Panelview Plus and PLC5 over DH+

I have been maintaining Panelview Plus terminals connected over ethernet for a few years and now would like to added a PV+ to a DH+ network. I have the comm card added and the driver configured.

I am hitting a wall with setting up my HMI tags, alarm tags, etc. Nothing seems to work. I know I'm missing something easy. I am starting from scratch and when I try to create a tag I expect to drill down to the PLC and specify a table, but instead the software locks up looking for something I obviously haven't configured.

Does anyone out there have a quick cheat sheet on doing this? I am digging through the manual but it is very slow and painful.

Thanks!

I never had much success "digging down" to create tags - but ethernet tags and DH+ tags amount to the same thing - you just need to change the device configuration in RsLinx enterprise. If you do and test your application over ethernet, you can change your PLC connection from ethernet to DH+ and will work. (sorry - not sitting in front of factorytalk to see exactly how to set up DH+ connection).

Do I have to import my tags from RSLogix5 first? I keep thinking I have it set up, but I can't get the panelview to react to changes in the PLC yet. I think I must be using the wrong syntax to address the PLC from RSView. I should add that the PLC 5 has no ethernet connection, unlike all the others we have that are connected to PV+.

i think you have to use an opc server set it up with rs lynx

Well, PLC5 doesn't have tags - so you wouldn't be able to import them. The data tables are directly accessible so say you want a button to turn on a bit, there are two ways you can do it. One is to create a tag in FactoryTalk that references a PLC5 bit then reference the tag with the button, the other is to have the button directly access the PLC5 bit.

I never used tags in PV+ because all of my applications were custom and keeping the extra "layer" out of it made it easier to build and debug my apps. Tags are defenitely a good thing - but i would recommend keeping them out of it for the moment because it makes it easier. So your expression may look like this

::[MyPLC5]B3:0/1

I had a helk of a time learning that "::" bit at the beginning. All it means is that "look out, there's a : in the following, just roll with it".
If you know how to create an ethernet connection to MyPLC5 in RsLinx enterprise get that working first, you won`t have to change the above when making the connection to DH+. The experiment with enterprise to make it DH+.

Now...SOMETIMES...stuff doesn`t work in FactoryTalk for no apparent reason (maybe it`s better now, haven`t used it in a year). I really like AB and FactoryTalk - but my rule was if I was pretty sure something I changed was correct, but it wasn`t working properly in the application, I would reset, still no good - redownload, still no good - reset, still no good - redownload, still no good reset. I wrestled with this and RSLinx Enterprise in the early days.

Good Luck.

Just reread your second post. If you are infact using RsView instead of factorytalk you may have to ignore most or all of the above. I believe PV+ used RsView before RsView `became` factorytalk back in version 3 or 4 but i can`t speak to the similarities between the two. What version / software are you using?

Thanks, Sinc for the info. I may be having trouble with making sure the MyPLC5 reference is set up in RSView properly. Also, I am having issues getting version 6.0 of Factorytalk working, so I'm using V4.0 on another machine. I guess that could be the problem as well. So many variables to consider I guess.....

I have one of those horrible abortions here (PV+ to PLC5 via DH+ and ControlLogix via Ethernet). It was truly a pain in the butt, and expensive. In the end, I just copied the data in the 5 to a single data table, and messaged the whole mess up to the Logix processor, and read it over Ethernet from there.

Hi guys, thanks for the help. I came into work early, calmly sat down with no distractions, mapped the PLC in RSLinx Enterprise, set up alarm triggers, tested and it works.

{::[EXAMPLEPLC5]N7:10,L5}