Control.com - Nerds in Control

We have setup a monitoring system that connect to a GE MarkV HMI. We are using serial comms at 19200 baud and modbus protocol. All works well, but every few hours the HMI freezes and needs a hard reboot to sort it. The data transfer stops when the freeze occurs.

The HMI is a GE Inode Plus. It has Cimplicity and uses TCI for getting data from the MarkV via stagelink/arcnet. It is running windows NT.
Any suggestions as to how to fix this?

Note, if we stop the serial data comms requests to the HMI, all is Ok.

This has been a common problem for us in the past. It's generally related to the PC being overloaded, especially if you are using a single HMI for multiple units. An upgrade to a more robust PC would probally solve the issue. Also reducing the number of points and/or the update frequency will help.

Also, Several non-GE companies now sell native communications drivers for the MK-5. Matrikon and Prism Systems both sell OPC servers for the MK-5 that work without any GE-supplied software, and CSE engineering and Global Controls offer similar products.

A better option would be to upgrade to a windowsXP system and use a modern OPC server or something along those lines and abandon Modbus.

Cimplicity freezing problem could be caused by variety of reasons (usually wrong configuration). In order to help you out with this problem, please answer the questions below:

1) Did your Cimplicity system functioned properly since commissioning on?

2) Is this system recently upgraded?

3) What is your or your team’s knowledge about the software configuration, Cimplicity, etc.?

4) IS YOUR PRINTER OFF-LINE?

5) Is your system MULTI-HMI?

6) Is the HMI also connected to a condition monitoring system (such as BN DM2K, B&K, etc.)?
These systems use in general the so called DDE (CWSERV) protocol for data acquisition (OLE) purposes.

In general the SDRAM of your PC is "blamed" for this problem. Let me tell you that this is mostly not the case. Previous versions of MK5 HMI are equipped with WINNT 4.x version. The SDRAM is usually 256 or 512Mb (Texas Instr.), which is more then enough to handle the protocols. The best way to solve this problem is to contact the OEM. If you don’t have any kind of contractual agreement with this OEM or don’t have a specialist on site, you may repeat re-booting every 2 days till your PC will not boot anymore!

As an initial advice, you may check if your printer spooling is enabled (SHOULD NOT) and your Cimplicity alarm printer should be turned off. Check the WINDOWS NT PRINTER properties. Corrected to "PRINT DIRECTLY TO THE ALARM PRINTER. Refer also to GEH-6126 manual of the OEM.

>1) Did your Cimplicity system
>functioned properly since commissioning
>on? <

Yes - works ok if no Modbus data acquisition is active.

>2) Is this system recently upgraded? <

Yes - this is a new PC (installed in 2007) which has replaced the original one from GE circa 1998. It is a Pentium 4 3GHz with 500Mb of RAM and a big disk.

>3) What is your or your team’s
>knowledge about the software
>configuration, Cimplicity, etc.? <

Some - we know how to install it but we are not experts.

>4) IS YOUR PRINTER OFF-LINE? <

Yes.

>5) Is your system MULTI-HMI? <

Yes. Two HMIs in total talking via ARCNET to 1 GE Mk 5 controller for a GE LM6000 GT.

>6) Is the HMI also connected to a
>condition monitoring system (such as BN
>DM2K, B&K, etc.)?
>These systems use in general the so
>called DDE (CWSERV) protocol for data
>acquisition (OLE) purposes. <

No. We have 1 Modbus data feed on this problem HMI. The other original HMI has two running at 9600 baud with no problems.

Thanks for your help!

To help you further out you have three options.
1) Easy and cheap - FIND our MK5 Guru "MK5GUY".
2) Provide me more information about the upgrade such as the OS of the new HMI (older version use WINNT). Most Likely the upgraded version is WINXP?
3) Contact the OEM and be ready to pay $$$... if they have time to help you?

You may write to me: vsaoztas @ gmail. com