Shawn discusses Module Discovery and Reading IO Config in today’s episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream: 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. NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5). Links mentioned in video:

– Online Courses: https://theautomationschool.com
– In-Person Courses: https://theautomationschool.com/live

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): Happy Wednesday. Right? I was gonna say Tuesday. It’s not Tuesday. It’s Wednesday.

I hope you’re all doing good. I hope, my mic and video is coming out okay. Let me know in the chat if it’s not. But in any case, I do want to, wish you all a great lunchtime here. And it is Wednesday, and, this is Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition.

And, feel free to chat in the, both on YouTube and on LinkedIn. And, of course, you’ll always find the audio, the video, and the transcript up on the automationblog.com later in the day. Typically, right after the show’s done, I try to get that all up there before going back to work. So in any case, today, I was gonna do one thing, and I decided to do something else. So, we’re actually gonna take a look at discovering IO, automatically discovering IO so you don’t have to crank in all those different part numbers.

And, we’re gonna do it today for Rockwell. And I did have some things that, I’ve been telling myself, Shawn, you gotta kinda remember to mention some things to everybody, when you’re doing the show. So let me just pull my notes up here and bring them over to the screen right below here so I can read them. So, first of all, the idea for today’s, discussion about discovering IO, adding IO, reading IO was, based on some lessons. I’m I actually had to I found some bugs in them, so I had to rerender them.

So I’ll be updating them, and, several of the courses over at the Automation School are getting updates, including my CompactLogics and ControlLogics. They’re getting the most updates today. But in any case, I also wanted to mention that I already have two industry veterans who I’m talking to about coming on the Automation Museum’s History of Automation podcast. And so I mentioned this because we already have three shows in the, in the can. We talked to experts about the history of Triconics, the history of InTouch or Wonderware, and the history of Rockwell PLCs.

But, again, these are things where we want to have multiple guests on about each each product and, to share their own experiences with them. And, you know, everybody remembers things differently. Like, some people remember some features, other people remember other features, and so on. So, we have two new people who I’m talking to to get them to come on the show. And I wanna invite you, whether you’re a vendor, user, integrated OEM, if you have done something with automation before the year February, I’m just using that as a kind of a benchmark.

Right? So, you know, we’re talking legacy stuff. We’re not talking, you know, fifty three seventies and fifty three eighties or a ‘7 you know, fifteen hundreds or December, or m two sixty twos if you’re a Snyder guy. But, we’re talking we’re talking, you know, older stuff, legacy stuff. The automation museum is not gonna be a museum of what just came out this this year.

It’s gonna be a museum of all that old stuff. And I wanna thank everybody who sent me stuff in. I will be doing more automation museum videos on the stuff you guys send in. I got a PCMK card. I got a net alert or or net net alert, I think, device too that I wanna show off.

So, in any case, thank you everybody and, for that. So what else do I have to cover here before we get started? There is no podcast today. The next podcast it takes, like, a day to produce every podcast. So, I’m taking this week off because I just got so much other else going on.

The the next podcast will be next Wednesday, of course, we release on Wednesdays, and that’ll be on IO Link. And that’s gonna kick off a bunch of IO Link coverage. So, I’ve been working after hours and weekends getting all the IO Link hardware I have together built into demos that we can not only use as labs here in the office, but also to do videos on. So, we got Siemens, we got Rockwell, we got IFM, Even had a a good friend of the show send in some stuff, so we’ll be looking at the stuff he sent in too, which just depends if I can get it working at 05:00 in the morning. We’re not drinking my coffee, but, hopefully, I can.

And, also, I’m looking at some really cool three d simulation software I wanna use in the school, but it can also be used as a digital twin, and it’s affordable. It’s not like the 10,000, $50,000 packages you see out there. Right? So, I’m actually been working on that, working with the vendor on that after hours as well. And a lot of things going on.

We are getting ready. I just got off the phone with the vendor, actually off a meeting with the vendor. We got a exciting new, episode coming up on, OPC. And then we have another episode coming up on Ethernet push buttons. This one actually was re requested.

We actually have the equipment here, but we’re waiting for the vendor to schedule that. I’m also guys, you probably remember the, military trade shows demo I have in there. I’m just gonna work through a couple of bugs, and that should be that video should be coming out. And, I actually have a major vendor approached me and said, Shawn, come and interview our folks at our trade show. And so we’re finalizing the details on that.

