Orion HE (Customer) asked a question.
Reboot CM5 Panel from touch screen?
A customer had a problem where a CM5 panel stopped communicating with the PLCs it was connected to. There were not errors listed and no timeouts reported. Touch continued working, only the communication with PLCs stopped. I was able to login to the panel and reboot it through the C-more programming software. But it would be really cool if I can add a button that lets an operator reboot the panel. Does such an option exist? I searched the manual but didn't find a method.
Going to the System Setup Screen will stop the plc communications and essentially reboot the panel. Go to Help topic CM071 for more information.
Also power cycling the panel will reboot it.
PLC communication was stopped, but not reporting as such. We could write going into the system screen and back out of it into the SOPs, but a simple reboot button on a screen would be cleaner. The software has the option, so clearly there is some API or hook that can be triggered. It would be best to expose that as a system tag, similar to ejecting SD cards and deleting Log files on external memory devices.
The Help Topic you listed only had a link to a PDF. I couldn't find any information in the PDF about the panel rebooting when the system screen is accessed (or exited).
Power Cycling is not always a readily available option. Sometimes enclosures are padlocked for safety/security. Accessing the back of the HMI is not as easy as a touch screen object. Obviously, such a button could have a passcode on it, if it existed. But sometimes we want to reboot a panel without grabbing a terminal block and physically removing it from a device. Yes, a dedicated breaker could be installed, but currently the HMI is ganged up with other devices that can't so easily be power cycled without interruption. An on-screen button though...
Page 5-4 of the manual that the link points you to.
But here is what it says:
• Pressing OK will display the system setup screen. See the WARNING below!
• Pressing Cancel will take you back to the project screen.
• Communications with the PLC is active while the Warning is displayed.
• The dialog box will close if no action is taken for 60 seconds.
• The dialog box will not display if the touch panel does not have a project loaded.
• The dialog box will display after a valid password is entered if the System Screen password is
enabled.
WARNING: Pressing OK at this point will STOP the PLC driver and therefore all communica tions between the touch pan el and PLC
will cease. It is strongly recommended that the pa ssword system tag “SYS SYSTEMSCREENPW” be enabled to add a safeguard step in
accessing the system setup screens.
See the next section for an overview for setting the System Tags in the Event Manager Database.
I bolded, italicized, and underlined it above.
Yeah, I read that part. That's why I mentioned that communication with the PLC was already stopped. I see now that it looks like I just mentioned that out of nowhere.
I'll have to test again (should this be a repeat problem) and see if a system screen call is enough to get it going. I know we opened the System Screen to look for a restart option, but can't remember if we went there before or after the software initiated reboot.
But as I said, stopping the PLC driver was something the panel had already done on its own. It was a new one for us because it wasn't updating values but didn't give a PLC timeout. Like the network adapter was fat and happy while the comms drivers were drunk and unconscious, but I don't know the architecture well enough to explain it. I just know rebooting it fixed it and that a reboot button would allow the night shift guy to fix it.
Were you able to come up with something for this issue? I'm experiencing the same problem with no answer.
No. I don't have that many CM5s out in the field yet. I imagine this is one of those issues that will take a larger number of customers complaining before AD takes it serious enough to troubleshoot and issue a bug fix. But with the CM5 being the supported model for the foreseeable future, this issue will probably pop up more and more.