AB Ultra5000 experiences

Jiri Toman

Member
Join Date
Jun 2002
Posts
498
I would like to share some info with you that has to do with AB Ultra 5000. I had a job recently that involved revamping a butchered up system supplied by a vendor from Indiana. Will not mention names. All the programming for the motion as well as the analog and digital I/O was done in C within the Ultra5000.
The HMI used is PV600.
In order to be able to de-bug and emulate the system I had obtained a demo from AB distributor. This is an AB made demo with PV550 and Ultra5000 as well as lights and switches wired to I/O.
I purchased a new UltraWare to do the programming. I reset the
Ultra5000 to factory settings to clear it up and proceeded to download the program created by the vendor. Then I installed
the pvserv.exe driver from the new UltraWare CD ROM. I installed
the PV 600 program into the PV550. UltraWare CD does not include any re-flash files to upgrade the Ultra5000 firmware.
I could not get the PV550 to communicate to the Ultra5000.
Well so I went and bought the PV600 so that I would have a precise match to what was being used in the field. I could not get it to communicate. Well it did kind of communicate, it showed the PV600 as being connected but the data was not getting through!
Contacted the Tech connect people. Got an app note on how to set it up. Followed it to the tee. Did not work! After numerous phone calls to tech connect and to the local AB office I was told actually by one guy in tech connect that I was argumentative.
wow. In my desperation I went back to the original demo setup
with PV550 knowing that this should work. Could not get it to work. After 3 days of exhaustive hacking at it I went to the AB's web site and was looking at knowledge base. I found a pvserv.exe driver there and after examining the file I noticed that it is about 2k smaller than the one I had. I downloaded it and installed it in the Ultra5000 and it worked right away with PV550. Wow. AB in their ultimate act of stupidity has decided to have a new pvserv.exe driver without doing any Rev control what so ever!!! In other words you now have a situation where different revisions of Ultra5000 firmware might or might not match the particular pvserv.exe driver! Is that stupid or what?
But wait I am not done!

I moved from the PV550 to the PV600 and it's not working??
Now what?
I am looking at the cables and I have noticed that there are only 3 pins needed 2-2, 3-3, 5-5 clearly no handshaking! Yet the genius who wrote the app. note on how to connect PV to the Ultra5000 said clearly to use the handshake ON!
Luckilly I know a thing or two about RS-232 comms so I noticed that pretty quick. I switched the handshaking off and it's working. Apparently the PV550 does not implement handshaking so it does not care whether it's on or off but PV600 does!

But wait I am not done!

After working with the system for a while I started again having
hickups in the communications. I figured out after a while that whenever you download either to the PV or to the Ultra5000 you need to switch the power off to both and then re-boot.

This has cost me 3 days of shear hell, I will stay away from AB's HMI's and drives as a result of this fiasco. I never had any issues with Emerson and they have an excellent tech support!

The question in my mind is this, AB is charging huge amounts of money for tech connect and really the only time I needed it in the past was because of AB's error's, bugs or anomalies as they call them.
I figure out what the problem is and on top of it I pay AB the tech connect fee. So I do the AB's de-bugging and I pay for the privilledge! LOL. They got it figured out.

In my many years of experience with AB's PLC's and other products I can honestly say that the level of support is going down.
Ultra5000 is a mess.
Ultra5000 manual has a lot to be desired. It lacks detailed info which you can get from the tech connect by e-mail. If you don't have tech connect you are screwed.
 
the *other* "5000".

The Ultra 5000 is an OEM-oriented product that is very complicated and difficult to configure. The communications relies, as you've seen, on loadable driver modules and not on "firmware" in the traditional sense.

This is not A-B's lead product. The Ultra 3000's are fall-off-a-log simple, especially with ControlLogix and SERCOS. The Kinetix 6000 are a compact and powerful successor to the 1394 family of controllers.

I have seen one Ultra 5000 since they were introduced, but have commissioned many dozens of axes of Ultra 3000, 3000i and Kinetix. I don't think it's fair to paint a broad brush and say "A-B motion controllers and support are awful" when you're looking at one of their least popular devices.
 
I don't think it's fair to paint a broad brush and say "A-B motion controllers and support are awful" when you're looking at one of their least popular devices.

Eddie,
Let me just clarify, I don't think that AB's support in general is bad, actually it's still better than avarage. Based on some other additional negative experiences I had about 3 months ago that had to do with software activation issues I think that it's going down hill.
Secondly I am not sure how you define a lead product?
Micrologix line has higher per unit shipments than top of the line ControlLogix processors, would you then conclude that Micrologix is a lead product?
As far as I know the Ultra5000 is supposed to be a step up from
the Ultra3000. There is a good reason why it is not popular as you state.
 
Jiri Toman said:
As far as I know the Ultra5000 is supposed to be a step up from the Ultra3000. There is a good reason why it is not popular as you state.

Having done several Ultra5K jobs (in C) and several Ultra3Ks, they are differnt products with different capabilities for different applications and the 5K is not a stepup from the 3K.

In a current gantry application I'm working on, I was at first pushing the 5K over the 3K because the plant won't support ControlLogix (ie SERCOS). Privately, A-B pulled me aside and said they didn't want a 5K installation because their reps at the plant were't trained to support the C programmability.
 
I'm having some of the same difficulties trying to get a Ultra 5000 to work with a PV600. Can find very little documentation. I've got them communicating okay, but not exchanging data. On the PV600, I'm getting #683 File access error.

Help would be much appreciated!

Thanks
 
pv.JPG
 
Thanks...I've received some Ultra 5000 training manuals that seem to have all the information I need.

The key information that I was missing was that the global variables in Ultraware have to be named N7, F8, or B3. So simple yet illusive! Works as expected now...
 
Last edited:

Similar Topics

dear gents, I need the firmware for SERVO AMPLIFIER ULTRA5000, 2098-IPD-020 can anyone help me with this device firmware
Replies
2
Views
1,028
Hello Experts, I new here and this forum already helped me a lot to get my 2nd handed Ultra5000 communicating with my PC via Ultraware. I am a...
Replies
0
Views
1,349
Hi,I'm trying to use athe cam window(ultraware software) with the Ultra 5000 servo drive. I editted the cam table(specified input from 0 - 360...
Replies
14
Views
6,365
We need direct support about the ultra5000, my techsupport contract is over, so, I can pay for this time support if anybody can help to us. we...
Replies
0
Views
1,507
hello everybody!! I'm trying to run a project in a ultra 5kdrive firmw.v1.08,my ultraware software is v1.64, firmware in the drive is older than...
Replies
3
Views
2,691
Back
Top Bottom