Communications dropdown panel
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The Communications dropdown panel allows you to enable the EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, and Modbus industrial communication protocols for your project. It also allows you to enable or disable the Quick Comm feature for the EtherNet/IP or PROFINET protocol, and to set communication channels to online or offline for your project. The Communications dropdown panel is accessible from the Platform toolbar.
By default, all 3 industrial protocols are disabled for the project. To enable any one of them, click on its corresponding slider under the Enabled column. The slider will turn green, indicating that the protocol is enabled for the project. You cannot enable both the EtherNet/IP and PROFINET protocols in the same project. If you enable one while the other is already enabled, a message will appear, stating that the currently enabled protocol will be disabled.
If you enable any one of the 3 industrial protocols in the Communications dropdown panel before enabling its corresponding protocol service using the MILConfig utility, a warning sign will appear. Clicking on it will open up a dialog. If you are using a local runtime platform, you will be able to enable the protocol service in the MILConfig utility by clicking on the MILConfig utility button. If you are using a remote runtime platform, you will not be given this option, as shown below. You will need to remotely access your runtime platform, open the MILConfig utility, and enable the protocol service from there.
By default, Quick Comm is enabled when you enable the EtherNet/IP or PROFINET protocol. To disable it, click on the Quick Comm slider. Disabling Quick Comm for the currently enabled protocol will automatically disable it for the other protocol.
Going offline
At design-time, the Communications dropdown panel allows you to set any of the industrial protocols or other communication channels for the project to either online or offline. This can be useful, for example, if your PLC is not available during the development of a project.
In cases where you need to monitor the online status of your protocol, you can use the ISONLINE function to determine whether a specific communication protocol is currently online. Online indicates that the communication steps will be executed and any event subflowchart connected to communication will be called. This function can be used for the PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, and Modbus industrial protocols. With this function, you can build a simple expression (for example, ISONLINE("PROFINET")) and display the results in the operator view. The returned value will either be True or False, depending on whether the specified protocol is online or offline, respectively. For more information on this function, see the ISONLINE function description. If using Quick Comm, the PLC can see if the vision system is online by monitoring the Online bit in the status section, whose address can be found in the Platform Configuration dialog.
When deploying your project, the Deploy Project dialog appears. If any communication channels are set to offline, a warning message will appear in the COMM page. To set the communication channel online for the project before deploying, enable the Deploy with communication online option, as shown below.
During runtime, when a communication protocol is set to offline, any communication step that is using that protocol will be skipped in the flowchart. When the project reaches a step involving communication with a PLC, it proceeds directly to the next step in the flowchart, rather than waiting for a signal that will never arrive, or sending a signal that will never be received. Setting communication to offline can be useful, for example, if your project supports creating new models, or recipes, and you do not want the PLC to send triggers while training.
If you set communication to offline while using the predefined handshake, Quick Comm, the flowchart will not wait for ACK signals from the PLC. By default, only the Quick Comm PLCReset bit is monitored when communication is set to offline. If you need to respond to an additional PLC value change event while the project is offline, you can create a field in the DataFromPLC page of the Platform Configuration dialog, then navigate to the page of the communication protocol that you have enabled to add an event to that field, which will allow you to select the Execute flowchart even if protocol is offline option, as shown in the menu below. This option is useful in the event that you need the PLC to force communication on. For more information on how to add an event to a field in Quick Comm, see the Subflowchart execution events subsection of the Configuring actions and events section in Chapter 41: Quick Comm protocol and PROFINET and EtherNet/IP steps.
To set your communication channels to offline or online at runtime, use platform configuration binding, a CommSettings step called from the flowchart, or a button in the operator view linked to the communication settings action. For more information on communication settings, see the Communication settings section later in this chapter.