Please help with DF1 to DH+ Passthrough

[soop7667]

I want to link my office PC to a PLC on our Block Plant floor.
I've run into some snags with "The Money Man" in our main office reguarding the cost of a KTX card. Anyhow...I've run 'blue hose' from the Block Macine PLC to the Office, and used a Spare Rack with a Spare 5/04 as an interface in the office. I hooked it all up but in Linx I couldnn't connect to the Machine PLC through the office PLC DF1 port. I used RS Logix and enabled "DF1 Pass thru" in the status file thinking that it would solve my problem....I got bumped offline from the PLC in the office, which i was hooked into via DF1, and an error message came up saying i had to DL from the eeprom or UL the file. I was THINKING that I'd be Downloading to the office PLC to which I was attached, BUT, when I DL'd the logic to the PLC (blank logic - no rungs)it went into my Machine instead and I lost the entire Day's production figures...not to mention all of the past 6 months of tweaking the settings. Thats about when I took the blue hose off and said to hell with it.

I just read a post about PT (Pass Thru) Drivers and my questions are....

What exactly did I do when I enabled DF1 Pass thru and should I leave it enabled or not?

Should I be using a different driver to "see" PLC's on the DH+ instead of the DF1 Driver ?

My Main goal is to be able to use Excel with DDE or OPC to display real time production figures and also play with my RS View32 project.(Animated Block machine)

Thanks in advance
Jon

[soop7667]

PLEASE!!! Any info may be of some help in this, if ANYONE knows or thinks they know ANYTHING that may be of relevance or might help PLEASE share your thoughts. Thanks!

[ArikBY]

When you configur your driver il RS linx did you try to configur KTX instead DF1?

[Ron Beaufort]

Jon,

maybe you’ve got this all figured out by now but this is the first opportunity I’ve had lately to work on this problem ...

this morning I went to the lab and set up a pass-thru example ... I used an SLC-5/04 as the pass-thru device ... I connected the SLC’s Channel 1 (DH+) port to the Channel 1 (DH+) port on a PLC-5/11 with “blue hose” cable ... note: I’m betting that all of your processors are SLC’s - but since you called the “Machine” one a PLC (as opposed to an SLC), I decided to use one controller from each platform in my example ... the basic approach should remain the same ... anyway ... I connected the SLC’s Channel 0 (serial) port to the COM1 (serial) port on the back of my programming computer ...

next I set up the RSLinx DF1 Driver to communicate with the SLC ... basically I used the Auto-Configure “sissy button” to make the connection ... this worked fine ...

next I used RSLogix500 to go online with the SLC processor ... I went to the Processor Status screen and clicked on the “Channel 0” tab ... I set S:34/5 (the Pass-Thru Enable Bit) to a “1” ... as soon as I “OK’ed” the change, I lost communication with the SLC (but I’ve done this before so I expected this loss of communications) ...

next I went back into RSLinx and reconfigured the DF1 Driver to set the “Device” entry for a 1770-KF2 ... basically this converts the SLC’s RS-232 port into a “communications adapter” ... (Arik was close) ... see red circle below ...

[attachment]

next I shut down RSLinx COMPLETELY ... and then turned it back on again ... sometimes operations like this need to be “kick started” ... when RSLinx warmed back up again, I could “Pass-Thru” the SLC’s DF1 connection and see the PLC-5 over the DH+ blue hose connection ... SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF A PASS-THRU EXAMPLE! ... note: this RSLinx “warm up” period can take a minute or two so be patient and give it a chance to work ... remember that you’ll be communicating through a 19.2K baud rate “bottleneck” and all of the DH+ network addresses are being “browsed” for active nodes ...

and I took the liberty of drawing in the cable connections on the RSWho screen shot above ... I figured that it might help to see what’s hooked up to what ...

and for those who are wondering ... yes, this Pass-Thru approach CAN be used to “work around” the need for a Data Highway Plus communication device (examples: 1784-PCMK or 1784-KTX, etc.) ... sometimes knowing this little trick can get you out of hot water if you show up at a job site and discover that you’ve left part of your “communication gear” back at the office ... specific case in point: the older “classic” PLC’s (example: PLC-5/15) do NOT have an RS-232 communications port ... you MUST use DH+ to go online with one of these animals ...

finally, once you’ve got this thing working, the best way to get “online” with a processor is to go to the menu at the top of RSLogix and click “Comms” and then “Who Active Go Online” ... this will open up RSLinx and give you a chance to “click around” until you’ve highlighted the processor you actually want to communicate with ... this will give you a much better shot at “dialing in” the one you really want and help to minimize the chances of downloading to the wrong one ...

PS Edit ... you said:

My Main goal is to be able to use Excel with DDE or OPC to display real time production figures and also play with my RS View32 project.(Animated Block machine)

actually you might have a problem achieving this particular goal ... don't forget about that RS-232 "bottleneck" ... your "Pass-Thru" communication link is likely to be too slow for any substantial "data collection" or "animation" projects ... so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high ... and by all means, try to make friends with the "Money Man" you mentioned above ...

[mordred]

we had at on time a similar operation on a slc 504 and what we did was run a belden cable thru an AB ST card. to channel 1. then use total control software to create a visual of the machine. Another option is to communicate via modem. which tends to be the standard here for remote operations. keep in mind a network cable will only work to 300 ft serial communications via RS 232 50 ft. Belden DH 485
1000ft.

[soop7667]

ALLRIGHT!!!!! You got me going good now RON! Thankyou so much. I'm still not able to "see" my DH+ Nodes on my laptop, however I'm able to see them using my desktop. Maybe I need a linx update? I've never used the desktop to connect to anything because of the distance from the desktop to the SLC's on the plant floor. I got Linx and RS Logix 500 on my desktop PC specifically for this DH+ I was TRYING to set up.

Now that this all works I'm stumped again. I've never really used dde/opc extensively. I've only configured one topic and it was a local connection. Now I need help figuring out how to configure a new dde/opc topic for my Machine PLC - which is also an A/B 5/04.

I think I have to setup the advanced communications tab? See...after loosing all my logic the first time around, I'm not too keen on the idea of screwing things up again due to ignorance. I just need some pointers on setting it up right the first time. So I want to set up hotlinks in excel. Show me the way! Thanks in advance, and Thanks again Ron!

[talunik]

I've been tried to communicate with a AB 5\04 cpu, but without success. I'd like to know with somebody could help me...We have a machine using a comum PC with a supervisor "WINROBOT" communicating to 5\04 using a COM1, because their aren't near, the PC are using a external converter RS232 to RS422, at the plc cabinet,have another external converter RS422 to RS232 and goes to RS232 of the CPU 5\04. I tried to use the same cable I used with a 5\03, but it didn't work. I'm using a RSLogix 500 version 4.5, RSLinx version 2.1. The drive is AB_DF1(RS232) and I tried the "Auto configuration" button, it didn't find any node...I don't understand, how the PC can communicate using this port (RS232) and I can't...Another thing, I opened the backup and the drive was AB_KT1. Is it possible to communicate without use this drive (DH+)