Shawn discusses the Second Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today’s Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition: Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes: Thanks for listening! If you’d like to join the show sometime, don’t hesitate to use the contact us link. Links mentioned in video: – Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-2/
– Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/ Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. I had a little, issue earlier, so I watched the replay. Everything looked great. So, again, I wanna thank you for hanging out with me at lunchtime.

I also wanna thank those folks who’ve reached out to me about actually being a guest on the lunchtime show. I really appreciate that. And, you know, it’s it’s nice to actually hear what other people are doing. Right? And, we got some pretty cool guests lined up.

I I also have some vendors who, maybe they’re not ready to sponsor an episode of the podcast, but they just want to, tell us the cool things they’re doing. And so, inviting them on as well. Just trying to share everything I’ve learned and share help people share what they’ve learned over the years, during lunchtime, right, when we all get to take a break from all the serious stuff trying to make money to pay the bills and all that. So in any case, with that said, I had and and I’m assuming I guess I’ll just delete the original five minute livestream, because, things didn’t seem like they were working. So I got a couple things I was talking about in that livestream.

Number one is that that big box in the middle of the training room, that is, some hardware for the add on lessons I’m gonna be adding. I have a lot of different hardware here from all kinds of different vendors, and I will be adding those as bonus, lessons add on lessons to the courses. So if you’re in in any of my level one or two do I still have the automation school up? So if you’re in, my level one or two courses, level one and two courses, I should say that correctly, over at the automationschool.com, you will get those, add on lessons at no charge. And, plus, there’s some other courses you’re gonna be getting at no charge as well as I kinda mix things up, and and I think I covered that over at the automation school and the updates for each of the courses.

Also, I ran across somebody on Reddit who was looking they’re like, you know, what do I need to get started? I’m like, hey. Lesson one zero two in all my courses is free and all my PLC courses, and it tells you everything you need to know to get started programming PLCs, software options, hardware options, demo options. So if you know anybody looking to get started and they don’t know where to start, like, how much does Rockwell software cost, and is it free, and can I get a free demo, and, you know, how about for Siemens, and what starter packs are available? I cover that all, and I make that lesson free.

Because quite honestly, I don’t want anybody signing up for a course and then be like, you know, I didn’t wanna do a simulated PLC. I wanna do a real PLC, and I can’t afford it. So I want everybody to know upfront what the costs are. For a lot of people, it’s not an issue. They get a bunch of PLCs in the software at work, so and they’re gonna do it at at during their lunchtime.

But in any case, I did wanna share that with you. And, now I wanna talk about the second generation of, CompactLogix. Let’s see here. Yes. CompactLogix.

This is where I gotta put the old glasses on. And, let’s see if I can go here. Okay. Great. And so let’s see if I can zoom in.

I don’t wanna zoom in on both cameras, just the overhead one. And so you might be asking, Shawn, why do you have all this hardware in the test stand? That’s because I am filming the new twenty twenty five courses. So, I got a lot of wiring to do, but but, you know, there’s no getting around that. So we talked about generation one.

Let me see if I can slide this a little bit. Maybe four. So not sure. Don’t push it off the table. That would be bad.

Okay. So if we look at these three controllers let’s see here. Maybe I can move them this way a little bit. Okay. This is what we call the second generation of CompactLogist controllers.

I don’t know that Rock will ever call it that, but it’s kinda makes sense because you can see these are all very similar. Right? And they all came out around the same time after the, I don’t and I I just can’t look at the camera with everything appearing backwards to me and make them straight. But in any case, these were the three options. Now this first guy, you know, I had some OEMs buy these, and they were very unhappy because just the speed of the serial ports.

Yeah. It was great. You had two serial ports. One that could be connected to, you know, an HMI, and the other one one could be for programming. But it was just really slow.

So, yeah, you can muddle through some online edits, but uploads uploads and downloads, you know, for the impatient northeasterner like me, it was kinda tough. It was like, yeah. You know? We used to call those, coffee downloads. You’d go grab a cup of coffee while it downloaded and hope nobody pulled the, and then you had to flash the firmware, of course, you had to flash everyone.

So flashing the firmware via serial is a very dangerous prospect because if anybody breaks the connection, you could end up with a brick, an unusable, PAC. Although these days, that I think Rockwell has figured out ways to resolve that. I think one of the ways they do that, and don’t quote me on this, but talking to product people over the years is they put, like, a basic firmware on the unit. So if the firmware is corrupt, it’ll just load, like, one dot x, which is just like a stub. It doesn’t can’t really program it in one put one dot x.

