CompactLogix to PanelView 300 Micro

I've been thrust into the world of PLC programming from relatively no experience and am finding myself out of my depth.

I've inherited a MicroLogix 1200 controller connected to a Panelview 300 Micro. My boss want me to get a new PLC, A CompactLogix 5320 L20 to run the Panelview 300M instead and I can't even work out how to connect the two.

The CompactLogix is setup to communicate using DF1 but I suspect the Panelview 300M is using DH-485.

Can anyone give me some advice on where to start? What cables I should use etc?

If anyone can give me a heads-up on how tags from RSLogix 5000 can be assigned/mapped to tags in Panelbuilder 32 to program the Panelview 300M I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks,

Hash.

Ok a little vague and difficult to answer without saying learn a bit more about what you're talking about and come back when you're ready.

A little more to the point then, can any let me know what cables (or how to make them) I need to connect a Panelview 300M to a CompactLogix L20 PLC?

Cabling for these two is easy; you use the same cable that you used to program the MicroLogix 1200. It's part number is 1761-CBL-PM02, and it has a round 8-pin connector for the serial port on the MicroLogix 1200 or the PV300 Micro, and a 9-pin connector for your laptop computer. When you're done downloading an application file into the PanelView, just pull the cable off your PC and plug it onto the CompactLogix controller.

Because there's just the one serial port on each device, there's going to be a little plug, unplug, re-plug, lather, rinse, repeat sort of thing going on.

You *could* step up to DH-485 protocol, which can have up to 31 nodes (your PC, the PView, the controller, etc) on a network, but that would require another piece of hardware (the 1761-NET-AIC signal converter, maybe two !) and it's my experience that the CompactLogix doesn't support it as well as the SLC's and MicroLogix do where it's native.

If your PanelView 300 Micro uses DH-485 protocol already, fear not; it's a little known secret that you can download DF1 firmware into a DH485 protocol PanelView 300 Micro (you didn't hear it from me !) because they're physically identical with electrically identical RS-232 ports.

For tag mapping, although you *could* directly reference Logix style tags, I try to keep things as simple as possible by addressing ALL the tags in the PanelView to a few Integer files in the Logix. Then you can easily and simply enter a tag array of INT type into the "Map PLC/SLC Addresses" table in RSLogix 5000 and that array will emulate a real SLC-500 integer file. I usually use N10 for "output" data to the PanelView, and N11 for "Input" data from the PanelView. In the Logix, I call them "PVin[50]" and "PVout[50]"

P.S. There's a trick to getting the RSLogix 5000 program translator to import MicroLogix programs (it officially only supports SLC-500 and PLC-5). Post your *.RSS program file if you want to get into that topic.

Hey, thanks very much Ken!

The CompactLogix and Panelview are talking to each other now which is better than the miserable state of affairs I had yesterday.

Re: Micrologix program Conversion

Actually we had a guy come in and convert the program but there were several errors in functions he said didn't convert properly - I would appreciate some info on how he did it though and how I could do it in future. I've attached the original RSS file in ZIP format.