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Description
Want to start learning PLC and HMI programming completely for free with no need to purchase a license? Rockwell Automation’s latest release of FactoryTalk Optix Studio (V1.3) now has a “Feature Preview” that will let you test connecting to a Micro800 controller using Ethernet. Use the Micro850 Simulator in the free, unlicensed Standard Edition of Connected Components Workbench (CCW) to create and run real PLC programs (Ladder Diagram, Function Block Diagram, and Structured Text) with the need for a phyical controller. Then use the free, unlicensed desktop version of FactoryTalk Optix Studio to create HMI applications and test them in the emulator.
Contributed by Wayne Welk – YouTube – LinkedIn – GitHub
Transcript
(00:02) I take a moment to show something that I just recently found out about and that’s called the feature preview inside a factory talk Optics and Optics studio and Fe feature preview is basically like a Beta release for what will probably be coming out in the next release of Optics so first I want to say I’m using version 1.
(00:27) 3 and if I go back to the factory talk Hub and I go to the Optics you know if I’m at the factory talk hub Hub and I click on Optics uh we see that their latest release is version 1.3.0 n68 it was released on the December 22nd 2023 so that is the latest release um when you’re here at the at this you know at the Hub and the factory talk Optics page you can also see the uh the the the whole you know all the previous releases so 1.2 1.
(00:58) 1 and they um you know when they were updated there so it’s like they have done some updates to the previous versions here so you can download any version you want previous version or the latest version um so I am using the PC version you know of of studio so uh back on my desktop and uh just to show it is 1.
(01:24) 3 um so want to First say that if you are curious into what actually is uh in the the release if you clicked on the question mark there we come up here and we we we open up the the help file for Optics studio and we have a release notes button there so anything on to release notes this is all about the latest version that’s installed on my computer 1.
(01:47) 3 so system requirements are here but system features are here too so things that are new that have been uh added to version 13 are listed here so there were a few things um of interest uh they have some new push button uh types a toggle momentary and a delay type push button so you know usually uh you know our a lot of our users are used to like panel view days where you know you had a momentary push button you had a a toggle push button so they they’ve added those those type of push buttons here in Optics in this release um another thing that got added of interest
(02:25) is a spark line object um so we can actually you know you can add a spark line uh here on the screen so you know this this uh list here is all the things I got added in 1.3 not going to quite go through all these things right now um the other thing is under application notes we see that uh there was feature preview kind of down here and it says feature preview that these are uh that you know features labeled as preview should not be used in a production environment feature preview includes feature pre preview includes so here are
(03:04) all the things that they’re featuring in this 1.3 release so um there is a uh some improvements to the ra ethern IP communication driver uh there’s um IP tag importer able to handle um add-on instruction uh tags better online uh but what I want to look at here today is the microcontroller driver this is going to allow us to connect a micro 800 or the micr Logics 1400 through either Ethernet or serial now up to this point and even here in in this 1.
(03:47) 3 release if I wanted to use VOR talk Optics with a micro 800 or micr Logics 1400 I would have to use modbus TCP or modbus rtu and I have done a video previously that kind of showed how to connect that so back in Optics Studio the other thing I want to show here is before we get too far down the line is that we do have to enable the feature preview so if that is not enabled already in your studio you have to come up here to the to the Gear symbol click on Factor talk optic Studio options and the window opens up over there in the other screen so here are my
(04:26) options so there is a checkbox for show feature previews so that box needs to be checked um if it’s not checked check it and then when you when you close that window it’s going to force you to restart Optics studio and then you’ll be ready to to go so I don’t have anything happening right now um in in a previous uh video I had um created a a micro 850 simulator project where I was did a little full adder to kind of take two binary numbers and add them together just to more to show the userdefined function block capability so I’m going
(05:07) to go ahead and use that program again and I have my micro 800 simulator up and running right now so I’m going to go ahead and uh just minimize that uh well before I do that I should show you that there are um there are controller variables in here there are of course course the the uh embedded IO tags there are also two tags that I created one called input one and input two and these are both basically integer values so um we’re getting some data right now from the mic from the uh simulator so back at the Optics I’m
(05:52) going to first configure the driver to connect to the micro 800 simul so I’m going to click on the uh there on the dashboard click on the on the wizard and I’m going to say new station now being that the feature preview is enabled there is this selection here for microcontroller station I’m going to go ahe and click that and the the option here is that I can choose either micro 800 or micr Logics 1400 I’m going to stick with the micro 80000 00 and give it an IP address and the IP address is the IP address of the emulator which is tied to my loop
(06:38) back IP and then I can give it a name and I’m going to go ahead and rename it to micro 850 Sim I’m going to say next so just like before with any other communication driver I now have the ability to uh import a tags uh and and the nice thing about being that since it’s a Rockwell uh driver Rockwell product I do have the option to do an online import now one of the things I’ve noticed here just playing with it is that there is not a select all button so uh one kind of work around this I’ve found is if I click that first one and
(07:23) then scroll to the bottom and do a shift click then it kind of highlights all I can basically select them all that way and uh it has successfully import it and I’ll say exit so now we come back here to com drivers we see our micro controller micro850 Sim and here are the tags input one and input two and then all my embedded IO tags all right um so I’ve already kind of had pre-created a screen here and I had two sliders uh or linear gauges basically uh one is tied to input one and one is tied to input two and I also went ahead created two
(08:16) spark lines just to see how they kind of work so I put spark line one TI to input one and of course spark line 2 to input two and the idea of this little program I created in a another video was I just I I was using the micro 800 to basically create a to do Boolean uh math Boolean Edition or I should say binary Edition um with a full adder circuit so basically input one will represent the input you know input one binary number 4-bit number and then uh input two is a 4-bit essentially a 4-bit number and out of the adder will be the binary
(09:03) representation of that so for instance and let me go ahead and um uh uh so let me go ahead and put this since I got everything tied here ahead of time let me go ahead and create the emulator uh window so you can actually watch this work for real so essentially you know that was it we’re tied to the micro 800 simulator I’m looking at live data from my from my micro 800 simulator I see here I got outputs uh one and two are on and that basically represents these right here if I take that one down we see output one is on and it’s lit up
(09:43) here as well so this was again a simple thing where you know this was a one and that’s the binary one two binary 2 three binary 3 four binary 4 right and then if I were to take uh input two and add it well 1 + 1 is 2 2 + 1 is 3 2 + 2 is 4 so and we could see that it’s lighting up here it’s line up there so basically just showing you that uh that you know it works the uh what I like about this and I think is really nice is and interesting is that you know anybody can get started with Optics and an actual real ladder logic
(10:36) or function block programming and a real controller completely for free because we can download Factor talk Optics Studio completely for free and unlicensed for the desktop version and we can run this emulator and we can download connectic components workbench Standard Edition for the micro 800s completely for free and you can run this this micro 100 simulator you don’t have to have any hardware you don’t have to purchase any software licenses so I think that’s really pretty interesting um that you know there’s really no barrier to at
(11:13) least kind of playing around with with the technology here and kind of learning Optics as well as tying it to an actual real controller so to speak or an emulated controller to actually you know simulate real industrial control applications now once again this is a preview version so I’m not going to tell you that we can use a micro800 in a production environment um basically you know it’s beta so it’s it’s not 100% ready to go it’s great for testing it’s great for kind of playing in the lab it’s great for Learning and then in a future
(11:51) release uh hopefully version 1.4 release will have the ability to connect to a microw hunter you know in a true production environment so just uh thought this was kind of interesting wanted to show it um so uh enjoy have fun