Created Date: October 03,2016

Created by: deep6ixed

Hello Everyone,

Recently we had to design a upgrade at the shop for our dust collection unit and we decided that we would use the P2K as our PLC, the built in logging (which was a huge requirement for this job) beat out our usual platform, the Do-More.

First time with the P2K and I was just gonna throw out there and see if anyone had any tips that they wish they knew the first time that used this PAC. I 've played around with the programming software and so far the only main difference i can see it the tag based programming which doesn't bother me. I'm also tying in a C-More Micro if anyone has any advice.

Created Date: October 06,2016

Created by: Frontier

The biggest thing that got me was retentive tags. In the Productivity Suite, you can set tags as retentive and give them an initial value. The PxK series doesn't let you have an initial value plus a retentive value, despite what it looks like. Once every few milliseconds (200 by default, adjustable in the hardware config dialog box), the current values for tags set as retentive are copied to the initial value. This confused the heck out of me, and I hope they change it some day, but for now, it is what it is.

Also, the email function is basically useless unless you have a very restricted intranet with an unsecured SMTP server. This is something they plan on fixing, but hasn't made it out yet. The C-More EA9 series makes up for this, but that doesn't help you much.

Overall, I think you'll love the P2K. I 've been moving a bunch of them, and people seem to be really happy with it.

Created Date: October 08,2016

Created by: Brandon_

The logging on the P2K is nearly useless, IMO. I would definitely suggest you write a small test program to see if the logging will work for you, before you deploy the hardware.

There is currently no automated way to get the log file out of the PLC. Your options are to physically remove the SD card or to login via the internal web server (if the unit will be on a network) and manually retrieve the log file.

The log file name varies depending on if you have it make a new one based on a length of time. Also, *every time* it goes from run to stop, it creates a new log file. On top of that, if you can live with those limitations, sometimes it just stops logging for no good reason. I lost a weeks worth of data because it just stopped, seemingly no rhyme or reason.

I seriously considered pulling out a fresh P2K system and swapping everything to Do-More because of the logging issues.

If logging is a top priority, you may want to consider moving up to a EA9 HMI instead of going to the much more expensive Do-More line. While I 've never used the logging function on the EA9, as I understand it the EA9 has much better logging support.