Wondwerware Window Viewer can't communicate.

As I said in the title, I can't get Windowviewer to communicate. The problem is a bit involved but I'll explain it and hope someone here knows a fix. The line I work on has one AB PLC 5 rack as a central acting mostly as traffic control and quite a few AB PLC 500 (5/04 specifically) at each station performing the operations. The console computer fried and unfortunately was some extremely dated hardware. When they replaced my computer they basically gaved me one of the old office computers and threw RS Logix on it for trouble shooting/programming. The old computer had 3 ISA cards with 2 ports on each card that the "blue hose" 3 wire AB communication cable connected to. I don't understand why, but it went into port 1 of one card, to port two of the same card, jumped over to port 1 of the second card, and so on until it was plugged into every ISA communication card port. Well, since new stuff doesn't have ISA cards my engineer installed an AB PLC 5000 power suppply rack and a RIO card that changes the "blue hose" to ethernet and ran an ethernet cable from the console computer to said RIO card. Ok, all my AB communication works great, but when I copied the Windowviewer files from the old hard drive to the new one, it doesn't work. I thought perhaps it was because Wonderware wasn't actually installed on this newer computer so I dug around, found a copy of WindowViewer and installed it straight up. Then I copied the liscense from the old drive to the proper directory on the new one. Now I can get Windowviewer to open but I still can't get my Windowviewer program to read anything from my AB PLCs.

So my question is where should I start looking to resolve this. I know when they installed RS Linx on the new computer they used the Lite version. Is that a problem? If not, can someone point me towards the right direction or manual because my engineer certainly isn't going to help me out on this one because he doesn't like wonderware and therefore won't spend any time on it so if this is going to work it will be up to me.

Thank you so much for any direction on this, I just hope I made sense of it all.

Hi,

You might have to go into the hosts file under windows/system32/drivers/etc and at the bottom of the file add the name of your plc and ipaddress.

hope this helps.

Sounds like before your communications from PC to PLC's was via DH+, so it was that I/O driver that was installed for WW. Now it is via Ethernet, so you'll need to install a different I/O driver.

If your new computer had a backup of the old installed, check out the driver Topic's , also look at Tags to see what Topic they are configured for and then do the same for your new I/O driver.

If the above confuses you, then the quickest way to get it running to to find a SI and get them in for a few hours to fix it.

In your post i cant see anything mentioned about IO server or DAServer.
the way communication works is like this:

PLC <----> DAServer/IOServer <----> Client(InTouch)

The DAServer/IOServer can reside on the same machine as InTouch(So I guess its missing)

You need to install the DAServer DASABTCP(Wonderware DAServer for AB PLC) and configure it to communicate it to your PLC, moreover you need to check the configration(Access Name) in InTouch so as it is configured to communicate to DASABTCP .

I hope this will help, if not let me know.

As the above poster indicated, you do not have the DASABCIP driver installed for WW to ControlLogix ethernet communications. You 'could' do it with RSLinx only (less efficient), but RSLinx lite doesn't support DDE or FastDDE (which wonderware uses).

You can download the server here:

ftp://ftp.west.wonderware.com/WONDERWARE/INSTALLS/DAServers/dasabcip4.0.zip

Thank you very very much for directing me onto the right path. Before I got to check the post I discovered that it was the DDE issue which was the root of my problems. I installed the DASABCIP driver linked above but didn't get a chance to fully configure it before the end of the day. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the time and find some sort of user guide/manual to get me going.

Thank you so very much for helping me this far. Without going into boring details getting this going falls on me since I won't be getting any assistance at work.

Duranthas said:

Thank you very very much for directing me onto the right path. Before I got to check the post I discovered that it was the DDE issue which was the root of my problems. I installed the DASABCIP driver linked above but didn't get a chance to fully configure it before the end of the day. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the time and find some sort of user guide/manual to get me going.

Thank you so very much for helping me this far. Without going into boring details getting this going falls on me since I won't be getting any assistance at work.

Click to expand...

Setting up the DASABCIP driver isn't too difficult. You'll need to Open the Wonderware System Console where you will now see it as a driver. From that point, you'll have to add a bunch of stuff down the tree, one of those being the access name that you are now using in WW for all your tags. Keep that the same so you won't have to redo the tags. I believe the download has a pretty good help guide for setting it up.

Hi Folks,
I am new to the site but thinks it is a big help to techs engineers in the fraternity.
A quick history of our application: We have 10 Modicon 584/984 emulated PLCs.we started using Intouch 5.0b on Windows 3.11. Upgraded to 6.0b on NT4.0 with SP6.
Added two PLCs and used Intouch 7.1 on NT4.0.
I am trying to configure an additional HMI on my own.
I can get the Intouch loaded and the conveyor belt demo runningbut can't seem to be able to get the Modbus server installed and configured.
Also bought an Intouch Ver 9 but no luck in getting that running.
Any help would be appreciated.
I am on the electrical side but would like to learn the PLC bits.
Any website with free HMI lessons?

Ok, so far I'm really making some progress with your help.

Now I think I'm down to the nitty gritty but must be missing something here.

In Windowmaker I see that the access name is "Galaxy". Alrighty, I'm not real sure which field to put that in.

