Red Lion, Red Lion, Red Lion

Hi Guys, We have a Redlion being used as a protocol converter between a Schneider Quantum and Rockwell Micrologix ( I think) . It seems to work OK for a period of time and then it locks up. We can detect from the SCADA that it has locked up because the status we see doesn't make sense. When we look into the PLC's we see that some of the data is getting thru intermittently buut the majority of data is not being updated. Cycling the data on the Redlion usually restores comms. The last two times that we have seen this behavior was after heavy rain. I am not certain but it looks as if the heavy rains cause some form of a fault in the network (multi-mode fibre/ethernet) and oncethis occurs the redlion somehow gets itself into a state that it can't recover from. Currently the comms in the redlion is scheduled to run as often as possible. Any idea's on how to a confirm or dispel my suspicions or b get the redlion to reset itself once comms has locked up ? Thanks

Well, I mean, this solution sounds hokey, but this is what I was thinking initially:

Use a relay to control the power supply to the Red lion if you can get a definitely "fault" signal from the unit, and cycle that relay when you get that fault signal.

However, have you spoken to red lion? Could you have a bad unit?

If you do not need the data instantly then I would strongly suggest you set it for a timed up date. One simple way shown to me by Red Lion is to use the Uptick (once per second) to read the data on your comms.

Another item to look at is Gateway blocks. I have used these and they prove to be very efficent. Basically you map the tags from one processor to another. This way you only read what you need to read.

Last trick actually just takes care of the symtoms not the problem. You can create a short program that clears the port just before you request data. This prevents the data que for that port from being overloaded and you only see the most current data.

We are using Gateway Blocks , I can post the CD2 file if that will help. Just let me know.