I have successfully established communication between a Allen Bradley Compact Logix 1769-L32E running firmware version 20.013 and an Ignition Edge running in a EPIC-PR1 with system version 2.0.2-b.139.
Due to an issue with the AB I updated the firmware to the latest revision which is 20.019. With that update Ignition Edge is no longer able to talk to the variables on the AB. It shows the device as “connected” but cannot access the variables. The error that I get from Groov View from each variable is: groov and the OPC UA server are communicating normally, but the server is not able to communicate with the field device. Details: Bad_CommunicationError (0x80050000) “A low level communication error occurred.”
The program that was loaded into the PLC after the update was the same as the one before. I then also downgraded the firmware to 20.013, reloaded the program and Ignition Edge communication was reestablished.
It works! That is great. Thank you. I couldn’t find a way to change the driver of an existing device but create a new one. Is that true? If so that implies I have to re-direct all my gadgets as well as my tags in Ignition Designer. Or is it possible to delete the previous device and replace it with one of the same name and all the “links” will re-form?
Great question… I was not sure, so had to ‘phone a friend’…
He said… I believe if he names the new device the same, it should be good to go. but other than that he is correct, he will have to first delete the existing device, which will cause his tags to error out. Making the new device the same name, should allow for direct re-connection.
(If it were me, I would be doing a gateway backup before deleting said device - but hey, you might like to live on the edge).
I will give it a try on Monday and post back about my results. I will do the back up before playing around with it --insert a joke here involving ignition and edge and living –
Well it turns out for this case it doesn’t appear you can just have a matching name and everything will reconnect.
I deleted the device with the old driver and created a new device with the new driver of the same name - none of the gadgets reconnected. I then restored my original ignition edge configuration (from a backup!).
I then ran some tests. I created a test device to the AB PLC. If I created it using the new driver, changed the name, and then changed it back again it would reconnect to the View gadgets.
I then deleted that device and created one of the same name but using the old AB driver. I then created a new View gadget that was connected to this device. So in view I have two gadgets - one created to the device with the new driver and one created with the device with the old driver but the device has the same name. None of them are working, as they can’t fully connect to the AB.
I then deleted the device with the old driver and replace it with one of the same name but with the new driver. The View gadget created with the new driver works while the one created against the old driver errors out with a “The gadget’s tag does not exist on the OPC UA server”
So it looks like, if the device is changed, all the tags have to be re-pathed.
I’m not quite sure how to do the tag export. I did discover since your post that in Ignition Edge I can change the OPC Item Path for my tags in the AB PLC. It looks like the new AB drive uses a different path format. The old driver has a [device name]Global.tag name while the new one, for the same tag, has [device name]tag as the path.
I’m not sure how to do that in Groov View but it significantly sped up the process in designer for getting the variables into PAC control. I already changed my tags in View. Luckily I didn’t have too many gadgets.
