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I'm curious how other places work. Is it normal to get stuck with project from entirely different departments, just because you are the only scada programmer in your plant? Ex engineer from department XYZ designs a super cool and useful water filter monitor. Said engineer later quits. Now it's suddenly my responsibility to fix it. But since not my department, I have no money to fix or repair it. Actually I couldn't as there is no documentation on where these are or what type of device it is outside of the PLC type. Which I got from the Ignition server.
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Aug 4, 2021 06:22
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dervinosdoom posted:For the most part, all GE is trash in my opinion. I had two semesters of PLC classes a long time ago where it was all on SLC-500s. I remember the basics being really easy like drawing a schematic but we also only did ladder logic. Now I do a lot with SCADA but its all hardwired contacts or DNP/Modbus. I hate it when every vendor feels like they need to come up with some new proprietary communications standard.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:25
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IO-link seems to have reached critical mass with vendor support, maybe in another decade or two users will start adopting it.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:43
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SpeedFreek posted:This is just a fact in the power industry. What's wrong with data highway, data highway +, rs232, rs 485, dh485, profibus, profinet, controlnet, BACnet, ethercat, devicenet, ethernet IP, Modbus TCP, canbus, directnet, optomux, melsecnet, componet, mechatrolink, rapienet, and Modbus RTU? Edit: I typed this list out and now I want to drink enough to forget all these protocols
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Aug 19, 2021 04:46
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Don't forget about OPC DA, OPC UA, and my favorites, BSAP & BSAP-IP.
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Aug 19, 2021 05:11
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Most things are modbus RTU if they are still using modbus, its old and annoying but it works across brands and different hardware types. Not like some vendors that re-orders the data points in their own but just different enough to be difficult to interpret comm format after every firmware update.
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Aug 24, 2021 20:28
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Great now I'm stuck with a machine with an IPC, I/O modules and Servo-drives that not only communicate on Can Open but also are very old! So I need to find a replacement for the Parker servo-drives from 20 years ago that have a lot of programming inside of them and also need to consider that they need to communicate over Canbus. Everything is terrible! Now at least I have a job offer to move to Ireland which has me a bit vexed, since I don't know anyone there, it's a lovely rainy island and it's still a maintenance job which I think has to be some form of satanic influence on this world. wipe up or ship out fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 17:31
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SpeedFreek posted:Most things are modbus RTU if they are still using modbus, its old and annoying but it works across brands and different hardware types. Not like some vendors that re-orders the data points in their own but just different enough to be difficult to interpret comm format after every firmware update. Ah, but you forget that sometimes vendors change around the RTU registers from firmware to firmware! Had a huge Trane cooler that running feedback was on a different read coil than the previous firmware. Those fuckers didn't have the new manual on their website, we had a Trane guy on site (who was an rear end in a top hat for the most part) that finally gave me the updated manual
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Aug 25, 2021 19:07
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wipe up or ship out posted:Great now I'm stuck with a machine with an IPC, I/O modules and Servo-drives that not only communicate on Can Open but also are very old! So I need to find a replacement for the Parker servo-drives from 20 years ago that have a lot of programming inside of them and also need to consider that they need to communicate over Canbus. Everything is terrible! Some days I'd like to write code from scratch, I'm working on a cake cutting machine full of spaghetti logic and I'm trying to add a couple new cut methods. I've luckily only seen one CANBUS application, an angle measuring device used to calculate a crane boom position on a dredge.
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Aug 25, 2021 19:10
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dervinosdoom posted:Ah, but you forget that sometimes vendors change around the RTU registers from firmware to firmware! Had a huge Trane cooler that running feedback was on a different read coil than the previous firmware. Those fuckers didn't have the new manual on their website, we had a Trane guy on site (who was an rear end in a top hat for the most part) that finally gave me the updated manual lol, job security I guess. Getting comms working is often the hardest part of being a controls engineer.
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Sep 2, 2021 17:27
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dxt posted:lol, job security I guess. God tell me about it, most of my trouble calls have been things not communicating anymore. My favorite is a crane with an AB PLC5 in it talking to another PLC5 on the ground through serial that's carried on a 120VAC line between the ground and the crane.
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Sep 3, 2021 03:39
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dervinosdoom posted:God tell me about it, most of my trouble calls have been things not communicating anymore. My favorite is a crane with an AB PLC5 in it talking to another PLC5 on the ground through serial that's carried on a 120VAC line between the ground and the crane. oof, that's rough. Serial is bad enough on its own, but next to that much noise.
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Sep 3, 2021 14:58
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dervinosdoom posted:God tell me about it, most of my trouble calls have been things not communicating anymore. My favorite is a crane with an AB PLC5 in it talking to another PLC5 on the ground through serial that's carried on a 120VAC line between the ground and the crane. Power line carrier? There are some very stable solutions out there for that, unless you mean that some hack put a copper data line in with power. Comms is a lot more fun when you have a spec from 15 years ago stating all devices must have a db9 rs-232 connection. Then you have a media converter to multimode fiber then a media converter back to db9 232 then into a box to submaster all the other devices and one more media converter before the firewall/router and then over microwave when the data gets split again into operational and engineering data. You then find someone in purchasing bought singlemode fiber and the wrong media converters to save money on the project, IT will also drag their feet on opening up the port for communications in the firewall.
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Sep 3, 2021 16:05
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I do fuel cell control systems and system design, and its all automotive components, not-intended-for-purpose actuators and incredibly overbuildt controllers. For protocols, we're a beautiful hodgepodge of CANbus (thats the automotive components), modbus and OPC for the datalogging and historian stuff. All of I have a love/hate relationship with the components, because due to the nature of the beast, we need to measure and control stuff in quantities usually used in petrochem industry in a small enclosure, with everything packaged tightly (quote from buisness owner: "I can fit a coffee cup in there, why the waste of space?"). On the other side, its always a mental challenge doing genuinely new stuff. One memorable risk assessment had us considering What if the liquid hydrogen fuel storage ruptures? The 21 degree kelvin fuel will liquify atmospheric air, so you get liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in pools around the storage tank 
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Sep 4, 2021 11:29
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SpeedFreek posted:Power line carrier? There are some very stable solutions out there for that, unless you mean that some hack put a copper data line in with power. I read that and started sweating.
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Sep 5, 2021 02:21
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My company sends me all over the place, beginning of the month I had the chemical plant install for a week, went on vacation, then got sent to a firm that is automating their CNC machines that cut cast iron parts for toyota for half a week, and now I'm spending a month up at a place that makes machines that cut food items. I'm working on a 3 axis cutter with an pneumatic cutting blade!
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Sep 5, 2021 02:24
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I finally am doing something that's not the steel mills. I've spent the last month and a half at a company that makes food cutting machines. Machines that cut cakes, pizzas, cheese and stuff like that. All Allen Bradley with AB servos. Lots of fun, got a flying shear pastry cutter running, working on a 1, 2, or 4 sheet cake cutter right now.
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Sep 28, 2021 02:47
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I work with a bunch of lovely garbage from robotics startups that have fundamental design issues that need to be worked around in a bunch of ways. It's cool when it actually works as intended and doesn't break 30 times in the first two months of deployment though.
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Oct 27, 2021 03:56
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Starting in January I get the joy of learning the Yokogawa DCS. It's all function block compared to the ladder logic I've been doing, but I'll live.
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Dec 17, 2021 16:29
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