I/O Enabler - old forum post

PAC Project
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Mr. Bill

Joined on 09-23-2003
Posts 18
IO Enabler PAC Control Example Strategies

We now have 3 new example strategies available on the Opto 22 Web site. They are available in the "Samples & Freeware" downloads page located here:

Sample & Freeware

You can also get there by going to www.opto22.com, then choosing the Support tab, then the Downloads link (near the upper-left corner of the page), and then "Samples & Freeware" in the lower-middle section of the page.

The 3 examples are different versions of the same concept. The intent is to make it easy for you to either build a strategy around the example, or incorporate the logic from the example into an existing strategy.

The IO Enabler example provides logic to automatically and intelligently re-enable communication to any I/O units that go offline. "Intelligently" because it tracks how many consecutive unsuccessful attempts are made to re-enable communication, and backs off how frequently it tries to re-enable communication. This is done to improve overall performance in the case of an I/O unit that goes offline for an extended period of time (blown fuse, etc.).

An I/O unit can go offline due to temporary power issues and I/O enabler automatically recovers communication to the affected units. However, if you have I/O units going offline regularly, then please contact the Opto 22 Product Support Group (support@opto22.com) to diagnose the root cause of the problem.

The 3 separate examples are intended to prevent complexity:

  1.  Support for all PAC brains (including the SB1 and SB2) and Legacy Ethernet brains (UIO & EIO).  Requires PAC Control Basic R8.0f or newer.

  2.  Support for all PAC brains (including the SB1 and SB2) and Legacy Ethernet brains (UIO & EIO), as well as Mistic Multifunction brains (but not remote simple).  Requires PAC Control Pro R8.0f or newer.

  3.  Support for all PAC brains (including the SB1 and SB2) and Legacy Ethernet brains (UIO & EIO), as well as Mistic Multifunction and remote simple brains.  Requires PAC Control Pro R8.2d or newer.

Starting with the next release of PAC Project (8.2003), these examples will be part of the PAC Project install.

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I have been using this enable code for as long as this post is old. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed the ethernet enable chart does not seem to work for an EPIC configured as the IO unit for a PAC-S2. I’m curious if this enabling chart still works with the EPIC used as only an IO unit to other controllers. I rely on this to avoid “bumping” outputs in a large distributed system and leaving the ENABLE IO Unit check box unchecked. In this instance, I did check the box to enable it in PAC Control since I only have panel lights outputs on this EPIC chassis. I have had to manually enable it while in debug mode without issue and did not see an error code.