HELP!!! RSlogix5000 and RSView communication

Well guys im looking for some ideas or help with a problem that im having. I am trying to monitor the communication between rsview and logix 5000, what i am doing now is using a 60 second timer. when the timer reaches 5 seconds it sets my reset bit in rsview that will reset the timer in the plc and set another bit to 1, when the other bit goes to 1 the rsview will set the reset bit back to 0 which also sets the other bit back to 0 and then it just repeats itself, if communication is lost the timer will count to 60 seconds and cause a loss of communication fault.

For some reason everyonce in a while my reset bit does not set back to 0 and the system just locks causing a loss of communication fault.

so basically i am looking for a new way check and insure communication and am just wondering how everyone else is doing it. Im sure there is more than one way. and hopefully i can find a way that is a little easier to use and explain then the mess above so somebody please help.

How is the RSView communicating to the PLC? What kind of faults are you seeing? How do you reset them? etc...

You haven't given us enough information to be able to help you. This is a fairly common application, so it should work -- if everything else is right.

hi sorry we are communicating using ethernet, now what i am trying to do is prove that the two are actually communicating. the only fault i am getting is that every once in a while the reset bit doesnt reset and causes a loss of communication fault when there isnt one. i know im not explaining this the best way possible, maybe i should just ask how other people monitor that the rsview and plc are communicating

Not real clear on what you are doing with the various bits, but the easiest thing to do is have a running timer (say preset of 20). In RSView, set up a derived tag or use an always running macro that writes zero to the timer.ACC if (timer.ACC is > 5).

In the PLC, if the timer ever completes, you know that RSView is not communicating to the PLC.

robertmee, thanks we were basically doing the same thing with a few extra steps but i will try to set it up this way, and let you know how i make out, unfortunatley its almost quitting time so it will have to wait another day lol

well i have had some better luck today with this problem, however i was unable to write a value of 0 directly into the timer.acc, so instead i am still using the reset to reset the timer.

Another method of doing it is to put a rectangle on your screen,
then use the visble animation along with a 1/2 second timer.
If you lose comms the rectangle will stop blinking indicating a loss of communications.