Internet PLC Forum

The LED flashes if there are current flowing through it but it does not mean that the input is recognized by the CPU. 

Are you able to measure the output from the vision system before you connect to the PLC's digital inputs? That way you can be sure what is the output voltage like when the output is ON and OFF.

Remember that the input to E10-Relay+ must be PNP type (i.e. between 18 to 24VDC when ON and 0-3V when OFF) so the output from the vision system must be compatible with the input requirement of the PLC for the CPU to recognize it.

Are you sure the output from the sensor is PNP? Can you measure the applied voltage to the PLC's digital input to see if you are getting a 24VDC? If the sensor output requires a pull up resistor to pull up to 24V power then you need to add it in order for it to work properly.

I assume you have an Ethernet switch that provides Ethernet port connection to the Fx1616-BA, the Weintek HMI and the MOXA?

The HMI connect to the PLC using Modbus TCP protocol and that part is working fine according to your experience.

The PLC connects to the MOXA using <TCPCONNECT....> command. I assume once connected MOXA works transparently and will transfer data from the PLC to its serial port and vice versa.

1) Does the PLC use this connection regularly?
2) Does the PLC close the TCP connection after transferring data with external serial port or does it keep it open?
3) Does MOXA has a timeout for this connection if it is idle? 
4) Did you define the client connection time-out value on the PLC?

What version is your PLC's firmware? if it is an older firmware (current release is F91. you can try to upgrade the firmware to see if it makes a difference. Contact support@triplc.com for upgrade instructions if you don't have it.

The EEPROM on Wx100 has erase/write cycle life of 1 million cycles. Erasing and writing of EEPROM cells does take a bit of time and may affect the PLC scan time. When you save a string to the EEPROM you are saving multiple bytes of data (up to 40 bytes per string) so the time delay multiplies by the number of bytes.

If you are developing an OEM equipment that you intend to manufacture in quantity (> 100 per year) then it is possible to add other useful components that can enhance your application need such as FRAM (works like EEPROM but with no life limit and a lot faster - writing to FRAM takes very little time since there is no "erase" cycles to deal with).

Wx100 is an excellent brain board platform (similar to our SmartTILE-Fx brain board system) that allows OEM customers to design and build their own custom carrier board (we call these "terminal boards" in Wx100) which can include customized components such as FRAM and battery-backed RTC (for applications that have no internet connection but still need to keep a real time clock running).  Please contact support@triplc.com to discuss your application if you wish to pursue an OEM custom terminal board design.

We are currently also adding new HTTP client capability which allows Wx100 to very easily connect to a HTTP or HTTPS web server to upload data via HTTP POST protocol, or download data from a web server via HTTP GET protocol. You can also log data to local data files in your PLC file system and then periodically upload the selected files to web server via HTTP mutlipart POST protocol before deleting it. This is in addition to the support of MQTT protocol already available on your Wx100 and thus further enhancing its IIoT capability.

You may like to consider using these new capability to log your data to a web server for permanent storage when it becomes available (should be pretty soon). Please register your interest by emailing to: support@triplc.com and we will contact you to provide free upgrade instructions when the new software and firmware are released.

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the details explanation of your setup.

One thing about the particular CPU chip family that is used on Fx, FMD and Nano-10 PLCs is that the interrupt input operates using the "input capture interrupt" mechanism and due to the CPU chip hardware limitation, when used in "input capture interrupt" mode the logic level on the input pin cannot be reliably read by the firmware. Hence when a digital input has been defined as interrupt input (especially for input 1 to 4) the pin logic state are no longer visible to the ladder logic. This is due to chip hardware limitation that could not be overcome by the firmware. When you INTROFF an input pin inside an ISR , it will be reset to become a general purpose input again.

The general purpose input logic state are only updated during the I/O scan which normally occurs only at the end of the ladder logic scan. or after running a REFRESH statement. So right after your ISR has disabled the input interrupt, the digital input status will not change regardless of the actual physical voltage level. At the end of the ladder logic scan the I/O scan routine is the one to update the the physical input but the software filtering may yet filter out the new state and therefore requires another scan before the new logic state is finally determined.

The new Wx100 CPU is different in that the actual logic state of the physical input is still visible to the firmware when it is being defined as an interrupt or a HSC input so I believe your experience with Wx100 CPU should be different.

Thank you for your feedback. We will look into these reported issues and fix them in future release of i-TRiLOGI. Please continue to feedback to us any quibbles

Thank you for letting us know.

The best way to access the documentation for Fx1616-BA is to go to:

https://triplc.com/fx1616ba.htm

Scroll down and click on the "Documentation" tab and all the updated links are presented there:

Anyway, please see updated documentation links as follow:

https://triplc.com/documents/Fx1616-UserManual.pdf
https://triplc.com/documents/Fx1616_Product_Info_Sheet.pdf

Neal,

The simplest way to have all three devices connected simultaneously is to use Modbus RTU over the RS485 port for your TX4S as you had been doing, and then connect the HMI to the PLC via Ethernet.

The Nano-10 and MT8050iE can be connected directly via Ethernet or through a switch. I assume you are programming the Nano over Ethernet, so you would need a switch in order to have both the PC and HMI communicating with the Nano.

Using the TRi_Fx driver, you should be able to communicate via Ethernet. Alternatively, you can use the Modbus TCP driver provided by Weintek.