August 20, 2025 • 20 mins
Shawn discusses the Second Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:
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Links mentioned in video:
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-2/
- Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/
Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. I had a little, issue earlier, so I watched the replay. Everything looked great. So, again, I wanna thank you for hanging out with me at lunchtime.
I also wanna thank those folks who've reached out to me about actually being a guest on the lunchtime show. I really appreciate that. And, you know, it's it's nice to actually hear what other people are doing. Right? And, we got some pretty cool guests lined up.
I I also have some vendors who, maybe they're not ready to sponsor an episode of the podcast, but they just want to, tell us the cool things they're doing. And so, inviting them on as well. Just trying to share everything I've learned and share help people share what they've learned over the years, during lunchtime, right, when we all get to take a break from all the serious stuff trying to make money to pay the bills and all that. So in any case, with that said, I had and and I'm assuming I guess I'll just delete the original five minute livestream, because, things didn't seem like they were working. So I got a couple things I was talking about in that livestream.
Number one is that that big box in the middle of the training room, that is, some hardware for the add on lessons I'm gonna be adding. I have a lot of different hardware here from all kinds of different vendors, and I will be adding those as bonus, lessons add on lessons to the courses. So if you're in in any of my level one or two do I still have the automation school up? So if you're in, my level one or two courses, level one and two courses, I should say that correctly, over at the automationschool.com, you will get those, add on lessons at no charge. And, plus, there's some other courses you're gonna be getting at no charge as well as I kinda mix things up, and and I think I covered that over at the automation school and the updates for each of the courses.
Also, I ran across somebody on Reddit who was looking they're like, you know, what do I need to get started? I'm like, hey. Lesson one zero two in all my courses is free and all my PLC courses, and it tells you everything you need to know to get started programming PLCs, software options, hardware options, demo options. So if you know anybody looking to get started and they don't know where to start, like, how much does Rockwell software cost, and is it free, and can I get a free demo, and, you know, how about for Siemens, and what starter packs are available? I cover that all, and I make that lesson free.
Because quite honestly, I don't want anybody signing up for a course and then be like, you know, I didn't wanna do a simulated PLC. I wanna do a real PLC, and I can't afford it. So I want everybody to know upfront what the costs are. For a lot of people, it's not an issue. They get a bunch of PLCs in the software at work, so and they're gonna do it at at during their lunchtime.
But in any case, I did wanna share that with you. And, now I wanna talk about the second generation of, CompactLogix. Let's see here. Yes. CompactLogix.
This is where I gotta put the old glasses on. And, let's see if I can go here. Okay. Great. And so let's see if I can zoom in.
I don't wanna zoom in on both cameras, just the overhead one. And so you might be asking, Shawn, why do you have all this hardware in the test ...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Automation Tech Talk
lunchtime edition.
I had a little, issue earlier, so I
watched the replay. Everything looked great. So, again,
I wanna thank you for hanging out with
me at lunchtime. I also wanna thank those
folks who've reached out to me about actually
being a guest
on the lunchtime show. I really appreciate that.
(00:20):
And, you know, it's it's nice to actually
hear what other people are doing. Right? And,
we got some pretty cool guests lined up.
I I also have some vendors who,
maybe they're not ready to sponsor an episode
of the podcast, but they just want to,
tell us the cool things they're doing. And
so, inviting them on as well.
Just trying to share everything I've learned and
(00:41):
share help people share what they've learned over
the years,
during lunchtime, right, when we all get to
take a break from all the serious stuff
trying to make money to pay the bills
and all that. So in any case, with
that said, I had and and I'm assuming
I guess I'll just delete the original
five minute livestream,
because, things didn't seem like they were working.
So I got a couple things I was
(01:02):
talking about in that livestream.
Number one is that that big box in
the middle of the training room, that is,
some hardware
for the add on lessons I'm gonna be
adding. I have a lot of different hardware
here from all kinds of different vendors, and
I will be adding those as bonus,
lessons add on lessons to the courses. So
(01:22):
if you're in in any of my level
one or two do I still have the
automation school up? So if you're in, my
level one or two courses,
level one and two courses, I should say
that correctly, over at the automationschool.com,
you will get those,
add on lessons at no charge.
And,
plus, there's some other courses you're gonna be
getting at no charge as well as I
kinda mix things up, and and I think
(01:43):
I covered that over at the automation school
and the updates for each of the courses.
Also, I ran across somebody on Reddit who
was looking they're like, you know, what do
I need to get started? I'm like, hey.
Lesson one zero two in all my courses
is free
and all my PLC courses, and it tells
you everything you need to know to get
started programming PLCs,
software options, hardware options, demo options.
(02:06):
So if you know anybody looking to get
started and they don't know where to start,
like, how much does Rockwell software cost, and
is it free, and can I get a
free demo, and, you know, how about for
Siemens, and what starter packs are available? I
cover that all, and I make that lesson
free. Because quite honestly,
I don't want anybody signing up for a
course and then be like,
you know, I didn't wanna do a simulated
PLC. I wanna do a real PLC, and
(02:27):
I can't afford it. So I want everybody
to know upfront what the costs are. For
a lot of people, it's not an issue.
