AB 1734-232ASC to Vorne Scoreboard

[mf8560]

Having issues sending numeric display to Vorne 87-705-4D-4CTR scoreboard from 5069-L310ERMS2 with 1734-232ASC. I have Putty up on one of the cards and I am seeing messages so I know the card is putting signal out but can't seem to get anything on the display to change. Their tech support said they want a string <SOH>s: D45<CR> to display a value of 45. They are telling me the AB string would look like $01s: D45$0D, but the carriage return in AB always comes out as $r not sure if that is the problem or not.

 

[drbitboy]

The text in the post has a space after the colon, but the ladder image does not. Could that be the issue?

I am pretty sure $r is the same as $0D i.e. carriage return.

See this

 

[mf8560]

I should have put in the post, I had to add a space between the colon and D because it kept showing up as a smile face emoji

Program does not have the spaces in it

I wasn't sure on the r, as R and r have different hex/decimal values. Below is the email from Vorne tech support when I first asked but I have not gotten any response since: (smile emoji are the colon and D no space, I dont know how to keep them from showing up)


The correct string to send the number 45 to a 87 Series display is shown below.

<SOH>s45<CR>

Note: <SOH> and <CR> are control characters. They are shown this way in the Vorne documentation for ease of reading. You are sending these characters as literal text. For Allen Bradley PLC’s, these control characters are usually sent as

<SOH>= $01
<CR>= $0D

So from your PLC, send the following string to display the number 45:

$01s45$0D

 

[drbitboy]

Am I correct that you are successfully displaying data using PuTTY? If yes, how are you sending the carriage return (e.g. Control-M or Enter)?

Are you sure the scoreboard is configured to use carriage return and not line feed ($0A = $l - dollar-ell) for a terminator?

 

[drbitboy]

hook up the PLC to the PC with Putty, so you can see what the PLC is actually sending; successful reception of expected data (<SOH>s:D45<CR>) on the PC should also confirm baud rate, parity, stop bits, etc.

You will need to fiddle with the cable pinouts, of course; I've done that with paper clips before.

 

[mf8560]

Putty results. I tried line return to the board as well and no luck, I have vorne book attachments coming

 

[mf8560]

Vorne instructions for simple message

Wiring seems to be correct, I am getting RX back from the board, dip switch on board seem correct according to manual

 

[Ken Roach]

Welcome to the PLCTalk forum community !

A recommendation: instead of PuTTY, use RealTerm. You can configure it to show hex codes, or extended ASCII, as well as ordinary printable ASCII text.

I like that because then I'm 100% sure if I am getting a SOH or LF or CR character even if it's not printable. The running total of bytes received can also be useful.

In the PuTTY screenshot, I'm not sure if the green box is the cursor (in which case it hasn't "carriage returned" to the beginning of the line) or if it's the unprintable carriage return character.

If the green box represents an unprintable character, then I would expect one for the 0x01 = SOH as well, right ?

For better or for worse, A-B stuck with classic shorthand for control characters. If you type in $0D, Studio 5000 will replace it with $r and the string will actually contain the hex 0x0D carriage return character.

I'm going to refresh my memory about the 232ASC module and its configuration for termination characters.

 

[mf8560]

Thank you guys. Found the problem, had a 2 wire with shield ran and they needed 3 wire with shield. Code above works just like it was supposed to now, the short hand like you said was throwing me and thats what i was hung up on. Thanks again

 

[drbitboy]

Thank you guys. Found the problem, ...

Well done, thanks for the feedback.

 

[Ken Roach]

Nice work not getting too focused on the software side, and thanks for the follow-up.

I can definitely think of a few installations where the installed asked "Just receive and transmit, right ?" and it would be easy to think they meant "and none of the hardware handshaking lines" and forget to remind them about the data common connector. Very frequent in RS485 installations, of course.

 

[OkiePC]

It sucks that "2-wire RS-485" really means 3 wires plus a shield. But, there are many misnomers, euphemisms and vast amounts of obscure knowledge in this field of work that make it challenging, rewarding and humbling almost every day.