Compactlogix to Red Lion DSP

[Solarplc]

This is the set-up we have, and we recently lost comms to two devices on this PLC. After replacing the red lion and copying in another identical devices programming updated with correct IPs one device was communicating but the other was not. The direction for the blocks is DSP to device. I found that one of the two blocks for the EtherNet/IP Slave had no values so after messing with it a bit I changed the starting address randomly and all of the block values populated and appear to be correct. The question is how can I know for sure in the future without just guessing. The values that populated donÂ’t match the tags in crimson 3 and appear to just be DB addresses. Is there a way to see the DB either in crimson 3 or RSlogix 5000? Our field laptop does not have network access, SQL, or Excel. I imagine those would be helpful for this. Any ideas?

 

[Ken Roach]

Welcome to the PLCTalk forum community !

Can you provide some additional details and context about the application and devices ? It's not clear to me from your initial post if there's a third physical device, and exactly how you've configured the Data Station Plus and its EtherNet/IP Slave driver.

Let's work through first what the "two blocks for the EtherNet/IP Slave" are, and what you mean by "the values that populated don't match the tags in Crimson 3".

If you can ZIP and post the *.ACD and *.CD3 applications that would be ideal, or do some screenshots and attach them as PNG or BMP files to your post.

 

[Solarplc]

Unfortunately all of the programming is being done on laptops without internet connections for security reasons. It would probably be fine to post screen shots, but I’m a little worried I’d end up getting the can for sharing images haha.

I’ll try to clear up your questions the best I can though. As far as the “blocks” go I’m talking about the gateway blocks in crimson 3. As a newbie, I assume these are telling the red lion to look for values in the PLC. After reading through some Crimson 3 documentation, it seems as though you would normally create a gateway block with a given amount of addresses and then associate one of your data tags but I’m not positive.

As far as the data tags go, the ones already present in the file have “real” names like XFMR_Temp, but the ones that populated when I changed the start address have a different naming convention that looks something along the lines of “INV1.DBxxxx:xxxx”. Hopefully that helps.

 

[Ken Roach]

Not being able to see the specifics does increase the degree of difficulty, but we'll do our best.

Let's confirm: is this is a classic Red Lion Data Station Plus (like a DSP-SX, or -LE), rather than the sleeker black-cased Data Station (DS10/DS30), and you're using Crimson 3.0, not 3.1 ? They each work similarly, but I want to get it straight.

Examine the driver that the DSP is using; is it only the "EtherNet/IP Adaptor", or is it also using another Allen-Bradley driver to read tags from the A-B controller ?

If it's an EtherNet/IP adapter, you should see a corresponding Generic Ethernet Module in the I/O tree of the ControlLogix. Check out the configuration for that object, particularly the Assembly numbers and their data type (usually DINT) and sizes.

Generally the DSP has two Gateway Blocks to match the Input and Output assemblies.

The green block is "DSPX to Device", so that's an Input assembly in the ControlLogix.
The red block is "Device to DSPSX", so that's an Output assembly in the ControlLogix.

The default names are prefaced with "C" (presumably for "Connection Point" and the Assembly number (often 100 and 101) followed by a colon and the offset of the element in the array.

If you changed the "Connection Point" number, that might have re-numbered the default names of the elements of those blocks. Maybe the "before" configuration didn't match the Assembly numbers in the ControlLogix, though your narrative seems to be that "it was working then it stopped" rather than "we are setting this up for the first time".

Those tags are defined before the Gateway Blocks have their elements mapped to other tags related to other drivers. Passing data to and from external devices on diverse networks is the essential core function of the Data Station Plus.

My guess is that "INV1" is the name of a PLC or device that's connected with another driver or communication port to the Data Station Plus. Look through your configuration for such a device and describe which protocol it's using.