But in any case, so this is the l 31. And let’s see if I can get a little closer here. You guys can see that. And this is I don’t know if you can see it on there. Let me take a look at it myself.

It should say somewhere on here 5331, but it doesn’t. I’m sure it says it somewhere. Let’s see. Let me find ah, there it is. Okay.

I found it. And again so you can see it on the label right there. If you can’t see it, no worries. But, in any case, 50, 50 331. There was also a 53, 32, and 35.

I think I have both, both of these are 30 fives. Right? So the difference between I would have to fix this backwards thing. It’s killing me. The difference between the ’32 and the 30 fives are just memory, how much IO they can support, but there were also of the thirty two and thirty five, there were also control net versions and Ethernet versions.

Now they kept the because US they didn’t have a USB port in their PLCs at this time. They kept the serial port, and and serial ports are great for, you know, serial ports are great for third party products, barcode readers, ASCII. You could do d h 45 with them and all that good stuff. Right? But in any case, you know, it would be better to have USB.

Right? And the new the new gen threes had US gen four had USBs. But in any case, what else do we have here? So a lot of people get confused with the control net. So the control net’s unique because it has the control net ports coming out the bottom.

Now the l 35, c, but it’s actually a c r because it had two control net ports. The l 32 c only had one control net port, so you couldn’t do redundant media with that guy. But in any case, control net really confused a lot of people. It was very easy to use, but the software cost quite a bit of money. Right?

And so RS networks for ControlNet was expensive, and I think that’s what eventually led to its downfall, plus Ethernet just became you know, Ethernet’s built in every laptop. You didn’t need an expensive ControlNet card. Right? So in any case, I think control net, was very fast. If you’re running Ethernet at 10 meg or control net at five meg or even Ethernet at a 100 meg and control net at five meg, control net was so efficient that you could really do this get as much data through.

However, ControlNet was scheduled. Right? So that you were scheduling the data to show up every so often. Kinda like how your RPI is off in the backplane when you put IO modules in the backplane. And, I always liked it.

I always thought it was easy. A lot of people would try to make their own cables and, you know, the, coax cables, and, they wouldn’t do a good job. I went to some places where they’re like, this piece of lousy piece of junk keeps falling off the network when you open up. And first of all, they have this the coax, r g six coax, and it’s going into, like, a a one one or two inch, one and a half inch piece of pan to it. Right?

And it’s, like, making a right turn. Right? And it doesn’t doesn’t bend radius to these things. Right? And so it’s going and a lot of times it would be right at the connector.

I’m like, oh, I want I wonder why your why your network’s in a minute. Here, let me try it. You shake it and it’d be like, oh, on, off. It’s like, really, you gotta have some common sense people. And so a lot of times, engineers don’t see inside the, panel that, they just order a panel and expect it to come in work.

And so, you know, sad but funny now after the fact, but a lot of people would get upset because, you know, they would self crimp their connectors with not using, you know, the expensive tools, a $100 tool, a $150 tool. They go buy a $5 tool and expect that the work and last forever. And it’s you just kinda wonder, you know, what kind of stresses they have in their life. They actually think that because, you know, if you’re doing professional work, you use professional tools. Don’t play around with anything that’s out of your kid’s toy box.

Okay? So in any case and I’m I’m having a lot of fun with that. But in any case, yeah, you’d see that a lot. So, you know, I’ve bought, I’ve bought, pre crimped cables and never had a problem with them. Again, you gotta you gotta, be cognizant of the bend radiuses of our g six.

But in any case, this point here confused a lot of people because it looked like a Ethernet port, and it’s not. It’s a network access port. Just like the r j 45 and a five zero three, it’s not an Ethernet port. It’s a, a d h 45 port. I need to be careful on that one.

It has power in it, but, we’re not talking to 600 today. So in any case, this unit, wasn’t very popular. I had a hard time getting one and, just like upon this one here. And you can see I got a commercial grade because, you know, this isn’t a facility. There’s no, no problems with downtime.

I can’t get it out of there. There we go. So I just have a commercial grade, SanDisk, confident flash in there because I’m not running a machine that’s making millions of dollars for the company. With that said, then we have the l 35. And this is the l 35 and l 32 were the most popular.

