Wizcon 9.4 & SLC 5/05 upgrade

[johnd_125]

I have a customer running the above. Its about a 10-15 year old installation.


They would like to upgrade the SLC 5/05. I would probably use a CompactLogix 5380 PLC for that.

The Wizcon is not so straightforward. Its running on a Windows XP machine and actually runs good and does what they need. They are using about 350 tags. I'd probably leave it alone except that when I upgrade the PLC I believe the tag references may need to change and possibly the comm driver. Is there a way to change the PLC and leave the tag references so that Wizcon would still find the right registers? Maybe "N7:11" is also named "N7:11" in the Studio 5000 PLC file?

I'd need the application side if I do need to update tags/driver. If I am doing that, perhaps I should upgrade the Wizcon to the latest version which is something called ControlMaestro by Elutions now. I have a European supplier working on a proposal for that. I'm expecting a high price and if thats the case I need to consider going to a different SCADA, something I am more familiar with. In that case I still almost need the Wizcon application software to de-construct screens and re-construct in something else.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance....

 

[plvlce]

Is there a way to change the PLC and leave the tag references so that Wizcon would still find the right registers? Maybe "N7:11" is also named "N7:11" in the Studio 5000 PLC file?

Create array tags that mimic the file structure of the SLC. You can name the tags whatever you want. Then assign the tag to the corresponding SLC data table via the 'Map PLC/SLC Messages...' dialogue.

 

[Ken Roach]

Logix incompletely emulates SLC-5/05

Examine the configuration of the WizCon driver and see if it has an option to use the "EtherNet/IP" or "CIP" transport protocol, and exactly what data file types it is reading and writing.

The SLC-5/05 was, for years, a "dual stack" device that supported both the legacy "CSPv4" proprietary A-B protocol and the more modern and mostly-open CIP protocol. The data table read and write commands were the same (called "PCCC") but the connection and session layers are different.

The ControlLogix can emulate basic SLC-5/05 data tables by "mapping" an Array Tag to a Data Table number; "MyIntegers[100]" maps to N10:0-99.

But that only works for B, N, and F data types. Timers, Counters, Strings, or anything other compound or complex data type doesn't "map".

If you can capture the TCP/IP traffic off the WizCon XP box with Wireshark or a similar protocol analyzer, look for the TCP port on the SLC it's using. If it's TCP Port 2222, it's old CSPv4. If it's TCP Port 44818, it's CIP.

 

[johnd_125]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I may be able to make the Logix work with the existing Wizcon but makes me nervous not having Wizcon application editing available to so much as check a tag address.

This might be a good time to switch them to Ignition....

 

[Henny]

Hello Johnd_125

For editing Wizcon aplication you would need a so called development key and now I think they have a runtime key (USB dongle ) connected to the pc?

You could try to find a file in the Wizcon project directory that is called something like W2pack.dat in control maestro that was the new name for Wizcon in 2008 are so the file was called cmpack.dat. If you rename dat file or move it to another directory and restart Wizcon without key attached it starts up in demo mode and probably you are able to open the studio then and examine the drivers. Beware don,t delete the w2pack.dat file because it,s needed in combination with the runtime key but just store in temporary into another directory.

Kind regards
Henny

 

[Henny]

In my Controlmaestro application a controllogix driver is described in the helpfile from the drivers but when I try to add and start browsing I can,t find that driver. For communication with our CTI PLC,s over ethernet we use kepware OPC installed on the same pc that runs wizcon. Before we used the OPC driver we used Siemens Sinec H1 driver that was availible in wizcon/controlmaestro. Later when using the ECC ethernetcards from CTI and their C400 CPU,s for replacing TI 555 cpu,s we used then the OPC driver because there was no appropiate driver availble within control maestro(wizcon).

So OPC could be an option if the customer does not want to use other scada system.

Kind regards
Henny