Long Epic Boot Time

groov EPIC
1

First time using an EPIC and the boot time seems way too long to me. It’s in the field and a technician just timed it at 3 minutes from startup to login screen on the built-in screen.

We’re using a thin client as the HMI and I had to add an output that the strategy turns on to power the HMI when the EPIC was ready. The thin client boots much faster and can’t connect to the EPIC because it wasn’t ready. Now, though, the output comes on but the EPIC is still not ready so I have to add an additional delay.

Is this right? Does the EPIC really take this long to boot?

Thanks.

2

It takes a while, true. I have not timed it yet, but yes, we (Opto) are aware of the boot time and are working on making improvements.

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3

Are there any updates on this issue?

Are there some things we can do to reduce the Epic Groov boot up time?

4

Has there been any improvements on this issue?
Just checking in after a while with regards to this, as when I last had a play with a new set of EPIC kit I found the 2-3min boot up time unacceptable for our applications. As such we have stuck with further design and development solely with the tried and true PACR1/S2/EB1 hardware that boots up brilliantly…
Thanks
Sean

5

This would be a good improvement. My clients really hammer me about the boot times

6

Has there been any effort put into this issue? In a field application this boot up time is not acceptable.

7

Any updates on the boot-up time? Many of my clients have also commented on this.

We have five equipment here running slightly different applications, and here are their startup times:

  1. 3:10 minutes
  2. 3:09 minutes
  3. 2:57 minutes
  4. 3:01 minutes
  5. 2:48 minutes
8

Can you add (roughly) what applications are running for each of those 5 controllers?

I can try and run some similar setups here with the new firmware and get some ballpark numbers.
Clearly its unreleased and so things might change, but it would be good to do some apples to apples comparisons.

9

Hi Ben, we are running PAC Control and groov View, along with some Node-RED, to pass Opto data to a datastore for logging groov View data into Microsoft Excel.

10

Gotcha. That should be pretty straightforward to setup here.
Will kick at it in my spare time < grin >

11

I think its important to remind everyone in this thread and reading it in the future that EPIC and RIO are a very different type of ‘controller’ than whats come before.

Not just running a Linux operating system with real time extensions, but also a power fail safe file system. (This can not be under-sold and does not exist on most other Linux based controllers/IPCs).

Core Linux system user interface via groov Manage.
On top of that, a choice of control engines, PAC Control or Codesys.
HMI in the form of groov View.
IIoT flexibility with Node-RED.
OPCUA, MQTT, SparkplugB data connectors with RESTful API and SNMP options.
Inductive Automation Ignition EDGE is another option for working on the platform.

Can all that boot in 10 seconds? No, of course not, but I think its just too easy to simply ask/demand faster times no matter what boot time we release the next firmware update with without thinking about what exactly is going on under the covers.

With all that said… Here is what I measured in my office yesterday afternoon.
PR1 running PAC Control, Node-RED and groov View with MQTT data service.

Services up and running: 1m 17 sec
Log in screen up: 1m 45 sec

Those times do not include starting/running Ignition EDGE as the release version for that software has not been locked down yet - but EDGE will take significantly more time to start and be ready than the controller bootup.

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12

Just for the heck of it, I timed the startup on my PR1 running CODESYS Controller, CODESYS OPC UA, groov View, and Node-RED.

Everything was up and running in 2m 27 sec.

The startup time has never been an issue for my clients as they run 24/7 on backup power, but it was an interesting test anyway.

Thanks all!

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