On the outside, they looked identical. They have the Ethernet port and extremely popular. And, yes, this Ethernet port could, control IO, and, that just made it super, super popular and, really became, we we sold a lot of l 30 twos and l 30 fives over the years. So many people I know used dozens, if not hundreds of them in their plants. Really good for the, small OEM.

Some users would you know, small users don’t have the don’t have the, budget of, you know, the big the big factory would use, just great. And everybody I always like the seventeen sixty nine I o, the way it connected and everything like that. So in any case, that is, the l 31, two serial ports, the l 32 and l 35. They both look the same, either control net or Ethernet. And, again, 5331, 5332, and 35, depending which one you got.

Again, I have two thirty fives here because I have one in control that one in Ethernet. But 32 just has less memory and less capabilities. Right? So I wanna show you another product that I consider part of the second generation of CompactLogix. And the reason is it pretty much supports the same firmwares and same features as those other guys.

Let me get it on here. And, okay, here we go. Alright. So this is the l 23. This particular one was donated by a very good customer of mine.

Thank you very much. RK, I really appreciate it. And, at least, I mean, it’s been a dozen years now, so I think he’s the one that donated it. I’m pretty sure. But in any case so this a lot of people wanted this.

They wanted the shoebox version of the CompactLogix. You can get the price down. It’s not as inexpensive as the, MicroLogix, but, you know, less expensive than buying all the components separately. You got a built in power supply. You got the, CPU.

You got, IO cards. You could get it without the analog and high speed counter, and some people would. But there was one flaw to this. Otherwise, awesome, perfect, and you could actually put a couple of expansion cards on it too. There was one major flaw that my OEMs ran into all the time, and that was the lack of a compact flash card.

So this is an OEM product. Right? Typically, you’re gonna use this if you’re an OEM. You wanna go low with the price as low as you can. You don’t need a lot of extra capabilities because your machine only has so much IO built in.

And this unit, like, we I I don’t know why we’ve gone through this so many times. It seems like every cycle, we have to go through this, but it did not have removable, removable memory. So, it had a battery, battery backed memory, but did not have removable, nonvolatile memory, which to me, if you’re an OEM, I mean, how else are you gonna send send the project? It’s not like the CompactLogic software is very cheap to buy. So, do you wanna spend an extra, I don’t know, $2, 1,500 to send every customer a package of software?

Typically, you do not if you’re a small OEM. So that was a major killer for this guy, but everything else about it, I really liked. It is a little big, but it’s kind of the equivalent of what you would do if you bought all the parts separately. I really like the design. When you look in there, you can see all the individual cards.

It looks like they were able to reuse the circuit boards from the actual regular cards. But in any case, really a big fan of it except for the fact of that no nonremovable memory. I even have one OEM. It says, I’m just gonna get you a free one so you can ship the whole unit out when you need to change the program because, what else are you gonna do? So, what else can I tell you about these guys?

Let me see if I can get them all back in the camera here. I got some more stats. I did include a link to my article on this I wrote a few years ago. So if you guys want more information about it and let’s just take a look at some of the stats. So the first one came out in 02/2003.

That’s a long time ago. Right? And, these were so very popular. Although, I gotta say, when we talk about not the third gen, but the fourth gen, it kinda blew these guys out of the water. As great as these are, the the fourth gen, the fifty three seventies were just a home run.

And, again, everything’s backwards here, so it’s hard for me to evenly space everything out in reverse. But in any case so let’s take a look at the article here. I’ll leave the product up on the screen here and see if I can get my mouse down to the right screen. So came out actually came out a couple of years before the Micrologix 1,100. So that would have been the first Micrologix with Ethernet.

Great product that we should have hadn’t, obsoleted it. That’s also the only Ethernet Micrologix that works with the free software. So in any case but, yeah, it came out in 02/2003. That’s the l 35 e. It looks like the l 35 e.

A lot of times they come out with the most expensive one first because quite honestly, you know, you might as well sell the most expensive one out the door and then work on, making it less capable, you know, via firmware or whatnot. In any case, it did use a no modem cable just like all the other serial ports that, that, Rocco products has because this is a DTE device, not a DC device like a printer. So you’re gonna need the crossover on no modem cable. It did yeah. Any of them will work.

