Firmware update for older (CF card) PanelView Plus 600

[bgtorque]

Hi
I have a number of the older PanelView Plus 600 HMI's (2711P-T6C20D, Ser D) that I want to update to the latest firmware. I believe that the latest firmware is v5.10.16 and I have downloaded this and run the executable.

My issue is when I run the Firwware Upgrade Wizard I have no option to the v5.10 firmware, only options are for v6.10 to v14.00?

Anyone any clue what I need to do to be able toe select it and create a v5.10.16 CF card please?

Thanks.

 

[dmroeder]

What you have there is a "PanelView Plus 6" terminal, minimum firmware is exactly what the wizard is telling you. You have the latest version of the previous generation of terminals, which is not compatible with yours.

• PanelView Plus: flashes up to v5.10.16
• PanelView Plus 6: v6.10 to the latest (I thought v6.0 was the earliest)
• PanelView Plus 7: (can't remember minimum revision)

 

[bgtorque]

Thanks for that. I do get that completely and know what i have (although on the HMI it states on the front and rear that it is a PanelView Plus 600). What i'm struggling with is how to get v5.10 in the Firware Upgrade wizard as an option to select and create the CF card to perform the upgrade to v5.10.16 (it's currently on 5.10.06).

 

[Operaghost]

First lets give you the bad news and then clear up a couple things.

OK, so the bad news is that you must use FT View Studio version 11 or older. The newer versions no longer support the old PanelView Plus terminals. You should be able to download the older version and install it onto a different machine. It will not require a license if we are only using it to do a firmware upgrade.

Now, to clear up some confusion on PVP versus PVP6...

PanelView Plus and PanelView Plus 6 look pretty much identical from the front. The Plus 6 models do not actually say "Plus 6" on them. From the back, the logic modules are different. The Plus 6 has sort of a wavy heatsink on the logic module where the original Plus has a flatter appearance to the logic module (no wavy heatsink). The Plus logic module was either silver or gold color. The Plus 6 is sort of greyish.

The other big difference is that the "Plus" uses a CompactFlash type removeable media where the "Plus 6" uses an SD card. Since you are talking about a CompactFlash card, we know you must have the original PanelView Plus model.

But again, you will need version 11 or older in order to perform the firmware upgrade.

OG

 

[bgtorque]

Great, thank you. I have FT6, 6.1,7 & 14. I will see if I cna download v11 and go from there, may thanks for the detail, most helpful. If I try and install though, given that I'm running a later version os FT VS, am I going to run into issues where it wont install as it detects a newer version? Do I need to uninstall the current version (v14)?

 

[bgtorque]

Have just realised that you said I need to install it onto a different machine. I guess to avoid this conflict. That is a pain as i'm away on site and don't have another machine. I wonder if there is a free virtual machine that I can install it onto, although I then need another copy of Windows I guess to run on that?

 

[Operaghost]

You would have to uninstall your current version to install an older version. That is very ugly and not at all recommended. If you have version 6 available, that should work.

A virtual machine is the ideal solution. They are very commonly used by the people on this forum. VMware Workstation Player is a great solution. They used to offer it "Free for personal use". Not sure if that is still the case. I think for almost everyone we use it for business purposes so you are supposed to buy it when that is the case.

VirtualBox is another option. Their software is free although there is an add-on that has some licensing implications. I think it is called an Extension Pack that also is for personal use only. So if you use VirtualBox without the extension I think you can use it for commercial purposes. I use VMware, so I'm not 100% sure of the licensing for VirtualBox. But many of the folks here really like it.

It is most definitely worth investigating. I never install manufacturer software on my physical machine. I always use VMs.

OG

 

[joseph_e2]

Another very strong recommendation to use VMs. The first time I used a VM for automation software was because my RSView Studio (old name for FT View Studio) software crashed. It would neither uninstall completely, reinstall completely, nor repair. Right now, I have VMs for View Studio versions 5.00, 5.10, 8.2, 9, 11, and 12.

In my experience, View Studio has always been a little unstable and is best run in a sandbox where it can't break other things and where it's easy to restore when it has a conniption itself.

 

[bgtorque]

I’ve tried using VMware with Win11 as host and as guest. It just keeps freezing and I can’t do anything, let alone drag and drop the software files to install. Need to look into this a little more as my PC should be plenty powerful enough. If I had a Win10 iso then I probably would’ve installed that at the guest OS.

 

[Operaghost]

I ran into some issues with earlier versions of VMware not working well with Windows 11 on my host. I would get a blue screen of death and looping reboots in my guest o/s. I upgraded to VMware version 17 and the problems went away. I think I was using VMware v15 at the time.

I have yet to use Win 11 as a guest. Pretty much everything I use is Win 10 for the guest o/s.

The one thing I would suggest in regards to the freezing is to make sure you haven't assigned too much RAM to the VM. If your computer has 16GB of RAM and you assign 8GB to the VM, then that leaves 8GB for the host to use. That should be fine. But if I assign 12GB of RAM to the VM then I have starved my host for memory by only leaving it 4GB. When that happens, everything on the system slows to a crawl, or just locks up. Give the VM only as much RAM as it needs.

OG

 

[bgtorque]

Good point and thanks, i've found the Win10 OS iso as well now and so will also give that a go. Thanks again for the pointers, much appreciated.