So that’ll be in several weeks from now, but I did wanna share that with you guys. So in any case, hey. Before I forget too, and I wanna say greetings to Nicholas. Before I forget, anybody, any of you guys out there, if you’ve learned something you wanna share with the rest of the community, please just send me a message. I know we had people sign up, and then they couldn’t make a customer’s call, the boss calls.

I totally get that. Totally get that. But if you are using I saw one person said he was he had created a video showing people how to use safety in a Siemens drive, and he got a lot of really, good feedback from it. I mean, those are the type of things. You know, a lot of you probably don’t even know what that video is.

Right? So we wanna get people like that on the show to talk about, you know, what they’ve done and and sharing, useful tips. And I think it’ll be easier, on the audience if they’re not always hearing from me all the time because I’ve been doing this for full time now for over ten years, going on eleven years. And, so you guys you know, I got thousands of videos in Ako, so you guys know all about me. But in any case, let’s go ahead and go over to the computer.

And, again, feel free to, chime in on the chat. Let’s see if I have everything set up here correctly. I think I’m in the top right. So, of course, this is a live thing right over my face, but that’s okay. I don’t think you guys see that.

So in any case, what are we gonna look at? We did not wanna see my desktop. We wanted to see VMware. Okay. And I’m actually in, and if you guys didn’t notice here on the, workbench, I have an old Suck 500 full of stuff, just full of IO.

And I try to pick up so many different types of IO modules for my course, which I’m filming now in the slick 500. So I wanted to pick up a a a real, you know, assortment of of IO cards. You know? And I could go in there and I could say, you know, let me type in each and every model. But one of the great things we got with the slick 500 that we didn’t have with the PLC five, now correct me if you think I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s any redial thing on the PLC five.

Maybe I’m just having a senior moment, but I don’t think it existed. But in the slick 500, it did. And this also worked for the compact for the, Micrologics as well. And so what you could do here in this old platform from the nineties, early nineties, late eighties, is you could go across RSLogix 500 didn’t come out until, like, 9596. Right?

I was actually I beta tested it. It was really cool. When it first came out, it was like Winlogix five on steroids. Right? So in any case, what I’m gonna do here is I got I got Studio 5000 open in the background.

Let me hide that a little bit. I’m gonna go to IO configuration, and I’m gonna do something called a read IO config. K. This is, again, a feature from the nineties, early nineties. Right?

And what’s what’s this work? Right? Now I do have to have the path to the PLC correct or I can’t read IO config, but I’m just I’m not online, but I’m giving it the path to where the PLC exists. Read IO config and look at that. It started off with a four slot chassis, and it was like oops.

Let me minimize that. Get that back. And it was like, nope. He has a 13 slot, I guess. And look at it.

I have an IB, ITB, IB, IB, IV, IV, IV 32, OBOV, NI 4, NI 4, NI four, I, NI four, I, NI four, INO4I, blah blah blah. But look at it. I read it all in. I didn’t have to type that all in. Now how often are you gonna have all the equipment on your desk before you actually create your program?

Well, maybe not that often. But this was a feature I loved about the Slic 500 and the MicroLogix. And, you know, so when Rocco came out with ControlLogix and CompactLogix and it did not have this it this feature, everybody’s kinda like, bummer. That kinda stinks. Right?

And so but they added it. They added it inversion starting back in version 20.011. Yes. I looked it up. And, what they did, though, is they only added it for, originally, seventeen fifty six modules.

And so that left all the CompactLogix people just kinda hanging out there with no way to find their modules. And so what would happen is so here’s an on the left hand side, I got a, an l 33 e r that both these PLCs are in the other room, in the training room. And if I right click on the bus, the seventeen sixty nine bus, and do discover IO modules, yeah, it can. It’s not as good as the SLIC 500. So sad.

No. And we know that it knows. Right? How do we know that it knows? Because in Arislynx, we can go out there, and we can see everything that’s in that chassis.

Of course, I can’t see it here because I have an EDS issue. K? So if I could upload the EDS file, but I have a problem here. But typically, if you didn’t have the problem I have now, you would be able to expand expand the backplane and see all the IO modules out there. And, yeah, see, this is when things happen when you just, like, come on to lunch and you’re like, yeah.

