adccommunitymod (AutomationDirect) asked a question.
Created Date: August 10,2009
Created By: erosinski
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I have a DL205 with an ecom module and 2 ea-7 cmore touch panels. I have been successful in getting one screen to work with the ecom module and screen hooked up to a switch. I need another panel with all the same functionality located elsewhere on the machine to aid in setup. Both screens are set to different IP addresses and both pointing to the ecom module. When the secondary screen is hooked up the original screen freezes and the secondary says no device found. When the secondary screen is disconnected the original screen goes about its business as usual. I have been successful on the bench to get 2 cmores to communicate to 1 plc with a small program and I believe I have the settings the same.
Created Date: August 10,2009
Created by: Do-more PE
Offhand it sounds like the second screen has the same IP address as the PLC. This would cause the behavior that you indicated. If this is the case then the when the second screen is placed on the network, it would force the PLC ECOM offline since there is an IP address conflict.
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: HMI Eng
"the original screen freezes "
Do you mean the data stops updating, or the panel is inoperable, you can not change screens, the touch screen does not work,...?
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: Kristjan H
I just had the same issue and it wasn't an IP conflict.
D4-450 with ECOM + three C-more panels on a LAN. The first C-More worked fine but when I downloaded a program to the other two, I got the error "PLC-001: PLC Communication Timeout ".
The solution : Route the later two panels through the first panel: Setup - Panel Manager - select device - Connection through Another Panel.
It was a fix but I am not too happy about it. I want to be able to address the PLC directly from each panel. I actually don't think this would work if I needed to access more than one PLC with the three panels. And it is quite likely that I will need that.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a better solution than the above mentioned fix?
P.S. In the same site, I have a single C-More accessing two D4-450 and that is no problem.
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: HMI Eng
Kristjan H
This is not normal behavior. Pass though should not be necessary. We run several panels to one ecom routinely.
Can you provide more information such as C-more firmware version, ECOM version, switch/router model, IP addresses of all,...
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: erosinski
correct me if I am wrong, but in order to pass through another panel, the one being "passed through " must be connected by a serial cable.
I was able to get it to work this way, but the screens took 3+ seconds to update all the information on both panels.
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: erosinski
by freezing i mean that the screen was unresponsive to changes made to button states and entering values, and no information would update on the screen.
Created Date: August 11,2009
Created by: erosinski
Kristjan H
This is not normal behavior. Pass though should not be necessary. We run several panels to one ecom routinely.
Can you provide more information such as C-more firmware version, ECOM version, switch/router model, IP addresses of all,...
its the latest c-more version (2.4 i believe), h2-ecom100, linsys wrt54g
ecom ip 192.168.1.102
panel 1 ip 192.168.1.103
panel 2 ip 192.168.1.104
PC 192.168.1.109
all IP's set static (no obtaining automatically)
all the same subnet mask
This is all on its own network. No other devices or pc's. Wireless has been disabled on the router.
Created Date: August 12,2009
Created by: HMI Eng
This all looks good. Lets us look into this.
1) Were you using this router when you only had one C-more connected that worked?
2) Using Pass through, I suspect you still have everything connected the same if you are using all Ethernet. am I correct about this?
Created Date: August 12,2009
Created by: HMI Eng
Pass through can be used with purely Ethernet. You can have your C-more connect to a PLC by Ethernet, and other C-more panels connected to the primary C-more by ethernet. Of course you have to use a switch to get the nultiple hardware connections. This can be useful where your PLC is some distance from your C-more, and connect by Ethernet.
Created Date: August 12,2009
Created by: krak
I have had an issue with this before running 4 plcss with h0-100 ecoms and 4 cmores on one network. I found that the poll rate on the cmores would bring the network to a crawl. I increased the poll rate on the cmores and everything works fine.