OkiePC
Lifetime Supporting Member
1) SLC processors will be going away much sooner than I expected. The 1747-ASB silver end date is already set for Jan. 2013. The SLC cpu's will start showing up on that list very soon from what we were told. I think he gave the impression that within two years the processors would all have a silver end date and would probably only be available for another year or two after that. The main reason given is difficulty sourcing components. 1747-I/O in general, is not expected to be a major problem.
2) There is a nice migration path for PLC-5 with the swingarm adapters. which takes up about the same panel space except may be about an inch increase in depth.
3) The PanelView standard will probably vanish by Christmas from new stock. He said all of them. He said their projections may cause them to be sold out sooner because they are already being horded more than anticipated. He showed a special concern for DeviceNet versions (we have none of those).
When I told them about how many we use, he naturally inquired about my plans for migration, and I got a nice reaction from him when I told him it would be Red Lion. He asked why I wouldn't consider the PV+6 and I said 'When you can give me free software that I can download, install, and start in less than a minute and runs reliably, a hardware HMI that boots and controls my machines in 7 seconds (we lock them out multiple times per shift) and one which can communicate with hundreds of different devices, and costs about half as much, then we can think about comparing the rest of the features.' He was happy to hear this and asked for my contact info to put me in touch with some folks in Ohio. He said they have been telling their designers all of these things and would like for them to hear it from more customers.
Also, he said, if we plan to use 3rd party hardware communication, it will be more and more important in the future to ensure driver compatibility. This is mainly because they will be making changes to improve security (stuxnet in the news?). So, a Red Lion G3 that works with version 19 of a Logix controller may not work with version 21, and that it will be important to verify this every time we need to upgrade firmware versions in controllers. Hopefully, the Red Lion staff will be on top of this and stay there. Hopefully, Rockwell will not use this as a tool to kill off competition.
4) Version 20 of RSLogix5000 will be a "line in the sand" such that it will be the last version to support a 32 bit OS. It will be updated for a long time but for major new features version 21 and newer will be required and a 64 bit Windows 7 (or 8?) OS.
The fellow who visited was extremely helpful and very informative and spent several hours with us, even buying a nice lunch to boot. He did an excellent job of answering our questions as clearly as possible.
We only have about 60 SLCs, one critical PLC-5, and about 20 or so PV standards. So, it looks like I will find no shortage of interesting projects over the next several years.
2) There is a nice migration path for PLC-5 with the swingarm adapters. which takes up about the same panel space except may be about an inch increase in depth.
3) The PanelView standard will probably vanish by Christmas from new stock. He said all of them. He said their projections may cause them to be sold out sooner because they are already being horded more than anticipated. He showed a special concern for DeviceNet versions (we have none of those).
When I told them about how many we use, he naturally inquired about my plans for migration, and I got a nice reaction from him when I told him it would be Red Lion. He asked why I wouldn't consider the PV+6 and I said 'When you can give me free software that I can download, install, and start in less than a minute and runs reliably, a hardware HMI that boots and controls my machines in 7 seconds (we lock them out multiple times per shift) and one which can communicate with hundreds of different devices, and costs about half as much, then we can think about comparing the rest of the features.' He was happy to hear this and asked for my contact info to put me in touch with some folks in Ohio. He said they have been telling their designers all of these things and would like for them to hear it from more customers.
Also, he said, if we plan to use 3rd party hardware communication, it will be more and more important in the future to ensure driver compatibility. This is mainly because they will be making changes to improve security (stuxnet in the news?). So, a Red Lion G3 that works with version 19 of a Logix controller may not work with version 21, and that it will be important to verify this every time we need to upgrade firmware versions in controllers. Hopefully, the Red Lion staff will be on top of this and stay there. Hopefully, Rockwell will not use this as a tool to kill off competition.
4) Version 20 of RSLogix5000 will be a "line in the sand" such that it will be the last version to support a 32 bit OS. It will be updated for a long time but for major new features version 21 and newer will be required and a 64 bit Windows 7 (or 8?) OS.
The fellow who visited was extremely helpful and very informative and spent several hours with us, even buying a nice lunch to boot. He did an excellent job of answering our questions as clearly as possible.
We only have about 60 SLCs, one critical PLC-5, and about 20 or so PV standards. So, it looks like I will find no shortage of interesting projects over the next several years.