Host Engineering Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mike Nash on December 03, 2015, 10:59:34 AM
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The Ethernet CLICKs look very interesting, (especially for the price) and just in time for Christmas shopping. But I really, really want to see the new Host product soon.
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And I really, really want you to see it. We generally don't like to talk about schedules because it tends to make us look like pathological liars, but, I feel pretty good that next year's Christmas tree could be well controlled. ;)
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I have a do-more addiction! Like a junkie looking for a fix, i'm eagerly awaiting the new do-more :)
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Im actually a little sad about the new Do-More coming out...
I don't have any upgrades scheduled in the next year that would let me use it.
And looking at this new click, I think they are trying to step on your turf just a little.
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And looking at this new click, I think they are trying to step on your turf just a little.
No way is it stepping on Host's turf. It's like the difference between Tee-ball, and the Major Leagues. The Click is not even on the same scale as Do-more.
IMHO... ;D
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Honestly, if Click can do an app with its limited capabilities, and you like using it, we're certainly not offended. I personally think that for some apps it ends up being a false savings due to increased programming effort, but for others it is the slam dunk correct answer. Use the right product for the app.
That said, we are definitely expanding down market while Click moves up. By the time we finish our down market expansion, there won't be much daylight between the products. And after that, we'll be expanding up market. In time...Do-more everywhere!
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If it will do Modbus TCP slave, I see one real good use Remote I/O for a Do-more
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Here at Engineered Wire, We've pushed the Click into "Smart Devices" category. It's great for small and simple projects, but it's not a work horse, more of a pony at a petting zoo.
They did work nice for our local vocational school. The price makes them great for a PLC trainer setup. I keep one on a display board for our maintenance techs to use to learn basic PLC skills, and at 70 bucks if they fry one oh well...
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Here at Engineered Wire, We've pushed the Click into "Smart Devices" category. It's great for small and simple projects, but it's not a work horse, more of a pony at a petting zoo.
They did work nice for our local vocational school. The price makes them great for a PLC trainer setup. I keep one on a display board for our maintenance techs to use to learn basic PLC skills, and at 70 bucks if they fry one oh well...
Ponies are cute. Probably shouldn't use them to plow the back 40 though.
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Ponies are cute. Probably shouldn't use them to plow the back 40 though.
Whereas with Do-More, you can automate the harvester, and check commodity pricing on the interwebs at the same time! ;D
I did notice on another forum that the new Click's are supposed to be 10X faster then the non-E's, so they must have upgraded the CPU and/or clock speed. That's a significant improvement, except I can't imagine the app that would overwhelm a non-E Click where I'd be willing to use one because it's now 10x faster. Seems like they're muddying their niche. If I were them, I'd concentrate on upgrading the software instead of more powerful hardware.
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Ponies are cute. Probably shouldn't use them to plow the back 40 though.
Whereas with Do-More, you can automate the harvester, and check commodity pricing on the interwebs at the same time! ;D
I did notice on another forum that the new Click's are supposed to be 10X faster then the non-E's, so they must have upgraded the CPU and/or clock speed. That's a significant improvement, except I can't imagine the app that would overwhelm a non-E Click where I'd be willing to use one because it's now 10x faster. Seems like they're muddying their niche. If I were them, I'd concentrate on upgrading the software instead of more powerful hardware.
I've made the observation previously that for CLICK to significantly increase its functionality is to risk losing its appeal. Do-more's future low end product (not the new brick, but the DM0 nano class coming after) has the advantage of not needing to be any more than the lowest-cost easiest-to-use thing you can think of. When you hit the wall with it, the project migrates to DM1 class hardware without change. I think if we can get close to CLICK pricing, we will do well with such a product. And when a DM0 class device can also drop in as low-cost RS485-based remote I/O for DM1 class processors, it gets even better.
This is starting to get real fun.
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With the limited instruction set, bogging down the click really shouldn't happen.
Maybe I never have stressed our PLC, but I've never, ever had an issues where the PLC wasn't fast enough on any of our equipment.
We don't do much analog or math so maybe I'm under working our Do-More's.
If you can hit Click pricing with a new Do-More, I will personally videotape me smashing all our clicks in our bearing press and send it to Host. Then I will replace all of them with the DM0.