They get a bunch of PLCs in the
software at work, so and they're gonna do
it at at during their lunchtime.
But in any case, I did wanna share
that with you. And, now I wanna talk
about the second generation
of,
CompactLogix.
Let's see here. Yes.
(02:47):
CompactLogix. This is where I gotta put the
old glasses on.
And, let's see if I can go here.
Okay. Great.
And so let's see if I can zoom
in. I don't wanna zoom in on both
cameras, just the overhead one. And so you
might be asking, Sean, why do you have
all this hardware in the test stand? That's
because I am filming the new twenty twenty
five courses.
So, I got a lot of wiring to
(03:08):
do, but but, you know, there's no getting
around that. So we talked about generation one.
Let me see if I can slide this
a little bit. Maybe four.
So not sure. Don't push it off the
table. That would be bad. Okay. So
if we look at these three controllers let's
see here. Maybe I can move them this
way a little bit.
(03:28):
Okay.
This is what we call the second generation
of CompactLogist controllers.
I don't know that Rock will ever call
it that, but it's kinda makes sense because
you can see these are all very similar.
Right?
And they all came out around the same
time after the,
I don't and I I just can't look
at the camera with everything appearing backwards to
me and make them straight. But in any
(03:50):
case, these were the three options. Now this
first guy,
you know, I had some OEMs buy these,
and they were very unhappy because just the
speed of the serial ports.
Yeah. It was great. You had two serial
ports. One that could be connected to,
you know, an HMI, and the other one
one could be for programming.
But it was just really slow. So, yeah,
(04:10):
you can muddle through some online edits, but
uploads uploads and downloads, you know, for the
impatient northeasterner
like me,
it was kinda tough. It was like, yeah.
You know?
We used to call those, coffee downloads. You'd
go grab a cup of coffee while it
downloaded and hope nobody pulled the, and then
you had to flash the firmware, of course,
you had to flash everyone.
(04:30):
So flashing the firmware via serial is a
very dangerous prospect because if anybody
breaks the connection, you could end up with
a brick, an unusable,
PAC. Although these days, that I think Rockwell
has figured out ways to resolve that.
I think one of the ways they do
that, and don't quote me on this, but
talking to product people over the years is
they put, like, a basic
(04:51):
firmware on the unit. So if the firmware
is corrupt, it'll just load, like, one dot
x, which is just like a stub. It
doesn't can't really program it in one put
one dot x. But in any case,
so this is the l 31. And let's
see if I can get a little closer
here.
You guys can see that.
And this is
I don't know if you can see it
on there. Let me take a look at
(05:12):
it myself.
It should say somewhere on here 5331,
but it doesn't.
I'm sure it says it somewhere.
Let's see. Let me find ah, there it
is. Okay. I found it.
And
again
so you can see it on the label
right there. If you can't see it, no
worries.
But,
(05:32):
in any case,
50,
50 331.
There was also a 53,
32, and 35.
I think I have both,
both of these are 30 fives. Right?
So the difference between
I would have to fix this backwards thing.
It's killing me.
The difference between the '32 and the 30
fives are just memory, how much IO they
(05:55):
can support,
but there were also of the thirty two
and thirty five, there were also control net
versions
and Ethernet versions. Now they kept the because
US they didn't have a USB port in
their PLCs at this time. They kept the
serial port, and and serial ports are great
for,
you know, serial ports are great for third
party products, barcode readers, ASCII.
(06:17):
You could do d h 45 with them
and all that good stuff. Right? But in
any case,
you know, it would be better to have
USB. Right? And the new the new gen
threes had US gen four had USBs.
But in any case, what else do we
have here? So a lot of people get
confused with the control net. So the control
net's unique because it has the control net
ports coming out the bottom.
(06:39):
Now the l 35,
c,
but it's actually a c r because it
had two control net ports. The l 32
c only had one control net port, so
you couldn't do redundant media with that guy.
But in any case, control net
really confused a lot of people. It was
very easy to use, but the software
cost quite a bit of money. Right? And
(06:59):
so RS networks for ControlNet was expensive,
and I think that's what eventually led to
its downfall, plus Ethernet just became
you know, Ethernet's built in every laptop. You
didn't need an expensive ControlNet card. Right? So
in any case, I think control net,
was very fast. If you're running Ethernet at
10 meg or control net at five meg
or even Ethernet at a 100 meg and
(07:20):
control net at five meg, control net was
so
efficient that you could really do this get
as much data through.
However, ControlNet was scheduled. Right? So that you
were scheduling the data to show up every
so often. Kinda like how your RPI is
off in the backplane when you put IO
modules in the backplane.
And, I always liked it. I always thought
it was easy. A lot of people would
try to make their own cables
(07:41):
and, you know, the, coax cables, and,
they wouldn't do a good job. I went
to some places where they're like, this piece
of lousy piece of junk keeps falling off
the network when you open up. And first
of all, they have this the coax, r
g six coax, and it's going into, like,
a a one one or two inch, one
and a half inch piece of pan to
it. Right? And it's, like, making a right
(08:03):
turn. Right? And it doesn't doesn't bend radius
to these things. Right? And so it's going
and a lot of times it would be
right at the connector.
