Panelview can connect to ? # PLC's

Hi Guys,

I am spending more time than I am going to be able to get away with looking for this answer, was wondering if someone would please point me in the right direction on this.

The end result I would like to achive is to have 6 controllers communicate to/from 1 Panelview+.

Is this doable straight up over ethernet or will I need special considerations to achieve this?

Equipment is:
1- Micrologix 1766-L32BXB
5- Compactlogix L24ER QBFC1B
1- Panelview Plus 2711P-RDT10C B

If this is doable straight up I can put it out of my mind and move on.

If not could you please provide some insight as to what is the preferable method to accomplish this.

Thanks in advance.
BCS

In my opinion it should be fine.

It's only the Panelview Plus "Compact" editions that have a limitation of only being able to communicate with 1 device.

What else is on your Ethernet network? You have a few PLC's there, a managed switch should be considered to reduce multicast traffic.

Thanks for the response,

I guess my question was more of can I make 6 direct connections,(through managed switches) from 6 controlers, to one panelview, simply by making 6 different device shortcuts in the communication setup of FT ME using RS Enterprise.
Then just link the tags from each PLC into the appropriate functions I want to use for each on the HMI?


But to answer your question:

What else is on your Ethernet network? You have a few PLC's there, a managed switch should be considered to reduce multicast traffic.

Click to expand...

First off let me say, I know little (nothing) about networking.

We have several different networks onboard for our PLC Equipment, but at the moment most of these are on other than ethernet. In the future they will all be replace and upgraded to Control Logix with ethernet though.

On the ethernet side we have a fiber backbone that splits off from our server to 4 Cisco Catalyst 2960-s Series SI managed switches.
(I.T. handles these so I could not tell you how they are configured)

We are running 2 seperate sets of IP addresses.
192.168.20.xxx for our equipment (PLC's) and 10.152.15.xxx for our PC network. (Computers in each departments shop for email, Amos (parts ordering)internet, etc.)

On the 192.168.20 There is not alot on there.

2 Control Logix (Drives connected to Control Logix are on Devicenet)
3 Micro Logix 1400
5 Panelviews
2 PC for Scada (FT SE)
4 PC running VNC to link to Scada PC's. (cheap way to monitor from more than 1 location)
1 Datamax Dh+ to ethernet converter.

Other networks onboard that will get upgraded to ethernet later are:

Surimi Factory on Dh+ using PLC5 that has LOTS of I/O including Remote through RIO scanner and 2 PV on Dh+.
This also has a OLD datamax Dh+ to USS converter that is running around 25 Siemens VFD's.

Plate Freezers on 2 SLC 5/04 on Dh+ with 3 PV on Dh+

Refrigeration System on 7 Micrologix 1200 on Dh485 with 5 PV on Dh485.

We have plans to add many more small PLC to upgrade existing systems also but have to do it in baby steps so Corporate does not choke on the $$$$.

BCS

One PV+ can easily communicate with six controllers at a time over Ethernet. No problem at all.

One thing I see on the horizon, though, is that you might be tempted to try to bridge through a 1756-DHRIO module to a DH+ network.

RSLinx Enterprise doesn't support that bridging, even though RSLinx Classic does. It's easy to see "hey, I can program my PLC-5 over this bridge module" and assume that the PanelView could make that link as well.

It's possible that RA has added that feature since the last time I tried it, but as far as I know they have not.

The only current way I know about to communicate from a PanelView Plus to a PLC on DH+ is to install a 2711P-RN6 card in the PV+ terminal.

Hi Ken,
Thanks, I was hoping that was the case.
I have done 2 PLC to 1 PV before but was not sure if there was a limit.

Is there a point where it would max out?
And if so what would that be?

As far as pulling anything through the RIO, I don't have need for that at the moment but, I have a PV 550, 2711-B5A1 that communicates via RIO and its days are numbered.
I do have a 2711P-RN6 so thats good to know.

Thanks again for the help and have a good one.

BCS

The usual limitation I run into is the opposite, where somebody installs multiple HMIs talking to a single small PLC, and the controller runs out of resources.

I don't know if there's a limit to the number of Shortcuts you can define in RSLinx Enterprise.

Surely there's a practical limit to how many tags the onboard RSLinx Enterprise instance can serve per second, but I've never encountered a project where that turned out to be the limitation. The communications limitation I usually encounter is the bandwidth of a slow (DF1, DH485, DH+) serial network.

There's probably no fixed limit - or if there is it'll be high enough to be completely academic. Most likely your "limit" will be when you start getting too much traffic to the one device, your network starts to slow down

edit: Ken types faster

The usual limitation I run into is the opposite, where somebody installs multiple HMIs talking to a single small PLC, and the controller runs out of resources.

Click to expand...

At what point do you see it hit wall in this case?
I have 2 PV+ communicating with 1 ML1400. It works well.

Most likely your "limit" will be when you start getting too much traffic to the one device, your network starts to slow down

Click to expand...

If this were ever to become a problem is there a way to limit how much traffic hits the one device at the same time, in the Managed Switch configuration or other?

BCS

I was working on a project last year where I needed to display data from 14 plc's on one HMI. After speaking to Rockwell Support in the UK they agreed with my other option of centralising the data in one or more plc's. As a rule of thumb they advised that 5 PLC's should be the maximum connected to a single HMI screen before performance will be affected. As always I'm sure they err on the side of caution and so I would expect 6 would be ok.

I have a Panelview Plus 1500 in my office that I created an application that basically has every screen on it that all of my different systems out on the floor has so that I can monitor for any problems and it has 15 PLC shortcuts on it and I haven't had any problems out of it so 6 shouldn't be any problem.

Good to know that what I am trying to do is possible without moving information from one plc to the next, and then to the HMI.
I really expected to get answers back telling me that 6 was too many. But since it is not, then that makes things less complicated for me.

Now I can put it out of my mind and move on to the next hurdle.
(Which will probably be getting all 6 clocks to sync. But will save that for another tread if I cant figure it out.)

Edit: While we are on this subject. Would I be correct in assuming that since the tags will be pulled from different short cuts FT will be able to tell the difference between them, even if the tag names are exactly the same in each PLC?

5 machines are almost exactly the same. So I would like to copy/paste the program for all and just make small changes to each, but most tags would be identical to each other.

Thanks to all.

BCS

As long as you name each of your connections differently which you'll have to, then the same tag name in multiple plc's won't be an issue as the path to the tag in the connection tab will be different.

Perfect,
Thank you.

BCS