Micro 8xx under the hood

I believe the AB Micro 8xx are re-branded PLC's. Anyone know what they are ??

Have a LSis HMI to talk to one, and it doesn't support the native addressing, so Modbus mapping everything.. If I knew the original brand, may be able to use a driver for that ?? (i know, small chance...)

Thanks Chris

I wish. They're an RA product from top to bottom.

Modbus works fine on these controllers.

Not what I was advised from Rockwell Nz.. Never mind, Modbus is working OK, but doesn't support strings.. I'll work around it..

Thanks

Above a certain firmware, the Micro800 series uses CIP symbolic addressing, which is the same as the ControlLgix/CompactLogix. If you have a driver for those controllers, it will work on the Micro800 series with Ethernet. The routing just does not use a backplane/slot.

I discovered this when I adapted the AdvancedHMI driver to the Micro820.

Ken Roach said:

I wish. They're an RA product from top to bottom.

Modbus works fine on these controllers.

Click to expand...

The Micro800 is using IsaGraf for the interface/programming.

It's my understanding that RA has acquired the IsaGraf company(?) Don't know that for sure either.
Good software, and RA has make some nice equipment to use it.

Just looked at IsaGraf's web site and it looks exactly like CCW.

Archie said:

Above a certain firmware, the Micro800 series uses CIP symbolic addressing, which is the same as the ControlLgix/CompactLogix. If you have a driver for those controllers, it will work on the Micro800 series with Ethernet. The routing just does not use a backplane/slot.

I discovered this when I adapted the AdvancedHMI driver to the Micro820.

Click to expand...

Tried this initially, without success.. was a couple of firmware revisions ago, so will try again.. Thanks

ICS Triplex

...Who?...

news.thomasnet.com said:

Rockwell Automation Acquires ICS Triplex

MILWAUKEE, July 2, 2007 - Rockwell Automation, Inc. announced today that it has acquired Industrial Control Services Group Limited which does business as ICS Triplex. As first announced on May 25, 2007, the deal is valued at £110 million (British pounds) in cash. The process of delivering cash to ICS shareholders will continue through August, 2007.

ICS Triplex is a leading global supplier of critical control and safety solutions to process industries. Headquartered in Maldon, United Kingdom, ICS Triplex has more than 500 employees and operations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. With 40 years of experience, ICS Triplex develops, delivers and maintains advanced products and solutions for high availability, fault-tolerant applications in process industry segments worldwide. These industries primarily include oil and gas exploration, production, transportation and refining, as well as chemicals and power generation.

"This strategic acquisition significantly expands our broad portfolio of process control and safety solutions that meet the needs of both Rockwell Automation and ICS Triplex customers around the world," said Terry Gebert, vice president and general manager, Rockwell Automation Manufacturing & Process Solutions business.

"Increased demand for oil and gas due to the economic growth of China, India, Brazil and Russia is fueling investments in oil and gas production and in refining, leading to increased demand for safety systems," according to Asish Ghosh, vice president of ARC Advisory Group. "With the acquisition of ICS Triplex, Rockwell Automation will gain a strong foothold in the oil and gas, chemical and power generation industries, and will significantly improve their capabilities in the fast-growing process safety systems and services market."

ICS Triplex will continue to operate under its current brand name as a subsidiary of Rockwell Automation. It will be included in the Control Products & Solutions operating segment.

(ICS Triplex from Rockwell Automation)

Rockwell Automation, Inc., is a leading global provider of industrial automation power, control and information systems and services that help manufacturers achieve a competitive advantage in their businesses. The company brings together leading global brands in industrial automation, which include Allen-Bradley controls and services and Rockwell Software factory management software. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., the company employs about 19,000 people serving customers in more than 80 countries.

Click to expand...

...and who owned ISaGRAF?...

ControlGlobal.com said:

No offence to Australian pump-station management system developer Multitrode, but arguably the most interesting aspect of the August 5 (2008) press release from Rockwell announcing that it has adopted ISaGRAF v5 for the latest version of its MultiSmart Pump Station Manager is that Rockwell has dropped any mention of ICS Triplex in the ISaGRAF branding.

ISaGRAF has had something of a chequered history. It started life under the auspices of French company CJ International, was subsequently acquired by the Canadian company Altersys and then, in turn, was acquired in 2003 by U.K. safety systems specialist ICS Triplex and renamed, somewhat inelegantly, ICS Triplex ISaGRAF. Now however, following Rockwell’s acquisition of ICS Triplex in May 2007, the company name has reverted to just plain ISaGRAF, with the tag line, a Rockwell Automation Company.

Despite these complex evolutions, the development of the ISaGRAF product has continued to the point where it is one of the few products to have been TÜV-certified as being compliant with both the IEC 61499 and the IEC 61131 industrial standards. The fact that Rockwell now describes ISaGRAF as “the world’s leading automation software partner” must hold out the hope that it will eventually adopt the product as the standard development environment for its own range of Allen-Bradley PLCs and PACs. Meanwhile, much of the original ISaGRAF development team remains intact at Austrian SCADA vendor CopaData’s French soft-logic subsidiary CopAlp.

Click to expand...

...and yes, ISaGRAF is written all over CCW...