I'm like, oh, I want I wonder why
your why your network's in a minute. Here,
let me try it. You shake it and
it'd be like, oh, on, off. It's like,
really, you gotta have some common sense people.
And so a lot of times, engineers
(08:23):
don't see inside the, panel that, they just
order a panel and expect it to come
in work.
And so, you know, sad but funny now
after the fact, but a lot of people
would get upset because, you know, they would
self crimp their connectors with not using,
you know, the expensive tools, a $100 tool,
a $150 tool. They go buy a $5
tool and expect that the work and last
(08:45):
forever. And it's you just kinda wonder, you
know, what kind of stresses they have in
their life. They actually think that because, you
know, if you're doing professional work, you use
professional tools. Don't play around with anything that's
out of your kid's toy box. Okay? So
in any case and I'm I'm having a
lot of fun with that. But in any
case, yeah, you'd see that a lot. So,
you know, I've bought,
(09:05):
I've bought, pre crimped cables and never had
a problem with them. Again, you gotta you
gotta, be cognizant of the bend radiuses of
our g six. But in any case,
this point here confused a lot of people
because it looked like
a Ethernet port, and it's not. It's a
network access port. Just like the r j
45 and a five zero three, it's not
(09:26):
an Ethernet port. It's a,
a d h 45 port. I need to
be careful on that one. It has power
in it, but, we're not talking to 600
today.
So in any case,
this unit,
wasn't very popular. I had a hard time
getting one and, just like upon this one
here. And you can see I got a
commercial grade
because, you know, this isn't a facility. There's
(09:46):
no,
no problems with downtime. I can't get it
out of there. There we go. So I
just have a commercial grade,
SanDisk, confident flash in there because I'm not
running
a machine that's making millions of dollars for
the company.
With that said, then we have the l
35. And this is the l 35 and
l 32 were the most popular. On the
(10:08):
outside, they looked identical.
They have the Ethernet port and
extremely popular. And, yes, this Ethernet port could,
control IO,
and, that just made it super, super popular
and, really
became,
we we sold a lot of l 30
twos and l 30 fives over the years.
(10:28):
So many people I know used dozens, if
not hundreds of them in their plants.
Really good for the, small OEM.
Some users would you know, small users don't
have the don't have the,
budget of, you know, the big the big
factory would use, just great. And everybody I
always like the seventeen
sixty nine I o, the way it connected
(10:50):
and everything like that. So in any case,
that is, the l 31,
two serial ports, the l 32 and l
35. They both look the same, either control
net or Ethernet.
And, again, 5331,
5332,
and 35, depending which one you got.
Again, I have two thirty fives here because
I have one in control that one in
(11:11):
Ethernet. But 32 just has less memory and
less capabilities. Right? So I wanna show you
another product that I consider part of the
second generation of CompactLogix.
And the reason is it pretty much supports
the same firmwares and same features as
those other guys. Let me get it on
here.
(11:31):
And,
okay, here we go. Alright. So
this is the l 23.
This particular one was donated by a very
good customer of mine. Thank you very much.
RK, I really appreciate it. And, at least,
I mean, it's been a dozen years now,
so I think he's the one that donated
it. I'm pretty sure. But in any case
so this a lot of people wanted this.
(11:51):
They wanted the shoebox version of the CompactLogix.
You can get the price down. It's not
as inexpensive
as the,
MicroLogix, but, you know, less expensive than buying
all the components separately. You got a built
in power supply. You got the,
CPU. You got, IO cards. You could get
it without the analog and high speed counter,
and some people would. But there was one
(12:11):
flaw to this. Otherwise,
awesome, perfect,
and you could actually put a couple of
expansion cards on it too. There was one
major flaw that my OEMs ran into all
the time,
and that was the lack of a compact
flash card. So this is an OEM product.
Right? Typically, you're gonna use this if you're
an OEM. You wanna go low with the
price as low as you can. You don't
(12:32):
need a lot of extra capabilities
because your machine only has so much IO
built in. And this unit,
like, we I I don't know why we've
gone through this so many times. It seems
like every cycle, we have to go through
this, but it did not have removable,
removable memory. So, it had a battery, battery
backed memory,
but did not have removable,
(12:53):
nonvolatile memory, which to me, if you're an
OEM, I mean, how else are you gonna
send send the project? It's not like the
CompactLogic software is very cheap to buy.
So, do you wanna spend an extra,
I don't know, $2, 1,500 to send every
customer a package of software? Typically, you do
not if you're a small OEM.
(13:13):
So that was a major killer for this
guy, but everything else about it, I really
liked. It is a little big, but it's
kind of the equivalent of what you would
do if you bought all the parts separately.
I really like the design.
When you look in there, you can see
all the individual cards. It looks like they
were able to reuse
the circuit boards from the actual regular cards.