C p three any c p three or no modem cable will work. It did take the seventeen sixty nine b a. We talked about that yesterday. Had that compact flash slot, which which was just a huge upgrade from the l 20 and l 30 we talked about yesterday. The battery is on the left hand side on these guys.

This one is there’s a door you have to pop off. The other one has that slide that I showed you yesterday. Let’s see here. The l 31 only had five twelve k of memory. That was usually, good enough.

16 IO modules and four tasks. Okay? So, yeah, the four tasks, I’ve never run into that being a problem, although it is it is very limited if you’re doing again, get 16 IO modules. Do you need more than four tasks? I I think that would be very odd.

The l 30 twos came with 768 k and supported 30 IO modules and six tasks. And the l 35 let’s see here. The l 35 did I write it down? Had a 1.5 or or 1.5 meg of memory, supported eight tasks, and took 30 modules. So six tasks versus eight tasks, and then double the memory for the or actually yeah.

Double the memory for the, from the 32 to the 35, but the same amount of IO local IO cards. Let’s see. Yeah. Distributed IO on the Ethernet, that which was great. Of course, that was not an option with the, with and that really kicked in.

You know, it kicked in the Ethernet IO because in ControlLogix, you could use device that control that all e or Ethernet. And, but getting the Ethernet on the CompactLogix in 2003 meant everybody was looking at doing Ethernet IO. Yeah. And so those are all the highlights. Again, the article I’m looking at, you’ll find, in the link in the description, of course, because this is the second edition, the second try of the show.

It’s not in the description of this show. I will add it after the show. But in any case, it’s just at the automationblog.com. I think it’s CompactLogic’s dash gen dash two. So with that, that is, the CompactLogix second generation.

I’m gonna look in the chat, see if there’s any questions there or not. So if you’re watching and like, hey. I wanna come on and share something I learned. I don’t care what the manufacturer is as long as it’s industrial automation. Yeah.

I wanna welcome you on. Of course, you have to speak better English than me, but in any case, yeah, just reach out to me. You can contact me, the automation blog dot com forward slash contact. You can leave me a a message on YouTube or on LinkedIn. That’s where all this is going.

And, we used to do all the other sites, but we got really zero interaction over there. So several other sites. So trying to just because it’s just me here. But in any case also, I’ll repeat something I said earlier that, I ran into somebody on Reddit who was looking trying to understand what they needed, in order to learn about CompactLogix, like, what they needed to like, what they needed. And I wanna show you that in each of my PLC courses, I have this free lesson.

Right? And I did this because, let me see if I can pull this up on the screen here. Yeah. So I did this because, I don’t want people signing up for my courses and then finding out they don’t have what they needed to take the the course. So this is lesson one zero two.

Every one of my PLC courses has this, all the new ones, as I break my my grade 100. No. I didn’t break it. In any case, what this is is this lesson one zero two, you just click on it here. Right?

Anything that’s a sample lesson you can take without buying, and this runs you through. It’s, like, twenty minutes, and I cover everything, everything you need to know. Like, how to get free software, how much the software is if you wanna buy it, you know, best, way to get the samples and starter kits and all of that for all the different PLCs I cover. So I wanted to bring that up because I know a lot of people are like and it also gets you, you know, my teaching style. You can get to see my teaching style and all that.

But, I do that for micro 800, Micrologics, CompactLogics, ControlLogics, and the s seven. And as I learn new things, I have those update those lessons. Those lessons, most of them were updated in November. I, probably do another update in November for the new prices, but in any case and if there’s any, requests, I did have somebody asking, how do I access tags in a micro 800 from a SCADA package? So, maybe when I get done the generations of CompactLogix, I’ll do that.

Also, I I wanted to show you the picture. I’ll have it ready for you tomorrow. I am setting up another studio because I got a bunch of products I wanna cover with you, but this is kinda in the way here in Studio B. So I’m setting up, what used to be, the office in the Studio A again. And, so I can show you other products besides when I’m filming my quest, my updated quest is on and lessons on.

And with that, that’s all I got for you today at lunch. I hope you guys had a great lunch. I hope your, your day is going well, and I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

If you have any questions about Shawn’s in-person or online courses, please don’t hesitate to setup a time to meet with Shawn via MSTeams, or drop him an email using his contact form here: https://theautomationschool.com/question/

Until next time, Peace ✌️ 

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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Eliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.