Crimson 3 Driver change corrupts Tag Addresses

Ken Roach

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Join Date
Apr 2002
Location
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This is one of those 'Doctor, it hurts when I do this' issues, where the solution is 'don't do that !', but it concerned me enough I wanted to share it with other users.

Red Lion's Crimson 3 HMI editing software has several different communication drivers for Allen-Bradley controllers. A detailed explanation of each one is in the Support section of their website:

http://www.redlion.net/Support/Downloads/DeviceDrivers/G3/AllenBradley.html

In my case, I was testing an application with an SLC-5/05 that had been originally developed using a MicroLogix 1400.

That meant I had to change from "DF1 Master via PCCC/ENI", which is appropriate for the MicroLogix 1400, to the "DF1 Master" over Ethernet, which is appropriate for the older PLC-5 and SLC-5/05 controllers.

That's where things went wrong. As soon as I changed the driver, the PLC addresses for many of the Tags in my project got corrupted. I figured this out when upon the next download of the project, many of my indicators weren't working. The effect was... disconcerting.

An example of what I mean by "corruption";

Reset_Mark_Count [Micro1400.B043:0000] became
Reset_Mark_Count [Micro1400.I000:0080]

and

FH_Flyer_Reported_Caption [Micro1400.R012:014] became
FH_Flyer_Reported_Caption [Micro1400.R012:003]

In some cases the address changed to a different data file entirely, and sometimes to a different element inside the same data file. I couldn't really find a pattern.

The data type never changed, nor any of the other aspects of the Tag. Just the PLC data table address.

To their credit, within a few hours of me figuring out what was going on, Red Lion Technical Support jumped right on it, re-creating the issue and providing two recommended workarounds:

1. Before changing the driver, go to the top level of the Tag view and Export the Tag databse. After changing the driver, Import the tag database. This worked 100% of the time.
2. Before changing the driver, go the the File -> Utilities menu and choose Rebuild Comms Blocks. Each time we did this, the tag database appeared to remain uncorrupted.

Red Lion explained that while the drivers are very similar, the "tag mapping" under the hood could be a little different, and that most users don't switch between drivers for the same vendor.

My takeaways from this experience are:

1. The "DF1 Master" driver on Ethernet is only for old PLC-5E and SLC-5/05 controllers. Don't try it with MicroLogix 1100 or 1400.
2. Make daily archives of all of your project files, with unique daily names.
3. If you must change drivers, export the tag database, then import it afterwards.
4. Crimson 3 isn't monkey-proof.
5. Red Lion Technical Support is very good.
 
Excellent report.

This is one of those 'Doctor, it hurts when I do this' issues, where the solution is 'don't do that !', but it concerned me enough I wanted to share it with other users.

I had an interesting one of those with Crimson this week.

Ken Roach said:
2. Before changing the driver, go the the File -> Utilities menu and choose Rebuild Comms Blocks. Each time we did this, the tag database appeared to remain uncorrupted.

That's new to me...good tip...I wondered what that item on the error indicator right click menu was useful for.

Ken Roach said:
1. The "DF1 Master" driver on Ethernet is only for old PLC-5E and SLC-5/05 controllers. Don't try it with MicroLogix 1100 or 1400.

I have used that driver for a variety of Micrologix and SLC, some of which behind NET-ENI modules over ethernet. It seems to work best to allow me to connect the emulator from my desktop to a running PLC mapping through my network card. I could not get the PCCC via EIP to work with my emulator to connect to them though.

Ken Roach said:
2. Make daily archives of all of your project files, with unique daily names.

I do this with a suffis rev. number starting with " r000". By them time I am ready to rock and roll I am ususally up to about " r014" or so. not always daily, but right before each major experiment or overhaul.

Ken Roach said:
3. If you must change drivers, export the tag database, then import it afterwards.

Another thing to try to see if it will work. Delete the device(s). The error indicator will pop up. Ignore it. Delete the driver, then add the new one, then add a device and then name it the same as the old. In some cases the errors will self clear, in other cases, just right click on Error and hit recompile database.

I have no idea if this is going to work for you, but should be easier than export/import, although perhaps not since you would have to go through the device settings again.

Ken Roach said:
5. Red Lion Technical Support is very good.
Yes, they are great in my experience.
 
We had a similar problem (well I think it was a similar problem) with our one & only Crimson project.

We were using a Compactlogix PLC, and at the start of the project we imported the tags, as you do.
Then later on, the PLC program had changed,, new tags had been created, so we had to re-import all tags.
This caused a problem with the mapping of Crimson tags to RSLogix5000 going out of sync.

We had to go to each internal Crimson tag & double-check where it was mapped to within the PLC.
 

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