But in any case, really a big fan
(13:34):
of it except for the fact of that
no nonremovable
memory. I even have one OEM. It says,
I'm just gonna get you a free one
so you can ship the whole unit out
when you need to change the program
because,
what else are you gonna do?
So,
what else can I tell you about these
guys? Let me see if I can get
them all back in the camera here. I
got some more stats. I did include a
(13:55):
link to my article on this I wrote
a few years ago. So if you guys
want more information about it and let's just
take a look at some of the stats.
So the first one came out in 02/2003.
That's a long time ago. Right?
And, these were so very popular. Although, I
gotta say, when we talk about not the
third gen, but the fourth gen, it kinda
blew these guys out of the water. As
great as these are,
(14:16):
the the fourth gen, the fifty three seventies
were just a home run. And, again, everything's
backwards here, so it's hard for me to
evenly space everything out in reverse. But in
any case so let's take a look at
the article here. I'll leave the product up
on the screen here and see if I
can get my mouse down to the right
screen. So came out actually came out a
couple of years before the Micrologix 1,100. So
(14:37):
that would have been the first Micrologix
with Ethernet. Great product that we should have
hadn't,
obsoleted it. That's also the only Ethernet Micrologix
that works with the free software.
So in any case but, yeah, it came
out in 02/2003.
That's the l 35 e. It looks like
the l 35 e. A lot of times
they come out with the most expensive one
(14:58):
first because quite honestly, you know, you might
as well sell the most expensive one out
the door and then work on,
making it less capable,
you know, via firmware or whatnot.
In any case, it did use a no
modem cable just like all the other serial
ports that,
that,
Rocco products has because this is a DTE
(15:18):
device, not a DC device like a printer.
So you're gonna need the crossover on no
modem cable. It did yeah. Any of them
will work. C p three any c p
three or no modem cable will work. It
did take the seventeen sixty nine b a.
We talked about that yesterday.
Had that compact flash slot, which which was
just a huge upgrade from the l 20
and l 30 we talked about yesterday.
(15:39):
The battery is on the left hand side
on these guys. This one is there's a
door you have to pop off. The other
one has that slide that I showed you
yesterday.
Let's see here. The l 31 only had
five twelve k of memory. That was usually,
good enough. 16 IO modules and four tasks.
Okay? So, yeah, the four tasks, I've never
run into that being a problem, although it
(15:59):
is it is very limited if you're doing
again,
get 16 IO modules. Do you need more
than four tasks? I I think that would
be very odd. The l 30 twos came
with 768
k and supported 30 IO modules
and six tasks.
And the l 35
let's see here. The l 35
(16:20):
did I write it down? Had a 1.5
or or 1.5 meg of memory, supported eight
tasks,
and took 30 modules. So six tasks versus
eight tasks, and then double the memory for
the or actually yeah. Double the memory for
the, from the 32 to the 35, but
the same amount of IO local IO cards.
(16:43):
Let's see. Yeah. Distributed IO on the Ethernet,
that which was great. Of course, that was
not an option with the,
with and that really kicked in. You know,
it kicked in the Ethernet IO because in
ControlLogix, you could use device that control that
all e or Ethernet. And, but getting the
Ethernet on the CompactLogix in 2003 meant everybody
was looking at doing Ethernet
(17:05):
IO.
Yeah. And so those are all the highlights.
Again, the article I'm looking at, you'll find,
in the link in the description, of course,
because this is the second
edition,
the second try of the show. It's not
in the description of this show. I will
add it after the show. But in any
case, it's just at the automationblog.com.
I think it's CompactLogic's
(17:26):
dash gen dash two.
So with that, that is, the CompactLogix
second generation. I'm gonna look in the chat,
see if there's any questions there or not.
So if you're watching and like, hey. I
wanna come on and
share something I learned.
I don't care what the manufacturer
is as long as it's industrial automation. Yeah.
I wanna welcome you on. Of course, you
(17:46):
have to speak better English than me, but
in any case,
yeah, just reach out to me. You can
contact me, the automation blog dot com forward
slash contact. You can leave me a a
message on YouTube or on LinkedIn. That's where
all this is going. And, we used to
do all the other sites, but we got
really zero interaction over there. So several other
sites. So trying to just because it's just
(18:07):
me here. But in any case also,
I'll repeat something I said earlier that, I
ran into somebody on Reddit who was looking
trying to understand what they needed,
in order to learn about
CompactLogix,
like, what they needed to like, what they
needed. And I wanna show you that in
each of my PLC courses, I have this
free lesson.
(18:27):
Right? And I did this because,
let me see if I can pull this
up on the screen here.
Yeah. So I did this because,
I don't want people signing up for my
courses and then finding out they don't have
what they needed to take the the course.
