Cosy 131 USB communication with Idec FC6A

Ewon Support eWON Cosy
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#1

Hello,

I am having a problem communicating with and Idec FC6A PLC over USB on the Cosy 131. I tested the same procedure connecting with and Idec FC5A (an older PLC model) over USB and it worked. I noticed that the driver is different between the two PLC’s, and confirmed this with an Idec representative. I can connect the PLC direct to my computer and it works fine, which tells me the driver on my computer is OK. Is there anything on the eWON side that can be done for supporting this different driver? Both devices connect fine in eCatcher, and the drivers show up in Device manager, but doing a trial program upload, the FC5A is successful, but the FC6A cannot communicate. Thanks for your help.

FC5A%20USB%20Port

FC6A%20USB%20Port

#2

Make sure you are running the latest firmware on the Cosy, 13.2s1, and latest eCatcher, 6.3.7. If you are still having problems, you can try the eCatcher 6.4 pre-release, but it will likely be a USB driver incompatibility issue between the device and the Cosy. Please share whatever info you have about the difference in USB drivers.

#4

Hi Kyle. Thanks for the recommendations. I tried updating ecatcher both to 6.3.7 and 6.4 and no dice. The device is running firmware version 11.0.0, which is pretty old, but unfortunately it is remote and from some other questions asked on here, it doesn’t sound like a good idea to try updating firmware remotely. I am hooking up a test device here and I will try newest firmware, and get back with the results. If still no luck, I’ll try to get more info on the driver differences from Idec. Thanks.

#5

I think there is a good chance that it’s not working due to the old firmware.

Typically we don’t recommend doing a firmware update remotely if it would be very difficult to get someone on site to help troubleshoot and the device is performing a critical function where downtime is not acceptable. This is because there is a small chance there could be a problem with the update that may require a manual power cycling or other troubleshooting. I would estimate at least 9 of 10 update with no issue, but you need to weigh that risk yourself.

#6

Thanks Kyle. It’s not worth the risk to me; we’ve got it working over LAN, so instead I grabbed a new one off our shelf and set up a little test bench here in my office.

I also was thinking the firmware upgrade would solve the issue, but sadly no. I updated ebuddy for the latest firmware, then upgraded the ewon firmware to latest (13.4 I believe), but no luck. Should I try the pre-release firmwares? I reached out to Idec to get more driver details, and am awaiting a response. Is there any particular info you need? I have the driver key if you want that, but am not too familiar with device drivers. I’ll attach a picture of some basic info below.

FC6A%20USB%20Driver%20Details

#7

I understand not wanting to risk the remote updating.

I am just trying to understand what changed, either in hardware or software (firmware/driver) between the FC5 and FC6, so we can better understand the root of the issue.

I also have another question that is probably more important. What exactly are you trying to do over USB? Are you using a software program? According to the manual, the USB port is for Maintenance Communication only. It appears that there are also ethernet ports which can do maintenance communication and more. So why are we using the USB port?

#8

This is what I’m looking at:

image

#9

Thanks for looking into this. We are communicating with the FC6A solely for monitoring the program, and doing downloads/uploads, which all can be done over USB. While ethernet does work, USB is easier for us because we have FC6A’s in the field that have different IP addresses, and we want to be able to ship eWON’s (or new FC6A’s) out with a generic setup instead of having to change the IP address each to match. It makes things simpler since you do not have to deal with addressing over USB, but we do have workarounds for it.

I just spoke with Idec and although they say that the usb drivers are different, they were not able to give me details on the differences. Looks like we might be SOL…

#10

Were you able to test a device with the latest firmware ?

#11

Yes, I upgraded the ewon firmware to the latest, but still had the same results. Should I try the pre-release firmwares?

#12

I think the chances the pre-release firmware will make a difference are very slim, so probably not worth it unfortunately… I would recommend using the ethernet network interface to connect.

#13

OK. Thanks for your help Kyle.

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