e-mail H0-ECOM100

[rgleonard]

I'm having a problem with e-mail, the message is being delivered with a 12-31-1999 date.  The body reflects the correct date.  The Ecom has the latest firmware (4.0.173) and loader (4.0.165) updates as well as the latest net edit (3.7).  Where can I change the date?  I know that I am missing something somewhere.

[AZRoger]

I think this is answered in the following Automation Direct forum topic. http://forum1.automationdirect.com/board/Forum1/HTML/002928.html
Roger

[MikeS]

yepper, the date is fixed at 01/01/2000 00:00:00. the only reason it's in there is to appease some smtp (email) servers which are keying on the date & time fields for identification of spam. we can't leave the fields 'undefined' so we choose a date that was old enough for folks to realize that it's a bogus date, but new enough to appease the smtp servers.

we kicked around several approaches to dealing with this issue - like using the plc time (if available) or making/allowing the user to set the time in the ecom100 via netedit3, or specifying the date/time information in the email ibox. all of these solutions had their pluses and minuses, so we opted for the least impact on the users whose smtp servers didn't complain about the lack of data in these fields.

we may go back and revisit our solution if enough folks have trouble with it but so far, it's been manageable.

[rjk]

We use quite a number of HO-ECOMs, close to 60 (represents about 1/2 of the total PLCs we used from Automation Direct) in the last year, with the expectation that we could use the module to email out to our customers when the systems went down on alarm. Our testing went very well so we standardized on the unit. We run our own SMTP server and forward the emails on to our customers. This worked fine, now we have a problem that because of the fixed date our system no longer runs. We are desperately trying to figure out how to get around this issue .... it would have been so easy if the date just reflected the date in the PLC or built in the ability to authenticate.

At the present time we are trying to figure out if we should continue to standardize on the DL06/DL260 or if we need to find another solution. Are there any plans to correct this feature to allow a 'real date' to be transmitted.

[MikeS]

we're currently working on some new firmware that will read the current date & time from the plc and use that in the email.

since we are simply reading data values from plc registers, we can't always know if they are correct or not, so it's up to the user to make sure the date and time are set correctly in the plc before sending an email.

if the values in the plc's date and time registers are 0's, we'll fall back and do what we're doing now, which is to set the date & to "1/1/2000 00:00:00"

keep checking the web site for this new firmware, we'll post it as soon as it gets through our testing phase, probably a day or so from now.

[rjk]

Don't want to nag, but do you have an idea when this firmware will be posted? It is a very critical issue for us to know when we can tell our customers when they can expect to be back online with emails.

thanks

[MikeS]

we've been beta-testing this new firmware for the last week because we want to make sure it's working with more than just the email servers we have to test with here.

so far the results have been good, and plans are to post in tomorrow morning (10/5/07) unless we find a problem today.