Compactlogix L32E Loss of Date

I have a customer that has asked me why when power is cycled to his Compactlogix he loses the date and time and he has to go back in and set it again.
Battery status light looks good and there is no minor fault for the battery.
Wondering if anyone has possible solutions for this.

Thanks.

Is it loading the program from a CompactFlash card every time power is cycled ?

That sounds like the most likely reason to me, but it's not impossible for the battery-backed RTC on a CompactLogix to fail without also damaging the rest of the controller.

Lose of Date & Time

dhuber, Did you ever figure out the problem?? We are trying to troubleshoot a station with the same symptoms.

Hi and welcome to the Forum!

I know you were directing your question at the original poster, but it would serve you well to answer Ken's question. He's still alive you know! Or else he's just haunting this old place?

Normally, a firmware diagnostics routine is periodically run in the controller to check, among other things, if the RTC is reporting the time that the controller expects. If the RTC in a CompactLogix does go awry, the firmware diagnostics routine is designed to transition the controller to a safe state i.e. it clears its memory, indicating a major fault.

If a user is not getting major, or minor faults, then it would initially point to a CompactFlash card being set to load on power up, overwriting the current time settings during power cycles.

So, have you got a CF card in this controller set to load on power up?

If not, are there any SSV (Set System Value) instructions using the Class: WallClockTime Attribute: LocalDateTime in the program. These instructions could possibly be writing incorrect time and date values to the controllers WALLCLOCKTIME at program execution after a power cycle.

Is the time/date resetting to defaults, or just out by some degree?
What is the controller catalog number?
What firmware version is the controller at?

Regards,
George

No Faults. Date goes back to 1997. CF card is not in the controller. We do have a SSV but we have tried several programs without it and it still does the same thing. It works fine at our shop but not at the customer's. We have un-wired everything except for the power supply and it still resets. We have also tried multiple controllers.

Are you sure it's 1997 and not 1998 ?

When you download to an empty ControlLogix without setting the date, it comes up with a date sometime in June 1998. I happened to do this today with a 1756-L61 v19 controller that had some internal event logging logic.

The first logic trigger when I started testing logged a date of June 6, 1998 about 6 AM.

I know for sure I've seen 1998 dates on un-configured controllers many times in the past.

If it really "works fine at our shop but not at the customer's", my guess is that you've got some serious voltage spikes that are killing the realtime clock.

I've heard this complaint before (WCT gets reset or scrambled during power cycle, no program loss or fault), but never from somebody who was willing to put in the time to troubleshoot it. I've never seen it in the lab.

I had this same problem with a L32E. 9 times out of ten when the machine was powered down the date would jump one day and one hundred years ahead. I did not have any battery indicators but decided to change it anyways. That was a little over a month ago and have not had the issue come back so far..

The date resets to 12/31/1997 7:00:00 PM. We have tried multiple controllers at our shop and they work fine. When we take it to the customer's shop, it resets to this date and continues to reset to this date even at our shop. The L2 has no battery, so I am out of ideas.?????

I have the same issue, and this has been some time. Has anyone come up with a solution to this?

Another possibility - is the customer connecting to an HMI PC or another PLC ? There may be a master clock somewhere else setting the time incorrectly .

Paul

I was thinking that before Paul, but why then does it continue to reset to this date when back at their shop?

The only other thing to note here is that we now have an older 1769-L32E and a newer 1769-L2x processor with similar symptoms?

rdeyoung,

What model controller are you seeing this issue on and what time/date does it reset to?

Regards,
George

Solved - at least for me

I'm working with a 1769-L18ERM-BB1B. The Rockwell tech that I worked with had an identical firmware, blank project, no time sync, but had an L18ER-BB1B. The tech had no date reset issues whereas I did. So, late last night I upgraded the firmware from 20.14 to 26, migrated the project to studio 26 and the problem disappeared. After speaking a lot with the techs, I think the ESM doesn't store the localdatetime tag on power down for this firmware with this PLC (my guess is something with the motion attribute in the firmware. I hope this helps someone.

Geospark - it resets to 12/31/1997 7:00. I knew something changed with the firmware when I used a browser to go into the processor and the date was automatically in 1998 (UTC clock)

Compact Logix L32E

I have a similar issue with time on a L32E The GSV object is returning a large integer like 32465 instead of 2015 for the year. This project has been running for 2 years with no issues. I get to drive 4 hours tomorrow to see what could possibly have happened. Anyone ever seen something like this?

No indications the battery was bad..... Replaced the battery issue went away

ras_roger said:

I have a similar issue with time on a L32E The GSV object is returning a large integer like 32465 instead of 2015 for the year. This project has been running for 2 years with no issues. I get to drive 4 hours tomorrow to see what could possibly have happened. Anyone ever seen something like this?

Click to expand...

You posted this November 9th, 2015, 06:58 PM.

Then today you said..

No indications the battery was bad..... Replaced the battery issue went away

Click to expand...

I guess it took you a little longer then 4 hours to get there.

Anyone ever seen something like this?

Click to expand...

No