Colin Carpenter Posted October 30, 2012 Report Posted October 30, 2012 You learn something every day. Was informed the other day by Beijer tech support that they recommend the MC driver for ethernet comms between their screens and all Q, QnA, E71 comms cards and Qxx-UDE integrated ports. Haven't used it yet, but plan to as I know that using the E71 driver with a Q03-UDE can give some strange results...... Update from the internet with E_Designer and look for the Melsec_MC_ driver. I'd never heard of it and probably wouldn't have found it without a bit of help. Cheers. Quote
kaare_t Posted October 30, 2012 Report Posted October 30, 2012 Not sure if I understand what you mean, I don't think they meant that you're supposed to use the E71 driver in their terminals but rather the MC protocol in any case. Both the QnUE CPU's and the E71 supports the standard MC protocol... Please clearify what you mean... Quote
Colin Carpenter Posted October 31, 2012 Author Report Posted October 31, 2012 Hi Kaare, I guess it is a little confusing. A couple of years ago, one of the sites that I work on had an anaerobic digester / CHP plant installed and the PLC that controls it is a Q03-UDE. The screen is an E1151 which talks to the PLC by ethernet into its integrated ethernet port. The software that was used for the screen was E-Designer 7.5, and, at the time, there was no MC driver that came with E-Designer. The guy who programmed it asked support what driver he should use and how he should set up the comms in IEC Developer for the Q03's ethernet port. He was told that if he used a later version of the E71 comms driver, that would work. I'm not sure if the MC driver was available at the time, but the system worked OK with the E71 driver, apart from when he was monitoring the PLC with IEC which would then cause other screens on the network to occasionally throw up a BDTP error and require re-booting. I could never get to the bottom of this error, and a few weeks ago, I was chatting to a Mitsubishi engineer and he told me that new ethernet drivers were available, Beijer support told me it was the MC driver, so I went online with my version of E-Designer 7.5 and found this MC driver, which wasn't installed on my version of E-Designer 7.5 I guess the reason for the post is just to say that this driver now exists, and that if you're programming Q or QnA ethernet with Beijer screens, that it's worth downloading, as many of us simply won't be aware that it even exists. I suppose it would come with the later versions of E-Designer, but if you haven't upgraded it is out there. Quote
kaare_t Posted October 31, 2012 Report Posted October 31, 2012 The "old" E71 driver is actually the MC driver.... MC = Mitsubishi Protocol and is what E71, C24 and so on uses when you select MC protocol for communications. The TCP driver is essentially the "old" MC serial protocol wrapped in TCP headers so the MC has been around for a long time, however the binary protocol was first supported on the QnAS systems, before this it was ascii based. So the "problem" is basically that Beijer shouldn't have named the driver "E71", instead they should have named it MC over TCP/IP or something like that (or simply just MC protocol). All in all it's very good that you put some light to this issue, maybe someone else is wondering the same thing... Quote
Colin Carpenter Posted October 31, 2012 Author Report Posted October 31, 2012 I'm really confused now ..... the text from the email from Beijer tech support stated: All QnUDE should be configured with the MC protocol: Our MC protocol driver is considered to be the replacement for the old QnA/Q-series (E71) driver. Which would make me think that the MC driver is a new one? If it was old, I would have thought that it would have installed when installing E-Designer 7.5? Time will tell, will be playing with it soon. Best regards. Quote
kaare_t Posted October 31, 2012 Report Posted October 31, 2012 The HMI driver is developed by Beijer, but the protocol itself is a Mitsubishi protocol. That's why the E71 and the QnUDE has built in support for this. Since the HMI driver is developed by Beijer, they have probably upgraded the driver software, possibly for new features on the QnUDE CPU, maybe to access more registers or something. So instead of maintaining two different drivers (1 QnUDE MC driver and 1 E71 MC driver) they have simply upgraded the "old" E71 MC driver to the new "MC" driver with one common name. My guess is that the E71 driver will not be maintained anymore, that's why they recommend to use the new MC driver. The "new" MC driver is simply the old E71 driver with added features which is supported by the QnUDE CPU.... Did that clearify? Quote
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