So this is lesson one zero two. Every
one of my PLC courses has this, all
the new ones, as I break my my
(18:48):
grade 100. No. I didn't break it. In
any case, what this is is this lesson
one zero two, you just click on it
here. Right? Anything that's a sample lesson you
can take without buying, and this runs you
through. It's, like, twenty minutes, and I cover
everything, everything you need to know. Like, how
to get free software, how much the software
is if you wanna buy it, you know,
best, way to get the samples and starter
(19:09):
kits and all of that for all the
different PLCs I cover. So I wanted to
bring that up because I know a lot
of people are like
and it also gets you, you know, my
teaching style. You can get to see my
teaching style and all that. But, I do
that for micro 800,
Micrologics,
CompactLogics,
ControlLogics, and the s seven. And as I
learn new things, I have those update those
lessons. Those lessons, most of them were updated
(19:30):
in November. I, probably do another update in
November for the new prices, but in any
case and if there's any,
requests, I did have somebody asking, how do
I access tags
in a micro 800 from a SCADA package?
So,
maybe when I get done the generations of
CompactLogix, I'll do that. Also, I I wanted
(19:50):
to show you the picture. I'll have it
ready for you tomorrow. I am setting up
another studio because I got a bunch of
products I wanna cover with you, but this
is kinda in the way here in Studio
B. So I'm setting up, what used to
be, the office in the Studio A again.
And, so I can show you other products
besides when I'm filming my quest, my updated
quest is on and lessons
on. And with that, that's all I got
(20:11):
for you today at lunch. I hope you
guys had a great lunch. I hope your,
your day is going well, and I wanna
wish you all good health and happiness. And
until next time, my friends,
peace.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Automation Tech Talk
lunchtime edition.
I had a little, issue earlier, so I
watched the replay. Everything looked great. So, again,
I wanna thank you for hanging out with
me at lunchtime. I also wanna thank those
folks who've reached out to me about actually
being a guest
on the lunchtime show. I really appreciate that.
(00:20):
And, you know, it's it's nice to actually
hear what other people are doing. Right? And,
we got some pretty cool guests lined up.
I I also have some vendors who,
maybe they're not ready to sponsor an episode
of the podcast, but they just want to,
tell us the cool things they're doing. And
so, inviting them on as well.
Just trying to share everything I've learned and
(00:41):
share help people share what they've learned over
the years,
during lunchtime, right, when we all get to
take a break from all the serious stuff
trying to make money to pay the bills
and all that. So in any case, with
that said, I had and and I'm assuming
I guess I'll just delete the original
five minute livestream,
because, things didn't seem like they were working.
So I got a couple things I was
(01:02):
talking about in that livestream.
Number one is that that big box in
the middle of the training room, that is,
some hardware
for the add on lessons I'm gonna be
adding. I have a lot of different hardware
here from all kinds of different vendors, and
I will be adding those as bonus,
lessons add on lessons to the courses. So
(01:22):
if you're in in any of my level
one or two do I still have the
automation school up? So if you're in, my
level one or two courses,
level one and two courses, I should say
that correctly, over at the automationschool.com,
you will get those,
add on lessons at no charge.
And,
plus, there's some other courses you're gonna be
getting at no charge as well as I
kinda mix things up, and and I think
(01:43):
I covered that over at the automation school
and the updates for each of the courses.
Also, I ran across somebody on Reddit who
was looking they're like, you know, what do
I need to get started? I'm like, hey.
Lesson one zero two in all my courses
is free
and all my PLC courses, and it tells
you everything you need to know to get
started programming PLCs,
software options, hardware options, demo options.
(02:06):
So if you know anybody looking to get
started and they don't know where to start,
like, how much does Rockwell software cost, and
is it free, and can I get a
free demo, and, you know, how about for
Siemens, and what starter packs are available? I
cover that all, and I make that lesson
free. Because quite honestly,
I don't want anybody signing up for a
course and then be like,
you know, I didn't wanna do a simulated
PLC. I wanna do a real PLC, and
(02:27):
I can't afford it. So I want everybody
to know upfront what the costs are. For
a lot of people, it's not an issue.
They get a bunch of PLCs in the
software at work, so and they're gonna do
it at at during their lunchtime.
But in any case, I did wanna share
that with you. And, now I wanna talk
about the second generation
of,
CompactLogix.
Let's see here. Yes.
(02:47):
CompactLogix. This is where I gotta put the
old glasses on.
And, let's see if I can go here.
Okay. Great.
And so let's see if I can zoom
in. I don't wanna zoom in on both
cameras, just the overhead one. And so you
might be asking, Sean, why do you have
all this hardware in the test stand? That's
because I am filming the new twenty twenty
five courses.
So, I got a lot of wiring to
(03:08):
do, but but, you know, there's no getting
around that. So we talked about generation one.
Let me see if I can slide this
a little bit. Maybe four.
So not sure. Don't push it off the
table. That would be bad. Okay. So
if we look at these three controllers let's
see here. Maybe I can move them this
way a little bit.
(03:28):
Okay.
This is what we call the second generation
of CompactLogist controllers.
I don't know that Rock will ever call
it that, but it's kinda makes sense because
you can see these are all very similar.
Right?
And they all came out around the same
time after the,
I don't and I I just can't look
at the camera with everything appearing backwards to
me and make them straight. But in any
(03:50):
case, these were the three options. Now this
first guy,
you know, I had some OEMs buy these,
and they were very unhappy because just the
speed of the serial ports.
