Created Date: March 29,2019

Created by: skyfox

My development PLC does not have the I/O cards that will be in the production PLC's. I want to load the program configured for a production PLC with all of the add-on cards configured within the program, and then load that very same same program on to the development PLC which has no I/O cards physically connected to it?

How do I still run the program ignoring the I/O errors and without altering the I/O configuration?

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Is this possible with this platform?

Created Date: March 29,2019

Created by: skyfox

I think I found the issue hidden in plain site.

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THIS IS NOT GOOD!

This implies that if I have 10 customers with 10 different I/O configurations, I need to have an exact duplicate of each I/O configuration available at my shop in order to be able to burn an updated program on to an SD card and send it to over to a customer. This is neither practical nor financially feasible if we were to settle in on this PLC platform. Every other PLC platforms that I have worked with to date (but not sure if DL-06 had this and it has been at least 6 years), had some sort of an option where the end user could configure (enable/Disable) this behavior. This allowed one to program a CPU without any I/O attached regardless of the I/O configuration of the loaded program and maintain that I/O configuration.

Anyway to do this on the current BRX platform and if not, any plans to implement this feature anytime soon?

Created Date: March 30,2019

Created by: BobO

In general our thought was that if you specified a manual config, requiring it makes sense, and is even a safety consideration. For 205 we allowed you to mark a module as optional, but we didn't think that made as much sense in a stackable backplane. I would have said leave it automatic, but I guess that doesn't work with modules that require configuration.

Let me think about it. I'm sure we can come up with something. We have another release coming in the summer.

Created Date: March 30,2019

Created by: skyfox

Thanks BobO,

For the short term we can work with this for this one customer. I will shell out for the three cards that I need for my Development PLC.

Couple of Ideas. Not sure how feasible these are but just throwing it out there.

Firmware and or Software Based:

Detect if I/O configuration is done in manual and if so, ignore I/O module errors and allow the PLC to go in to run mode?

Hardware Based:

A new configurable sim module add-on card that is firmware upgradeable. This module will then allow an end user to configure fake I/O's on slots 1 to 8 (if the module is on slot 1), or 3 - 8 if the module is on slot 3 etc., etc. But the PLC will act as if actual I/O cards are present based on this sim modules user configuration.

Far fetched?

Created Date: March 30,2019

Created by: BobO

Thanks BobO,

For the short term we can work with this for this one customer. I will shell out for the three cards that I need for my Development PLC.

Couple of Ideas. Not sure how feasible these are but just throwing it out there.

Firmware and or Software Based:

Detect if I/O configuration is done in manual and if so, ignore I/O module errors and allow the PLC to go in to run mode?

Hardware Based:

A new configurable sim module add-on card that is firmware upgradeable. This module will then allow an end user to configure fake I/O's on slots 1 to 8 (if the module is on slot 1), or 3 - 8 if the module is on slot 3 etc., etc. But the PLC will act as if actual I/O cards are present based on this sim modules user configuration.

Far fetched?

Far fetched? Not at all. It would be ridiculously simple to add a third config mode that is "manual, tolerate missing ", and maybe a fourth that says "manual, tolerate mismatched ".

Building a smarter simulator module could work too, but I'm not sure whether there would be enough demand to justify.