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With the limited instruction set, bogging down the click really shouldn't happen.
Maybe I never have stressed our PLC, but I've never, ever had an issues where the PLC wasn't fast enough on any of our equipment.
We don't do much analog or math so maybe I'm under working our Do-More's.
And this is exactly our philosophy for the future nano class I referred to. It will be built on the cheapest micro we can find, and will have no hardware acceleration or coprocessors like the DM1. Won't matter though. With a max of about 32 I/O and a very limited feature set, how slow is slow?
Further down the road, I want to move back up market with a true rack and cards modular, high density I/O, hot swap, etc. It will launch with a new DM2 class processor, which will be 10x to 20x faster than the DM1. Such big plans...so little time.
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Honestly, how big does a program have to be before a PLC runs into a scan time issue?
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We don't do much analog or math so maybe I'm under working our Do-More's.
It's like how being five minutes early is on time. Underworking is right-working. As cheap as hardware is, if you pick a platform that has a powerful instruction set and hardware power (and memory) to burn, you'll more than get your money back in saved engineering effort, and in the long run, end up getting a more robust system for LESS money.
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Honestly, how big does a program have to be before a PLC runs into a scan time issue?
I can do it in a handful of rungs...but I know the weaknesses. When used in a fairly conventional way, Do-more is very hard to break. There are some that hang around here (you know who you are) who probably nudge up against the performance edge more than others. With Do-more, however, there are so many ways to reduce processor load that working around it is pretty easy.
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Such big plans...so little time.
After the toilet thread on the ADC forum, as I read that one I heard it in a Slavic accent, and I have to say, your Russian is not that bad!
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I recommend NOT making a DNS call every five seconds! D'oh! ;D
(though that isn't a limitation of the PLC per se, but how fast you can get a response from your DNS server)
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After the toilet thread on the ADC forum, as I read that one I heard it in a Slavic accent, and I have to say, your Russian is not that bad!
A friend of mine is Latvian born, but raised in the US. I got to spend a week with him in Latvia doing ministry work. He has this big list of Russian-isms, which of course must be spoken in Slavic accent to get full effect. A couple of favs:
1. When needing the time, while tapping one's wrist: "Which watch?" or "How much clock?"
2. When explaining one's newness to the country: "You help please? I've only been in country short distance".
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"As long as they pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."
Applies as well in some US companies as it did in the USSR.
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"As long as they pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."
Applies as well in some US companies as it did in the USSR.
Following the fall of the USSR, it was stunning how much Latvia changed, both for Latvians and for the Russians living in Latvia (about 1/3 of the population). Very capable and intelligent people completely crushed by a system. It took about a decade before capitalism started to free their minds, but it happened eventually, and Latvia really blossomed. Having witnessed both sides of that first hand (also spent time Soviet Bloc countries during the Cold War), it is utterly appalling to me how the US is drifting that way.
But alas...let's avoid depressing political discussions.
How about that CLICK Ethernet!?!?
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How about that CLICK Ethernet!?!?
Well, the Click E-Port has the same number of wires as a Do-More, but in every other respect, I'd rather have a Do-More.
In re: politics, I heartily concur with all you said. Note my tagline (though perhaps I should change "crooks" to "Fascists")
How about that local sports team? ;D
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How about that local sports team? ;D
We favor the color orange up in these parts, although one partner is a UK fan and the other went to VT. In the south, college football is probably more contentious than politics, although mostly in a more friendly way.
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As a Tennessee Yankee (not the baseball team but just a displaced Yinzer, and its my fantasy football tag), I tend to cater to the Pros and bleed Black and Gold.
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Scarlet and Grey...
On PLC's: Im excited in the industrial control world. Technology is rapidly advancing and the power it gives us to make our jobs easier is astounding. Our plant is slow to catch on to new things, about two or three times a month a new products comes out and I say "Wow, that would go good here and fix ...."
In the 10 years since I left the navy (Submarine Fleet) it seems overnight we've gone from basic controls to a place where anything is possible.
I wonder where we'll be in another decade?
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I wonder where we'll be in another decade?
See BobO's avatar: "Do-more will control the world!"
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Scarlet and Grey...
