I have used Citect for 2 applications to date both using Fx3 but I used serial comms as the PC was beside the PLC. But I'm interested in seeing what these new versions of the product can do.Thanks Automaton, that has helped. Red Lion does sometimes jump the gun with announcing products before they are commercially available, so I'm not going to get too excited. Literally two minutes ago, a Red Lion marketing e-mail hit my in-box, with the new, improved, low-profile, Graphite-3.1-supporting edition of the DataStations: DA10D and DA30D. I fully expect them to re-start it on an emergency basis when their repaired hardware fails in the next few months. the customer managed to get a bunch of rebuilt hardware in, and canceled the project. That was of similar cost, and gave us a shiny little screen to see the important position variable.Īnd then. Then I built the same application but with just one serial port, on a G304K2 Kadet. It slowed down when I started hitting the DSPSX with HTTP requests for the virtual HMI. I was able to get 100ms updates with ease from the DSPSX. I ended up building that application with a DSPSX that I had in my lab, and it handily out-ran the existing custom devices, due to some choices made by the firmware and PLC program authors that limited them to 250ms cyclic updates. I have some data-conversion that peak out a window machine at 40+% consistently. Lack of ability to scale without going through internal tag first. to INTERGER.2 without creating a native redlion Flag(Bool) tag to INTERGER.2 first. Can't link to bit level of an integer, ie. why can't this support additonal 5 or 6 serial ports as expansion? Yes, I could use some serial-to-Ethernet converter and set up virtual serial port but. Should list that as the top object in the org tree. hard to tell which project or hardware I'm working on.
SUBNET Solution's Windows based software is better, allowed direct copy-and-paste from Excel but they don't talk to AB directly. Hands down, one of the easiest multi-protocol data-converter/concentrator I worked with. For this project, I haven't really touched other ability of this controller like virtual HMI, IEC-61131, edge IOT. There are a lot of devices out there that can do this but I'm most interesting in Redlion because the Edge can handle DNP3 which is quite popular in my industry and I want to see how the programming environment is. I'm using a Edge controller to do data conversion from Contrologic to Modbus slave.
So, my first redlion project is online and I thought I stop by to give my impression on it. The Graphite Edge RS-485 serial ports are impervious to lightning, sal****er intrusion, and rodent attacks.Īny input from folks who have used the Graphite Edge controller and can comment on its RS-485 performance ?
There's something impossibly awesome in the Graphite Edge controller that I have not yet discovered.Ĥ. The DSPLE will be unavailable in the near futureģ.
Its a lot faster and the DSPLE can't handle two drivers simultaneouslyĢ. So I think the compelling arguments to use the Graphite Edge controller instead of a DSPLE or DSPSX would be:ġ. The price of a DSPLE with an Serial Expansion module is about half of the price of the GRAC001 with two serial ports. I don't need the IEC1131 control engine, or the USB or SD ports, or the e-mail, or the data logging, or the SQL integration. It's nice to have if you want to check on the status of your serial devices, but it's not going to be used except for engineering. Sweet.Īnd the Poll/Response protocol should be fairly easy to write using Red Lion's built in language PortSendData and PortReadData are about all I need.
To my delight, Red Lion has a driver for those XtraDrives, already in their protocol list. I think I can do better, as the system frequently has comms problems to these devices and nobody knows if they're wiring or protocol or damage to the slave devices. The implementation that the SLC-500 programmer did was.
I have an application where Prosoft MVI46-GSC Generic Serial modules were used with an SLC-500 to communicate with two serial devices a set of position indicators with a simplified poll/response protocol, and a couple dozen Yaskawa "XtraDrive" servo controllers. Any Red Lion Graphite Edge Controller users here ?