1734-AENT Module Failure - any way around power cycling the unit

[owenmctague]

Hi,

We are seeing a problem on our Allen Bradley Ethernet Point IO modules (1734-AENT Module) to our L72 controllers, where if there is a network problem we need to cycle the power to get it running again.

These modules have been working with no issues for the last 3 months, but originally the RPI update was set too fast (default 20ms) and we would see random failures on some modules, and to get it going we had to recycle the power on that unit. We increased the RPI to 50 msec and everything has been running fine since.

However we had a problem with traffic on our managed IT switches and it caused all the point io modules to fail with the network status LED showing red and we couldn't ping the modules. When we recycled the power, everything came back online.

It is pointing to a comm timeout/ too much network traffic issue that caused the modules to freeze and that is understandible but is there a way to reset these modules without power cycling? The switch came back online after an outage of a few minutes but our entire control system remained faulted until we went around each remote panel and manually recycled the power, which took a while. Luckily nothing important was running at the time but I want to be better prepared in case something like this happens again.

 

[ohnedich6]

What firmware are you currently using for the 1734-AENT modules? I was having a comms timeout issuing on a point IO system I implemented (for no apparent reason) and tech support told me to bump the firmware version to the modules. It did the trick and we haven't had any comms failures out of the blue anymore.

I don't remember what firmware I had to set them to, I'll see if I can find it tomorrow once it get in the office and report back.

 

[owenmctague]

They're running on firmware rev 4.3, there was an underlying issue where one of our managed switches was failing in and out of the network causing a large increase in network traffic. I think the AB kit is sensitive to a lot of traffic and just stops working (we also had a SLC5 and PLC5s go out at the same time).

We also would see some problems when our RPI was set to update too quickly, since we increased this, we havent had any problems when the system has been running stabile.