Yeah. It was great. You had two serial
ports. One that could be connected to,
you know, an HMI, and the other one
one could be for programming.
But it was just really slow. So, yeah,
(04:10):
you can muddle through some online edits, but
uploads uploads and downloads, you know, for the
impatient northeasterner
like me,
it was kinda tough. It was like, yeah.
You know?
We used to call those, coffee downloads. You'd
go grab a cup of coffee while it
downloaded and hope nobody pulled the, and then
you had to flash the firmware, of course,
you had to flash everyone.
(04:30):
So flashing the firmware via serial is a
very dangerous prospect because if anybody
breaks the connection, you could end up with
a brick, an unusable,
PAC. Although these days, that I think Rockwell
has figured out ways to resolve that.
I think one of the ways they do
that, and don't quote me on this, but
talking to product people over the years is
they put, like, a basic
(04:51):
firmware on the unit. So if the firmware
is corrupt, it'll just load, like, one dot
x, which is just like a stub. It
doesn't can't really program it in one put
one dot x. But in any case,
so this is the l 31. And let's
see if I can get a little closer
here.
You guys can see that.
And this is
I don't know if you can see it
on there. Let me take a look at
(05:12):
it myself.
It should say somewhere on here 5331,
but it doesn't.
I'm sure it says it somewhere.
Let's see. Let me find ah, there it
is. Okay. I found it.
And
again
so you can see it on the label
right there. If you can't see it, no
worries.
But,
(05:32):
in any case,
50,
50 331.
There was also a 53,
32, and 35.
I think I have both,
both of these are 30 fives. Right?
So the difference between
I would have to fix this backwards thing.
It's killing me.
The difference between the '32 and the 30
fives are just memory, how much IO they
(05:55):
can support,
but there were also of the thirty two
and thirty five, there were also control net
versions
and Ethernet versions. Now they kept the because
US they didn't have a USB port in
their PLCs at this time. They kept the
serial port, and and serial ports are great
for,
you know, serial ports are great for third
party products, barcode readers, ASCII.
(06:17):
You could do d h 45 with them
and all that good stuff. Right? But in
any case,
you know, it would be better to have
USB. Right? And the new the new gen
threes had US gen four had USBs.
But in any case, what else do we
have here? So a lot of people get
confused with the control net. So the control
net's unique because it has the control net
ports coming out the bottom.
(06:39):
Now the l 35,
c,
but it's actually a c r because it
had two control net ports. The l 32
c only had one control net port, so
you couldn't do redundant media with that guy.
But in any case, control net
really confused a lot of people. It was
very easy to use, but the software
cost quite a bit of money. Right? And
(06:59):
so RS networks for ControlNet was expensive,
and I think that's what eventually led to
its downfall, plus Ethernet just became
you know, Ethernet's built in every laptop. You
didn't need an expensive ControlNet card. Right? So
in any case, I think control net,
was very fast. If you're running Ethernet at
10 meg or control net at five meg
or even Ethernet at a 100 meg and
(07:20):
control net at five meg, control net was
so
efficient that you could really do this get
as much data through.
However, ControlNet was scheduled. Right? So that you
were scheduling the data to show up every
so often. Kinda like how your RPI is
off in the backplane when you put IO
modules in the backplane.
And, I always liked it. I always thought
it was easy. A lot of people would
try to make their own cables
(07:41):
and, you know, the, coax cables, and,
they wouldn't do a good job. I went
to some places where they're like, this piece
of lousy piece of junk keeps falling off
the network when you open up. And first
of all, they have this the coax, r
g six coax, and it's going into, like,
a a one one or two inch, one
and a half inch piece of pan to
it. Right? And it's, like, making a right
(08:03):
turn. Right? And it doesn't doesn't bend radius
to these things. Right? And so it's going
and a lot of times it would be
right at the connector.
I'm like, oh, I want I wonder why
your why your network's in a minute. Here,
let me try it. You shake it and
it'd be like, oh, on, off. It's like,
really, you gotta have some common sense people.
And so a lot of times, engineers
(08:23):
don't see inside the, panel that, they just
order a panel and expect it to come
in work.
And so, you know, sad but funny now
after the fact, but a lot of people
would get upset because, you know, they would
self crimp their connectors with not using,
you know, the expensive tools, a $100 tool,
a $150 tool. They go buy a $5
tool and expect that the work and last
(08:45):
forever. And it's you just kinda wonder, you
know, what kind of stresses they have in
their life. They actually think that because, you
know, if you're doing professional work, you use
professional tools. Don't play around with anything that's
out of your kid's toy box. Okay? So
in any case and I'm I'm having a
lot of fun with that. But in any
case, yeah, you'd see that a lot. So,
you know, I've bought,
(09:05):
I've bought, pre crimped cables and never had
a problem with them. Again, you gotta you
gotta, be cognizant of the bend radiuses of
our g six. But in any case,
this point here confused a lot of people
because it looked like
a Ethernet port, and it's not. It's a
network access port. Just like the r j
45 and a five zero three, it's not
(09:26):
an Ethernet port. It's a,
a d h 45 port. I need to
be careful on that one. It has power
in it, but, we're not talking to 600
today.