To give a bit more information, under RS Linx this is how my connection looks

Workstation, XXXXX (name of company)
+AB_ETHIP-1, Ethernet
+172.22.150.210, 1756-ENBT/A, 1756-ENBT/a
+Backplane, 1756-A4/A
00, 1756-ENBT/A
+01, 1756-DHRIO/D, 1756-DHRIO/D
+CH A, Data Highway Plus
+02, PLC-5/60B, CONSOLE
+03 SLC-5/04, STA 2-4
etc etc till
33, 1756-DHRIO/D 1756-DHRIO/D


Now, if I am reading the manual correctly my SMC should looks like this

ArchestA System Management Console (XXXXX) <--name of company
+DA Server Manager
+Default Group
+Local
+ArchestrA.DASABCIP.4
+Configuration
+PORT_CIP
+ENB_CLX
+BACKPLAN_CLX
+DHRIO_CLX
+PORT_DHP
+PLC_5DHP

All settings are default. On the PORT_DHP it is set to Channel A, DH+ Node Address 1, Link ID 1. The PLC5_DHP Node Address is 2. There are two tabs there that I'm thinking need something but I must be overlooking this in the manual. The tabs are Device Groups and Device Items.

Which of the above fields need to be Galaxy so it will be the same as what InTouch is calling for?

Am I getting close or am I totally disillusioned?

Thanks so much for your help thus far.

First off, the Galaxy Access Name is a default one used by newer WW versions and is not one that you would use. You need to go into the tag database, pick one of the tags and see what access name is already assigned to it. If it says unassigned, then you have bigger issues. If it has a name, and you don't have the corresponding name in your Access List in WW, then you have another problem and will have to create it. Your Access setup needs to point to DASABCIP in WW. But don't change Galaxy to do that.

First Picture is the Wonderware setup. Your Access Name should match the Access Name setup in your tags already. The application should be the DASABCIP server.



The second picture is the DASABCIP setup. Note the topic name matches the one in WW.

I'm drawing a blank where the tag database is. I know earlier I stumbled across it and saw the tags under something titled CONSOLE. So, that said I've done quite a bit more reading and now have (as you showed in the second picture) under the device groups a topic named CONSOLE which is the same name as the PLC processor I'm trying to talk to.

Am I correct in reading that I don't need to list the tags under Device Items tab unless I want to alias them to another name?

In my particular instance I have the wonderware configured with the Access name and Topic Name as the same. The application name is DASABCIP just as in your picture. I'm not sure though whether I need it set as DDE or Suitelink.

Is there a way to check if the DA server is reading the PLC aside from wonderware? I'm curious which side I'm not getting configured correctly. If I can see if it is reading the inputs and outputs changing state outside of wonderware then I'd know it's working correctly. I'm really thinking that my problem might be when I migrated the original files over to the new hard drive but don't know how to check that.

Right, you don't need to populate the Device Items.

Make sure that the DASABCIP server is actually running. In your console, you should see a small green checkmark on the server, not the red X as in my above example photos. You should also see DASABCIP.exe in your windows task manager process list.

To see the tags, in windowmaker, click on Tagname Dictionary. When the popup comes up, click on select. That will give you a list of all your tags. Scroll down and look in the Access Name column. If what you described is true, they should all be CONSOLE.

That's fine that your access name and topic name are the same. Just be sure that in the Wonderware Console, the topic name is also set to CONSOLE, not MyTopic as I showed.

Good deal, I left the Device Items alone because I was going to use the "regular" tag name like I:002/02.

DASABCIP is indeed running. I see it listed under the task manager and in the SMC console it has a green check mark on it with the little white certificate icon as well showing it is running and that it is licensed.

It will be Monday morning before I get to recheck the tagname dictionary. I'm pretty sure that's where I saw all my tags but some of them didn't make sense to me. For instance, instead of a tag being I:002/02 it said something like CONS_I_002_2 and to the right it said $SYSTEM. I know I saw CONSOLE in there in a few places... tell ya what, come Monday I'll post a screenshot of my tagnmae dictionary.

Thanks again for not giving up on me

Duranthas said:

Good deal, I left the Device Items alone because I was going to use the "regular" tag name like I:002/02.

DASABCIP is indeed running. I see it listed under the task manager and in the SMC console it has a green check mark on it with the little white certificate icon as well showing it is running and that it is licensed.

It will be Monday morning before I get to recheck the tagname dictionary. I'm pretty sure that's where I saw all my tags but some of them didn't make sense to me. For instance, instead of a tag being I:002/02 it said something like CONS_I_002_2 and to the right it said $SYSTEM. I know I saw CONSOLE in there in a few places... tell ya what, come Monday I'll post a screenshot of my tagnmae dictionary.

Thanks again for not giving up on me

Click to expand...

CONS_I_002_2 is just the name of the tag in Wonderware. $System is just the default alarm group. You can group tags by an Alarm heirarchy, and $System is the default and parent alarm group.

What you'll need to do is open up that Tag CONS_I_002_2 and it will have two things associated with it that points it to the PLC data table. The AccessName which is what you created called CONSOLE and the itemName which will be something like I:002/02. Once you open up the tagname dictionary, it will become more evident to you as to what's going on.

Ok, I looked under the tagname dictionary and I can't find anything wrong there.


I wondered if it was something in my original files so I created a new Windowmaker application titled Test 4, created a new window in that, and on that window placed 2 lights. One is for station 1 adv and one if for sta 1 ret. I set up the access name, created new tags, and the whole 9 yards but they still don't change state. Since that didn't work it really makes me think I have something off in the SMC panel but I don't see any thing wrong in there either...


Any clue where I should start looking now? Is there a way to monitor an i/o through the DAServer outside Windowviewer to see if it is actually reading?