Dear List,

We have a problem to established the connection between MMI which has been develop by Citect Software and PLC-5/15 Allen Bradley. Do I need to add more expansion module or communication module or driver to make those things communicate ? Thanks.

Adi Purnomo S
Sales & Marketing Manager
PT. Asia Karsa Indonesia
Advanced Technologies
Indonesia
Telp. 62-21-8649318
Fax. 62-21-8649316
e-mail : [email protected]

 

Citect is supplied with the drivers it needs, but what else you will need depends on the chosen configuration. For example, if a simple serial connection is desired, then you will need a serial connection to the PLC, either via a 1785-KE board in the PLC or a 1770-KF2 interface module between the PC and the PLC. (Later PLC 5's have a serial port on them anyway, but I believe that that is not true of the PLC 5/15?)

Alternatively you may need choose to use DH+ or Ethernet, or via a KT card. A similar situation exists - you have the Citect driver, but you will need suitable hardware for it to connect to.

From your question it sounds like you already have a Citect application to use - is that correct? If so it will have been configured for a particular type of comms already (although it's
probably not too tricky to change if you need to). If you start Citect's development system (Citect Explorer, unless you have a very old version of Citect), go to Project Editor and look at IO Devices under the Communications menu, it will tell you in there which protocol has been selected (eg ABKT, ABTCP, and so on). You may need
to hit Page Down to cycle through the IO Device records if more than one has been set up.

It also sounds like you have attempted to get communications working without success, so it probably isn't a missing hardware issue (you
would have noticed if you had a cable with nothing to plug it into!). What are the symptoms? If you have a hardware alarm page set up, what
error message does it give?

My knowledge of the AB range is very limited, but Citect normally gives enough clues as to the problem if you know where to look (and it is my job to know that much at least). However, because there are so many different ways to talk to the AB PLC/5 we need to narrow the search down a little. Also, which Citect version are you using? (Help | About from one of its programs will tell you.)

Mark Rogers
Citect (UK) Ltd

 

On newer A-B PLC-5s the RS232 serial port of the PC/HMI computer can be connected directly to the Channel 0 serial port of the PLC. However older
PLCs without a Channel 0 port require a separate serial to DH+ interface module connecting the HMI to the PLC via DH+. In this case you could also
use DataLink's DL2000/3000 free-standing/DINrail serial interfaces or their DL-PC (ISA/EISA bus) pc card interface as an alternative to A-B's products. See: http://www.dltech.net/products.html
Colin Marsh