Panelview plus 1500 - loading an application

Hi there everyone. I work for a little company that repairs coal mining equipment doing Auto CAD (mostly electrical schematics). I consider myself to be pretty good with computers, but have never ever had any PLC training.

Long story short, my boss thinks I am a computer genius because I can build and troubleshoot computers....which for some reason makes him think I know what I am doing when it comes to this PanelView Plus 1500. Basically my boss lied to one of the bosses at a local coal mine and said we could set up the panelview no problem...well now its my problem.

They sent us a .mer file and from what I have already read online if I could just get it onto the panelview, then I should be able to load the application. I through the program on a usb drive and tried to load it from there but didnt have any luck.

So basically my question is how do I take the .mer file from this desktop PC and get it to the panelview plus 1500??

Any help is muuuuuuch appreciated because im am soo lost right now!!

Most "newer" PanelViews (the past 5 years or so) will recognize the removable USB device as "Storage Card2".

Is there a button or other feature in the ordinary PanelView screens that takes you to the "Configuration Mode" ? The "File Management" feature in Configuration Mode will let you copy the *.MER file from the USB drive to the Internal Storage.

From there, you can select the file to run from the Internal Storage location using the first two F1 and F2 buttons in the Configuration mode display.

If there's no "Go to Configuration Mode", try power cycling the PanelView and looking for a white box in the lower left corner; hold it and the PanelView will boot to Configuration Mode instead of Runtime mode.

You can also use a Batch file to copy the *.MER file from removable media to the correct folder in the "Internal Storage".

There are some threads about this.. search on Batch file and PV+ here on the Forum.

Thank you very much for your help, ill try what you said and if that doesnt work ill search the forums. Ill post back here in a little bit with what I figure out. Thanks again!!

On the USB thumb drive create the nested folders "Rockwell Software/RSViewME/Runtime". Copy and paste the .mer file within the Runtime folder.
Take the thumb drive and insert it into one of the HMI's USB ports.
Within the HMI Configuration Interface navigate Application Settings/File Management/Copy Applications; choose External Memory 1 as the SOURCE and Internal Memory as the DESTINATION of the Copy command.
Once the .mer is within the HMI's Internal Memory, Exit out to the Configuration Interface, choose Load Application and choose the just pasted .mer from the Internal Memory and then Run Application.
DO NOT REPLACE COMMUNICATIONS if the HMI terminal was functional up to that point.

If the panelview is quite old you may need to find an old large format camera card, I think they will only read one up to 500 meg, guy I work with just went through this exercise.

I found the Panelview Plus will automatically create the proper folder structure Rockwell Software/RSViewME/Runtime on a USB stick when inserted in a USB port if if does not already exist.

I have an instruction cheat sheet aimed at the maintenance tech. audience with pictures for the Panelview 600 - 1000 Plus. I whittled it down to 6 pages to cover our installations including both DH+ and Ethernet models.

Depending on the communication media/protocol, there are manual entries required for IP Config. with ethernet, and they are a bit complicated at first. You will also want to examine the start up options for the terminal as it defaults to goto config mode, you have to change that to get it to boot to run mode (eventually) automatically after a power cycle.

Get comfortable with the literature library at ab.com their manuals are very good.

Specific part numbers for your particular project will get you bonus advice in most cases with the Panelview models particularly due to their various comms options.

Paul