I don't have much opinion about the B1G, but pretty sure y'all didn't send the best team to the CFP.
I wonder where we'll be in another decade?
We're really just bringing well established desktop technologies to the PLC, and pretty incrementally at that. Given the relatively slow acceptance of new tech on the factory floor, I don't think it will be significantly different than the best available today, just more prevalent throughout the industry. Even if somebody drops The Next Big Thing in automation, it will still take many years before it takes over. JMO...
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In the 10 years since I left the navy (Submarine Fleet) it seems overnight we've gone from basic controls to a place where anything is possible.
Yeah, but you get a lot more choices for industrial automation gear when it doesn't have to work underwater.
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In the 10 years since I left the navy (Submarine Fleet) it seems overnight we've gone from basic controls to a place where anything is possible.
Yeah, but you get a lot more choices for industrial automation gear when it doesn't have to work underwater.
Or supplied by Uncle Sam.
JW
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Second the point about false savings. Staged programming feature alone saves hours of programming and troubleshooting.
Honestly, if Click can do an app with its limited capabilities, and you like using it, we're certainly not offended. I personally think that for some apps it ends up being a false savings due to increased programming effort, but for others it is the slam dunk correct answer. Use the right product for the app.
That said, we are definitely expanding down market while Click moves up. By the time we finish our down market expansion, there won't be much daylight between the products. And after that, we'll be expanding up market. In time...Do-more everywhere!
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Honestly, how big does a program have to be before a PLC runs into a scan time issue?
It's not really how big rung wise that the program is, but what you have in it. For example with the DirectLogic PLC's, if you want to go slow, use a lot of BCD or Real math. These instructions are incredibly slower than using signed or unsigned decimal which is a native instruction to the processor.
(Yes, I know BCD is the default Timer and Counter data type for DirectLogic. There is a reason for this buried in antiquity. Decimal math is still incredibly faster.)
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Our boat had her keel laid in '82 with technology that put a man on the moon, remember the unit in Apollo 13 that Tom Hanks was looking at to steer the command module. Yeah thats a VERDAN unit, ours was MARDAN its cousin...
Our computers were loaded from paper tape in 2004...
So a Do-More could easily run Navigation Control.
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Let's not forget Latvia's greatest export to date:
(https://forum.hosteng.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.hngn.com%2Fdata%2Fimages%2Ffull%2F133646%2Fknicks-forward-kristaps-porzingis.jpg%3Fw%3D650&hash=72ca6952abcd7e0bbc8fe7f6fd599b6b8e82fd93)
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Out of curiosity, what are people getting for their average scan times on a Do-More? What min and max ranges are to be considered normal?
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Can vary considerably. Minimum generally a couple hundred microseconds, depending on I/O. Max depends greatly on the type of application. Simple logic is very fast, string processing can be pretty slow.
What are you doing and what kind of performance do you need?
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I managed to bog one down to 13ms. Only 200 rungs but TONS of MATH boxes. Probably an average of better than one per rung. I pretty much can't energize a coil without resorting to a MATH box.
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You must have a lot of floating point or complex functions. Basic integer math is blistering fast.
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I'm running an average of 6ms, with a max of 9ms. The application is a brewhouse, and the most critical thing is a PID loop with a 20 second lag time. I have a CTRIO card for reading two pulse flow meters, a fairly hefty RS485 bus, and 8 RTD inputs. I was mostly curious how my scan compared so I would know if I should optimize some of the program.
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You must have a lot of floating point or complex functions. Basic integer math is blistering fast.
Tons of boolean math (XORing DINT's with each other and with masks, etc.), and some looping, though not extreme. If I get a chance I'll profile it and see if there are any bottlenecks.
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I might have cut some of those from the copro due to resource issues, but they were part at one point. I'll check when back at the office. Should definitely be in the new hardware.
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The 13ms wasn't a problem, but more power is always a good thing; I won't turn it down!
Yeah, I guess the lesson is that some weirdos like myself do a LOT of boolean math (and a lot of math in general), so the better it's handled the happier we'll be. ;D
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Gate array was snug, so I made the bool math box stuff optional to save space. Didn't think they would be used heavily. Sorry. Should be space in the new box. Will be about a 20x performance boost for those instructions.