't have the program loaded on a PLC here, although I could probably pull it off as long as I didn't have to put it in run mode (IO config mismatch and all that mumbo jumbo)
I do have an Ethernet version that works with SLC 5/05's, but has not been as well refined. I was actually going to update that one this week. If you want the latest version of that one, I'll be glad to send you what I currently have and you can test it out. The Ethernet version would require them to know the IP address of the PLC.
What is the text file format? Is it hard to convert a .SLC file to the format? I don't have the program loaded on a PLC here, although I could probably pull it off as long as I didn't have to put it in run mode (IO config mismatch and all that mumbo jumbo)
I don't know why I didn't think of that. Thanks, I'll keep it in mind just in case the download utility doesn't work out. Bubba is actually going over in about a month to do maintenance training and he could make the change, but customer needs change this week.
You could also just send them a new processor with the project already loaded.
I've done that for just sending a program across the US. Of course I just happened to have one sitting on my desk that wasn't being used and they sent back the one they were using. All they did was plug in the new processor and away they went.
What site can we get it at Archie? This sounds like something that would come in handy for some of the machines that we need to update overseas. I noticed that it has ML 1100 1200 and 1500 on it also.
It does require .NET 2.0 framework, so when you go to install it will try to go to Microsoft to get the framework if it is not already on the PC.
In the next week or so I will be posting Version 3. The new features of version 3 will be useful for those that want to use the driver to develop their own applications.