471043 - CCW ISaGRAF issues
Access Level: Everyone

Regards,
George

The original claim was that the Micro 800 are "re-branded".

They are not. They are a Rockwell Automation product. The hardware was designed by Rockwell Automation, the software was produced by a Rockwell Automation company.

I'm not complimenting the controllers; I think they're in the bottom of the barrel of things RA has built. But RA takes both the credit and the blame for them.

Ken,

We are of the same mind on this one, in case you feel I was supporting "the other side" of the original query.

Rebranded does indeed suggest someone else manufactured the hardware and AB rebadged them. I fully agree that the Micro800 controllers are of their own design at the hardware level, and beyond.

The info I provided was just in passing to clarify the points that were being made about RA owning ISaGRAF and that CCW does use it. Although I wanted to, I just hadn't the time to address the OP's thoughts and queries, which are a little misguided.

Whether developed by or aquired by Rockwell Automation, the mention of them using or owning ISaGRAF, while perhaps interesting to know, is a bum steer with regards to what drivers might be available for these controllers.

Chris,

You are enquiring about driver support for your 3rd party HMI. While the Micro800 controllers do use ISaGRAF at the programming level, this has no direct bearing on the protocol drivers that we're chosen for these controllers to access their memory registers. This decision was based more on the Micro800 controllers being aligned with the PanelView Component terminals, PanelView 800, Kinetix servos, PowerFlex drives, etc. This is why Design Station is incorporated into CCW, and Drive Tools, DriveLogix features, and more. CCW is a collaboration of many of their products and features, connecting components within one workspace. ISaGRAF is at the core of the programming language, but it is only one of many features, albeit an important one.

So again, the fact that they use ISaGRAF does not make them a non AB/RA product, or have any real relationship with what drivers they use.

The serial model controllers are quite restricted in their driver offerings and quite proprietary in using CIP Serial.

I mentioned this proprietary aspect not too long ago in another thread related to their driver options...

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=622856

So the answer to your original questions/queries is that they are indeed AB/RA all the way and the available drivers are what they are. i.e. The drivers available for selection in CCW are your lot. Modbus and Ethernet/IP are widely used open source protocols, CIP Serial is also open source, but not so widely available.

I actually had a conversation yesterday with my coordinator after he had been working on a small Micro810 project using CCW. Everything is "foreign" to him. The terminology, "build", "debug", etc. CCW was RA's first foray into the ISaGRAF jungle. The feedback of which we see all to often on the Forum here.

Regards
George

I dunno, I kind of like them... In a clunky fashion, is not a lot they cant do.. Even online edit in V8 (sorta...) If you approach them with the mindset they aren't a micro / SLC..

Modbus working fine, but just another step in getting the data to the HMI..

Cheers for all the replies

My issue with them was that Rockwell released them long before they were ready to support them. I was tasked with creating a product demo that included a Micro820 and there was next to nothing as far as sample programs were concerned (just a traffic light application). When I contacted some of my connections at Rockwell they couldn’t come up with anything either. I did a lot of trial and error figuring out how to get the damn thing to do a simple message instruction (which isn’t called a message instruction). Once I figured out the details it wasn’t that bad but certainly not even close to as intuitive as a SLC/MicroLogix or Logix. The telling part of that is during that year’s Automation Fair I had the only operational demo of the Micro800’s (including Rockwell) and I’ve not seen once since (except of course Rockwell does active demos with them now).

The Micro800s were a response to a large OEM machinery market segment in Asia that AB could not get at with the other MicroLogix products because they were too large and expensive. Form-fill-seal machines for food packaging are big time users of that type of micro PLC, almost all of those OEMs are in Asia now. That's why Schneider and Siemens have done the exact same thing. Rockwell built the factory in Singapore from the ground up as their own to make the Micro800s (and PowerFlex 520 drives) close to that marketplace. We (North America) get to benefit from the lower price point this achieved, yet we were a secondary target for that.

But the Micro800 was NEVER intended to replace or duplicate other Logix products, hence the fact that the otherwise ubiquitous "Logix" name is not associated with the Micro800 line. The fact that it is less expensive and the software is free has attracted a new batch of customers that were not giving AB a chance, that was the desired effect. But the fact that it has sort of ****ed off some loyal Logix users was an unintended consequence. I thought their marketing messaging was clear, but people jumped to a lot of conclusions about that product early on, ignoring the official messaging.

Yes, it's not the same as the MicroLogix and it lacks some features. It was never intended to be the same and those features are what differentiates them still.

But haters gonna hate I guess...

Honestly not sure what it cant do opposed to a Micro 1400 logic wise?? Some AB-centric comms options are missing...

MicroSD datalog

My experience with this micro820 is not good. I was loking for a PLC to make datalog in a MICROSD card but this device has problems doing that.
At first I had tu upgrade the firmware from 6.012 to 8.011 to get the memory recognized at start up.
Aftter that it worked fine logging some data, but after 8 hours of test, it stopped the logging, and now it can not even make backups of the program in the memory. It shows always the ErrorID 3:
DLG_ERR_DATAFILE_ACCESS every time it tries to do a datalog. I have even formatted the memory twice, it is a Class 6 SDHC.