Let’s just do a show and, you know, we could try to should we try to register the EDS file? Should we try to do this live? I think it’s, it’s somewhere here. Right? I know it’s in where’s the EDS?

Well, probably easy to go here. Alright. So let’s close that one now. Let’s do tools. EDS I don’t even know if I have it on this hard drive, do I?

No. Well, we’ll take a little side trip here. Let’s see if the EDS tool launches. Here it is. Okay.

Let’s see. Register. Let’s register a, folder directory. Look in subfolder. Sure.

Where would it be? Where would I have put it? Alright. I don’t even know if I have them. Nah.

Alright. So forget that. But in any case, if everything was working, we would be able to see all the modules on the backplane. Just like on the l 16 I have plugged in, right, you would be able to see any point IO modules I have on that. Right?

And that is just the way it works. And a little secret here is I believe that the backplane on both PointIO and on seven sixty nine seventeen sixty nine is actually based on DeviceNet. So we always get all the information. We could see all the modules, and that’s a great thing. But, apparently, they couldn’t figure out how to get it into the software.

I mean, I’m assuming it wasn’t a commercial decision not to add it into the software. I’m sure it was a technical decision, but with the l 30, the 53. Right? So much newer than the sec five hundreds. They just couldn’t get that that Discover modules to work.

So very sad. So maybe maybe they could get it to work, but they couldn’t get it to add it online. I don’t know. But here’s the good news. If you have gone to the, to the newer, right, to the fifty three eighties, if I right click on backplane and do discover modules, yes.

Okay. It’s like, are you not gonna work? What’s going on? But any case, yes, we’re as good as the slick 500 from 1990. Woo hoo.

But, and this works for 1756 as well. Originally, it was just for 1756, and I think the PowerFlex drives. I went to grab the latest release notes, and every time I say give me release notes from version 21 to ’30 seven, it just crashes my browser. So in any case, I didn’t have again, this is automation tech talk lunchtime edition, so I get my entire lunch to prepare for this. So, I didn’t couldn’t go any farther than that, but pretty confident, that it’s, seventeen fifty six, fifty sixty nine, and of PowerFlex drives.

I could not confirm whether or not Flex 5,000 supports it or any of the servos support it. And if anybody wants to shoot me out, I did I did search the knowledge base. So, you know, if anybody, thinks I missed something, let me know. But I think there’s not a very wide, support on that. But, now I can go ahead and create typically, you just create them all.

You know? And because this is not full screen, it does give you a warning about adding modules online. And let me pull this over here so you can see it added it right there. And so this is I actually I did a new lessons on this for both ControlLogix and CompactLogix as part of another lesson where I’m adding IO and testing IO and all that good stuff. But in any case, I wanted to do everything in the version 31 plus because I know, we had some, students who I think I mentioned this yesterday, who’ve never used version 30.

You know? They’re they’re they’re lucky. They’ve been sheltered, only used 31 plus. So, you know, when they don’t see this blue background, they would get a little, little disconcerted. But in any case so that’s what I wanted to talk about today at lunchtime, and I wanna thank you guys for tuning in.

I’m just looking at the list of stuff I covered at the beginning of the show. I don’t think I have anything else left. Again, being the lunchtime show, there’s not a whole lot of prep that can go into this. But in any case, we do have another, message in the chat that I wanna say. Person’s asking about the BRX, the BRX system, and he has two servo drives.

I don’t have any movies on the any videos on the BRX. I’ve only done an unboxing on it. I have tried to get the AutomationDirect folks on many, many times. I think they’re a great company. Again, I know Siemens and Rocco guys and scenario guys are probably rolling their eyes, but, you know, they’re they’re you know, just like just because you like Honda or BMW or, you know, Chevy doesn’t mean you should pooh pooh Dodge or or any any other, you know, or Acura or somebody at some other, you know, Nissan or some other company.

So there you know, these companies have been around for a long time, so they they gotta be doing something right. In any case so, yeah, sorry. I won’t be able to help you with your BRX. I don’t have a quest on the any of the automation direct stuff. Not that I don’t want to.

It’s just timing and market. Right? So when you’re self employed, you gotta do everything you can to keep the lights on. And with that, I gotta get back to work. So I wanna wish you all I hope you enjoyed today’s show.

I wanna thank you for joining in with me. Please reach out to me if you wanna come on and share your expertise with the audience, and, just 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 ✌️ 

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

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.