So in any case,
this unit,
wasn't very popular. I had a hard time
getting one and, just like upon this one
here. And you can see I got a
commercial grade
because, you know, this isn't a facility. There's
(09:46):
no,
no problems with downtime. I can't get it
out of there. There we go. So I
just have a commercial grade,
SanDisk, confident flash in there because I'm not
running
a machine that's making millions of dollars for
the company.
With that said, then we have the l
35. And this is the l 35 and
l 32 were the most popular. On the
(10:08):
outside, they looked identical.
They have the Ethernet port and
extremely popular. And, yes, this Ethernet port could,
control IO,
and, that just made it super, super popular
and, really
became,
we we sold a lot of l 30
twos and l 30 fives over the years.
(10:28):
So many people I know used dozens, if
not hundreds of them in their plants.
Really good for the, small OEM.
Some users would you know, small users don't
have the don't have the,
budget of, you know, the big the big
factory would use, just great. And everybody I
always like the seventeen
sixty nine I o, the way it connected
(10:50):
and everything like that. So in any case,
that is, the l 31,
two serial ports, the l 32 and l
35. They both look the same, either control
net or Ethernet.
And, again, 5331,
5332,
and 35, depending which one you got.
Again, I have two thirty fives here because
I have one in control that one in
(11:11):
Ethernet. But 32 just has less memory and
less capabilities. Right? So I wanna show you
another product that I consider part of the
second generation of CompactLogix.
And the reason is it pretty much supports
the same firmwares and same features as
those other guys. Let me get it on
here.
(11:31):
And,
okay, here we go. Alright. So
this is the l 23.
This particular one was donated by a very
good customer of mine. Thank you very much.
RK, I really appreciate it. And, at least,
I mean, it's been a dozen years now,
so I think he's the one that donated
it. I'm pretty sure. But in any case
so this a lot of people wanted this.
(11:51):
They wanted the shoebox version of the CompactLogix.
You can get the price down. It's not
as inexpensive
as the,
MicroLogix, but, you know, less expensive than buying
all the components separately. You got a built
in power supply. You got the,
CPU. You got, IO cards. You could get
it without the analog and high speed counter,
and some people would. But there was one
(12:11):
flaw to this. Otherwise,
awesome, perfect,
and you could actually put a couple of
expansion cards on it too. There was one
major flaw that my OEMs ran into all
the time,
and that was the lack of a compact
flash card. So this is an OEM product.
Right? Typically, you're gonna use this if you're
an OEM. You wanna go low with the
price as low as you can. You don't
(12:32):
need a lot of extra capabilities
because your machine only has so much IO
built in. And this unit,
like, we I I don't know why we've
gone through this so many times. It seems
like every cycle, we have to go through
this, but it did not have removable,
removable memory. So, it had a battery, battery
backed memory,
but did not have removable,
(12:53):
nonvolatile memory, which to me, if you're an
OEM, I mean, how else are you gonna
send send the project? It's not like the
CompactLogic software is very cheap to buy.
So, do you wanna spend an extra,
I don't know, $2, 1,500 to send every
customer a package of software? Typically, you do
not if you're a small OEM.
(13:13):
So that was a major killer for this
guy, but everything else about it, I really
liked. It is a little big, but it's
kind of the equivalent of what you would
do if you bought all the parts separately.
I really like the design.
When you look in there, you can see
all the individual cards. It looks like they
were able to reuse
the circuit boards from the actual regular cards.
But in any case, really a big fan
(13:34):
of it except for the fact of that
no nonremovable
memory. I even have one OEM. It says,
I'm just gonna get you a free one
so you can ship the whole unit out
when you need to change the program
because,
what else are you gonna do?
So,
what else can I tell you about these
guys? Let me see if I can get
them all back in the camera here. I
got some more stats. I did include a
(13:55):
link to my article on this I wrote
a few years ago. So if you guys
want more information about it and let's just
take a look at some of the stats.
So the first one came out in 02/2003.
That's a long time ago. Right?
And, these were so very popular. Although, I
gotta say, when we talk about not the
third gen, but the fourth gen, it kinda
blew these guys out of the water. As
great as these are,
(14:16):
the the fourth gen, the fifty three seventies
were just a home run. And, again, everything's
backwards here, so it's hard for me to
evenly space everything out in reverse. But in
any case so let's take a look at
the article here. I'll leave the product up
on the screen here and see if I
can get my mouse down to the right
screen. So came out actually came out a
couple of years before the Micrologix 1,100. So
(14:37):
that would have been the first Micrologix
with Ethernet. Great product that we should have
hadn't,
obsoleted it. That's also the only Ethernet Micrologix
that works with the free software.
So in any case but, yeah, it came
out in 02/2003.
