PanelView Plus Comms

[Tom Jenkins]

Thanks, Michelle. Although it may not apply directly to our network, since we are using DH+, it will undoubtedly be helpful on our next project.

 

[akreel]

Do you think it was the firmware, Tom?

 

[Doug-P]

6' ?

A-B is anal retentive about having no less than 6 feet of cable between any two devices (and they count a terminal block as a device!). We may be one or two feet short, so that may be the problem.

Great info. I hadn't heard of this before. Does this mean six cable feet between ANY two ends of wire?

For example, there are two station connectors in a panel. One goes to a PLC in the panel, the other to a terminal outside the panel. Must there be six feet between the two SC's and also six feet between the station connector and the PLC?

We'll be adding station connectors and reconfiguring our DH/DH+ network shortly so it would be good to avoid introducing problems. In fact, some of the SC's already installed may need to have their cables lengthened.

 

[Tom Jenkins]

Aaron - yes, I personally think it was the firmware, probably due to the implementation of the Kepware A-B is using for comm drivers. We didn't get a clear explanation of why the new firmware was going to be better, and nothing in the upgrade notes indicated it would have an effect on our problem. However, it seems more unlikely that changing from a using a bit to address alarm bits to using a word to address alarm bits (see below!) would correct the comm problems. That was the only configuration change we made.

Doug - Yes, that is exactly what they mean. You may have to upgrade your wire duct sizes to hide all the extra cable you have looped around.

This is an actual quote from the tech support email - I am not making this up. Don't ask - I don't understand it either!

"The alarm triggers in the Alarm setup are configured incorrectly. They are set by bit. They should be set for value because the actual trigger is a bit. The bit type is used for word triggers that are evaluated as bit."

 

[Rick Densing]

"The alarm triggers in the Alarm setup are configured incorrectly. They are set by bit. They should be set for value because the actual trigger is a bit. The bit type is used for word triggers that are evaluated as bit."

I makes sense to me.

When you have a trigger that is a bit, you want to use the value type. The values are 0 or 1. If you set it to bit type, you are now looking at the bit number in the trigger starting at zero. So, if you set your trigger to 1 and type to bit you will be trying to look at the second bit in a 1 bit tag.

 

[akreel]

...probably due to the implementation of the Kepware A-B is using for comm drivers...

Funny you should mention KEPWare.
The next time we chat, remind me to tell you about my test of KEPWare against RSLinx.

 

[Doug-P]

Re: post #49

Thanks, Tom