Automation Direct

[J. B. Jennings]

I have come to the conclusion, from observing the activity in the forums, that either Automation Direct is not very popular OR Automation Direct is not very difficult to deal with. What do you think??? J.B. Electrical Engineer Waynesboro, VA

[Tech Fred]

I would disagree with that. I deal with quite a few people at AD and they are all very knowldgeable and easy to work with. I find a lot of bias in all the forums, usually based on frustration, and I tend to ignore it and base my opinion on my own experience. If you go by the volume of questions that I see, and I monitor several foums the fewest questions are about AD devices and software.

[b_carlton]

I find that people who have problems with it either have not used any PLC before (in which case they would be confused by any PLC) or have had intensive experience with only one PLC and have come to think that its way of doing things is the way all PLCs act and are confused when they have to work with something else. My experience was exposure to a number of different PLCs (thus realizing that there a certain core abilities which everybody implements in different ways including the naming and layout of memory.) I also had experience in programming different microprocessors at the assembly language, BASIC and C levels thus familiarizing me with the way computerized circuits work at their lowest levels. So when I encountered the AD line it was just another way of using information. No big deal. In fact, their 'Stage Logic' implementation was very close to the methodology I already us in designing programs. As a help, I provide an introduction to AD PLCs on my website oriented to those who have Allen Bradley SLC and Micrologix experience.

[Peter Nachtwey]

If I had a forum there the same question was asked over and over and over again like for some other products I would know there was a design problem. Questions on a forum can be roughly divided into two groups. The first is questions about the PLC or the tool. Repeated questions about the same thing indicate there is a design or documentation problem. The second groups is application related. Application questions tend to be the same no matter what PLC is being used.

[Eric142]

I have used AD in many applications, they are easy to use and the tech support is GREAT! They are always ready to help and do not ask for a service contract. The hardest to deal with has always been AB, they have some great stuff but don't care if you know what to do with it unless you keep spending your dollars. Edited April 9, 2010 by Eric142

[milldrone]

I believe there is another set of factors that skews the lack of AD activity at Mr PLC.com. 1. Automation Direct has their own customer forums. The AD forums are advertised at the same place that you purchase the hardware. Thus it's many users that have problems first stop. There is an old saying " I found it in the last place I looked". Which means when you find what you are looking for, you stop looking. Many questions are answered there, so they stop looking. 2. Target market strategy, I believe AD is aimed at the low $ end of the market. This tends to leave things like redundant control, hot standby, motion control, profibus, and all the really complicated things that generate lots of questions. This means that you have a very basic controller without any very fancy options. I believe it's those fancy options that make documentation and manuals difficult. Because they have not had to spend a large effort on those fancy options, they have spent their time on making things intuitive and easy to understand. 3. Bernie mentioned stage programming. When stage programming fits the application, it's intuitive and it just works! Most of the subroutine "gotchas" are not an issue. So, few "gotchas" = few problems = few questions. BTW I have a hard time understanding why other PLC makes have not adopted this concept. Edited April 10, 2010 by milldrone

[plcdp]

Just wondering... what is stage programming? I have very little experience with AD PLC's. thanks, plcdp

[rlp122]

It is a method of turning on or off groups of rungs. Groups are identified by a Stage bit which is controlled via the ladder program. Using this method you can "skip" the "stages" that you don't want to run and speed up program execution by a considerable margin assuming that all rungs do not need to be evaluated every scan. One example would be for making cookies. You add dry ingredients, mix, wet ingredients, mix, pour, bake, cool, etc. Each of the steps can have one or more stages that is enabled and disabled as needed. This way the program is only executing the parts that are currently beding used and unnecessary rungs are skipped.

[b_carlton]

If you can analyse your machine/process in terms of "what is it doing right now? and "what conditions cause it to do something different?" without referring to the outputs then Your process is a good candidate for Stage Programming. The CPU manuals for the DL06 (the second section) contains an introduction to Stage Programming. That may help make it clearer. When I program using Stage Programming I break down our machine action as I describe above. I don't even worry about outputs at this point. I describe the action generally "it is extending cylinder 5". The "what conditions .." may be "nput X21 - attached to LS5 - turns on". At that point we will transfer to the next Stage. By the way - I haven't even touched the programming package yet except to assign nicknames to the inputs and outputs. Next the "what is it doing right now?" (in a shortened form) forms the name for each stage. It works out well if the Stage numbers are sequential (though I leave space between them for possible 'oopsies' in analysis). I enter these (the Stage blocks) into the program. Next, as rungs in each stage I enter the conditions (a swtch making, a counter reaching a count, a timer timing out ...) for a JMP to the next Stage. Finally I enter into each stage the outputs which must be on to accomplish the 'what is it doing right now?". It's ok in Stage programming to have an output in more than one place (seperate Stages) as long as they aren't energized at the same time. That provides the core of a Stage Program. Of course there are start-up and shut-down considerations as well as error detection. But that comes later.

[Shiner]

AD has a couple of nice sequential functions. I addition to the Stage function they have a very nice DRUM function that we have used a few times to replace some of the old sequential drum controls in machinery. It is a very handy tool in that it can implement several timers (one per step) or each step can be triggered by an input. Most importantly to one of my recent programs, the drum sequencer can be stopped at any time without loss of data, and when the activation bit is enabled again your program picks up where it left off. When it comes to support around here that part is easy, what you don't get direct, you can get at any of the local colleges. AD has marketed the state and county colleges to be the processor they teach with, so often the professors are a source of info.