That's the l 35 e. It looks like
the l 35 e. A lot of times
they come out with the most expensive one
(14:58):
first because quite honestly, you know, you might
as well sell the most expensive one out
the door and then work on,
making it less capable,
you know, via firmware or whatnot.
In any case, it did use a no
modem cable just like all the other serial
ports that,
that,
Rocco products has because this is a DTE
(15:18):
device, not a DC device like a printer.
So you're gonna need the crossover on no
modem cable. It did yeah. Any of them
will work. C p three any c p
three or no modem cable will work. It
did take the seventeen sixty nine b a.
We talked about that yesterday.
Had that compact flash slot, which which was
just a huge upgrade from the l 20
and l 30 we talked about yesterday.
(15:39):
The battery is on the left hand side
on these guys. This one is there's a
door you have to pop off. The other
one has that slide that I showed you
yesterday.
Let's see here. The l 31 only had
five twelve k of memory. That was usually,
good enough. 16 IO modules and four tasks.
Okay? So, yeah, the four tasks, I've never
run into that being a problem, although it
(15:59):
is it is very limited if you're doing
again,
get 16 IO modules. Do you need more
than four tasks? I I think that would
be very odd. The l 30 twos came
with 768
k and supported 30 IO modules
and six tasks.
And the l 35
let's see here. The l 35
(16:20):
did I write it down? Had a 1.5
or or 1.5 meg of memory, supported eight
tasks,
and took 30 modules. So six tasks versus
eight tasks, and then double the memory for
the or actually yeah. Double the memory for
the, from the 32 to the 35, but
the same amount of IO local IO cards.
(16:43):
Let's see. Yeah. Distributed IO on the Ethernet,
that which was great. Of course, that was
not an option with the,
with and that really kicked in. You know,
it kicked in the Ethernet IO because in
ControlLogix, you could use device that control that
all e or Ethernet. And, but getting the
Ethernet on the CompactLogix in 2003 meant everybody
was looking at doing Ethernet
(17:05):
IO.
Yeah. And so those are all the highlights.
Again, the article I'm looking at, you'll find,
in the link in the description, of course,
because this is the second
edition,
the second try of the show. It's not
in the description of this show. I will
add it after the show. But in any
case, it's just at the automationblog.com.
I think it's CompactLogic's
(17:26):
dash gen dash two.
So with that, that is, the CompactLogix
second generation. I'm gonna look in the chat,
see if there's any questions there or not.
So if you're watching and like, hey. I
wanna come on and
share something I learned.
I don't care what the manufacturer
is as long as it's industrial automation. Yeah.
I wanna welcome you on. Of course, you
(17:46):
have to speak better English than me, but
in any case,
yeah, just reach out to me. You can
contact me, the automation blog dot com forward
slash contact. You can leave me a a
message on YouTube or on LinkedIn. That's where
all this is going. And, we used to
do all the other sites, but we got
really zero interaction over there. So several other
sites. So trying to just because it's just
(18:07):
me here. But in any case also,
I'll repeat something I said earlier that, I
ran into somebody on Reddit who was looking
trying to understand what they needed,
in order to learn about
CompactLogix,
like, what they needed to like, what they
needed. And I wanna show you that in
each of my PLC courses, I have this
free lesson.
(18:27):
Right? And I did this because,
let me see if I can pull this
up on the screen here.
Yeah. So I did this because,
I don't want people signing up for my
courses and then finding out they don't have
what they needed to take the the course.
So this is lesson one zero two. Every
one of my PLC courses has this, all
the new ones, as I break my my
(18:48):
grade 100. No. I didn't break it. In
any case, what this is is this lesson
one zero two, you just click on it
here. Right? Anything that's a sample lesson you
can take without buying, and this runs you
through. It's, like, twenty minutes, and I cover
everything, everything you need to know. Like, how
to get free software, how much the software
is if you wanna buy it, you know,
best, way to get the samples and starter
(19:09):
kits and all of that for all the
different PLCs I cover. So I wanted to
bring that up because I know a lot
of people are like
and it also gets you, you know, my
teaching style. You can get to see my
teaching style and all that. But, I do
that for micro 800,
Micrologics,
CompactLogics,
ControlLogics, and the s seven. And as I
learn new things, I have those update those
lessons. Those lessons, most of them were updated
(19:30):
in November. I, probably do another update in
November for the new prices, but in any
case and if there's any,
requests, I did have somebody asking, how do
I access tags
in a micro 800 from a SCADA package?
So,
maybe when I get done the generations of
CompactLogix, I'll do that. Also, I I wanted
(19:50):
to show you the picture. I'll have it
ready for you tomorrow. I am setting up
another studio because I got a bunch of
products I wanna cover with you, but this
is kinda in the way here in Studio
B. So I'm setting up, what used to
be, the office in the Studio A again.
And, so I can show you other products
besides when I'm filming my quest, my updated
quest is on and lessons
on. And with that, that's all I got
(20:11):
for you today at lunch. I hope you
guys had a great lunch. I hope your,
your day is going well, and I wanna
wish you all good health and happiness. And
until next time, my friends,
peace.
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