New features wanted!! Apply here!

[uman]

Read this entire thread and the V6 looks real cool, soooo.....any chance we could get a status?  ETA? 
Jeff in Florida

[BobO]

Well, given the market we are in right now, we are highly motivated to get it out this year. There is much left to do, but late this year remains our goal.

[henke]

yet another feature request list:
DS6
- feature required - please add the ability to Find Previous when searching the ladder
- ability to show/hide rungs just leaving a plus sign in it's place with a tooltip bubble for the first two lines of the comment field (useful for all those "setup" rungs we put in our programs)
- Documentation View: filters (eg. jump straight to element categories via buttons such as X, Y, etc.)
- toolbar button bars switchable to Ver4-sized icons
- eliminate the obligatory New Project dialog everytime you open a programming session (people can click New easily enough if they intend to start a project from scratch)
ECOMs
- ability to send larger emails
- program-defined web pages
- enhanced security and configurability for the http server plus configurable data access
DL06
- expansion option or built-in cardslot for web-accessable CompactFlash or USBkey (datalogging). Could it possibly be combined with the ECOM?

Thanks for all the hard work integrating features and the amazing customer communication .

[pravp]

Will the new PLC have support for DNP3 Master / Slave?

[franji1]

Will the new PLC have support for DNP3 Master / Slave?

Sorry, no.  I'm not familiar with DNP3.  What types of applications would a PLC be useful as a DNP3 Master?  What types of applications would it be useful as a DNP3 Slave?

What is the physical layer for DNP3?  Is it RS-232? 422? 485? Ethernet?

[b_carlton]

In DSLaunch, allow the list of projects and links to be limited to those last opened within X amount of time. An alternative is to limit it to the last X number of projects. We produce all custom machines so don't have a standard program. The list fills up quickly and must be weeded occasionally.

Another would be to change the projects list to be just the Explorer tree view of the projects directory. Right now I right-click 'Browse' to open. Just have a version of the tree view already there.

[Controls Guy]

I'm with you, Bernie.  I find the "normal" way of deleting links in the projects area at once too safe (one dialog per file) and too dangerous (don't accidentally select to erase the files with the link!).  I just edit DS500.ini and I get to delete all the links (or all the ones I want to delete) in one swell foop, with no risk of deleting the actual projects.

[b_carlton]

I use the DS500 edit way also. It just seems a little bit kludgy. Of course it's not as dangerous as editiong the registry. Many probably on deal with a few files and don't want to remove them.

[Controls Guy]

AFAIC they could just add recent projects to the File Menu like a normal Windows program.  They insist on following usual Windows app GUI conventions (having the dockable Xref and Data views not part of the Ctrl-Tab sequence, etc), but when the standard approach is better, we get this.   

[pravp]

Will the new PLC have support for DNP3 Master / Slave?

I'm not familiar with DNP3.  What types of applications would a PLC be useful as a DNP3 Master?  What types of applications would it be useful as a DNP3 Slave?

What is the physical layer for DNP3?  Is it RS-232? 422? 485? Ethernet?

Wikipedia is your friend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNP3

In our case here in Australia DNP3 is used extensively in the water industry where the PLCs/RTUs are DNP3 Slaves and only report on exception to minimise on overall network loading.

At the moment here in Western Australia, Koyo is uses in the majority of regional pump stations but unfortunately is on the brink of being potentially being replaced by a GE PLC which has DNP3 slave functionality as when a Koyo is installed it needs to be paired with an RTU just to do the Modbus to DNP3 translation. Having support for DNP3 would position the new PLC strongly in the water industry over here as it is extensively used for not just its cost effectiveness, but also its simplicity as far as programming is concerned.

[franji1]

So it sounds like DNP3 as a slave is useful in a traditional PLC?  DNP3 Master capabilities are not needed?  If this is true, then this is good (a PLC is not a SCADA system).  If this is not true, please explain how you would set up a PLC as a DNP master to configure a bunch of DNP3 slaves.  Normally, comm is done via polling from master to slave, but DNP3 looks quite advanced for a Master to configure what we call "report by exception" requests in the slaves, causing the "slave" to initiate the transfer?  This seems do-able on a peer network like Ethernet, but I'm not sure how it would work in a multi-drop serial network, where you speak only when spoken to?

[pravp]

DNP3 Master capabilities are not needed?  If this is true, then this is good (a PLC is not a SCADA system).

Yes that would be correct as a DNP3 Master would probably be too complex to implement at the PLC level. In our case we would be more interested in DNP3 Slave at a serial level but the way things are going with the shift from serial to IP based comms it would probably make sense to also have support for ethernet as well.

One important thing though is that even though many vendors say they have support for DNP3 it is sometimes not "complete" and therefore its probably important that the implementation to the standard is complete. I believe this is the DNP organisations website http://www.dnp.org/About/Default.aspx

[franji1]

We cannot do it now (already too much to get done), but we'll consider it as a possible protocol in future versions.  Actually, Host Engineering develops the Ethernet products for ADC, so it would be easier for us to implement it on the ECOM100 vs. a serial port.

[pravp]

We cannot do it now (already too much to get done)

thats a shame but i guess you guys are already under the pump. Hope though it does happen in the future as this will give the Koyo a big boost in the water industry over here and also lock in a lot of future implementations.

We are eagerly awaiting the new PLC & Software so bring those out first and lets worry about upgrades and more features later on! We really need the new PLC here to help us knock heads with the big boys (GE, AB, Siemens etc.)

[pravp]

Another thing that came up, would there be any form of "redundancy" available?