September 4, 2025 • 21 mins
Shawn walk's through converting an RSLogix / MicroLogix program to a CCW / Micro800 project in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:
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NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5).
Links mentioned in video:
- Migration Guide
- Conversion Tool Released
- Conversion Tool Updated
- Conversion Tool Download
- Conversion Tool How To Article
- Conversion Tool How To Video
- Shawn's Online Courses
- Shawn's In-Person Courses
Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. Shawn Tierney here from Insights. And today, we're gonna take a look at something different. We're gonna take a look at migrating a Micrologix program to a Micro 800 program, and we're going to do this because, I had somebody ask a question about connecting to a Micro 800 from a SCADA package.
And, you know, when I did my VSC course, I did I think every Allen Bradley PLC except for the Micro 800. So I thought, you know, this would be a good time to convert my my VUSC application that I use to simulate the data for that for that course. And, anybody in my VUSC course can download that, in Micrologic, PLC five, ControlLogics, CompactLogics, multiple versions. You know, you know, I recently converted it to Siemens because I wanted to add those advanced graphical lessons to my unified comfort panel and unified, a basic panel course. So I need to convert it to Siemens, and then somebody asked me to test their SCADA package with Codesys.
And as you know, I had a couple of vendors step up and send me Codesys PLCs. So I converted well, not all of it. There's five molding lines. I wanted to do something different than a bottling line or, you know, a a widget maker. And so, I only did one molding line into the into the code Sys because, you know, I I I we all we've talked about that before.
But in any case, needs a little love and tender love and care to the code sys, IDE does. But in any case, yes. I figured, hey. Let's use this to convert my existing program, which I which I wrote from scratch to the micro 800, and let's see how it goes. Now I did this this morning around 04:30.
I went through it once, and it seemed to work okay. So I figured, we would do this during lunchtime. And so if you guys have any questions on this or anything, let me know. Oh, a couple of housekeeping things. There will be no episode of the show tomorrow.
I'm kinda backed up trying to get through a couple of videos that I'm, sponsored videos with vendors. And, also, I have to, just get all the stuff to do with the the automation school, but I do I did record this morning an update for any students at the automation school. So that I'm gonna schedule that to go out this afternoon because I said September 4 in it. Now looking backwards, I probably should have said September 5. But in any case, that'll come out this afternoon, and I kinda update a lot of the new lessons over at the automation school.
So, especially customers and PLC courses, PAC courses over there, you wanna check that out. I did have a great conversation with a gentleman who was who knew what a Symax 300 was, so we'll try to get him on the automation museum podcast, which is I'm calling the history of automation. I have we've recorded three already. History of Triconics, history of Wonderware, history of, Rocco PLCs. And these are all from people's perspectives.
This is, like, the definitive history, but, you know, it was been a lot of fun hanging out with these people who work with this old stuff, and, I really have enjoyed it. Sunday, my goal is to edit those three and, and,
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime
edition.
Sean Tierney here from Insights. And today,
we're gonna take a look at something different.
We're gonna take a look at migrating
a Micrologix
program to a Micro 800 program,
and we're going to do this because,
I had somebody ask a question about connecting
(00:21):
to a Micro 800
from a SCADA package.
And, you know, when I did my VSC
course, I did I think every Allen Bradley
PLC except for the Micro 800. So I
thought, you know, this would be a good
time to convert my my VUSC
application
that I use to simulate the data for
that for that course.
And, anybody in my VUSC course can download
(00:43):
that,
in Micrologic,
PLC five, ControlLogics, CompactLogics,
multiple versions.
You know, you know, I recently converted it
to Siemens because I wanted to add those
advanced
graphical lessons to my unified comfort panel and
unified,
a basic panel course.
So I need to convert it to Siemens,
and then somebody asked me to test their
(01:04):
SCADA package with Codesys. And as you know,
I had a couple of vendors step up
and send me Codesys PLCs.
So I converted well, not all of it.
There's five molding lines. I wanted to do
something different than a bottling line or, you
know, a a widget maker. And so, I
only did one molding line into the into
the code Sys because, you know, I I
I we all we've talked about that before.
(01:26):
But in any case, needs a little love
and tender love and care to the code
sys, IDE does. But in any case,
yes. I figured, hey. Let's use this
to convert my existing program, which I which
I wrote from scratch to the micro 800,
and let's see how it goes. Now I
did this this morning around 04:30. I went
through it once, and it seemed to work
(01:47):
okay. So I figured, we would do this
during lunchtime. And so if you guys have
any questions on this or anything, let me
know. Oh, a couple of housekeeping things. There
will be no episode of the show tomorrow.
I'm kinda backed up trying to get through
a couple of videos that I'm, sponsored videos
with vendors. And, also,
I have to, just get all the stuff
(02:07):
to do with the the automation school, but
I do I did record this morning an
update for any students at the automation school.
So that I'm gonna schedule that to go
out this afternoon because I said September 4
in it. Now looking backwards, I probably should
have said September 5. But in any case,
that'll come out this afternoon, and I kinda
update a lot of the new lessons over
at the automation school. So, especially customers and
(02:28):
PLC courses,
PAC courses over there, you wanna check that
out.
I did have a great conversation with a
gentleman who was who knew what a Symax
300 was, so we'll try to get him
on the automation
museum
podcast, which is I'm calling the history of
automation.
I have we've recorded three already. History of
Triconics, history of Wonderware,
(02:49):
history of, Rocco PLCs. And these are all
from people's perspectives.
This is, like, the definitive history, but, you
know, it was been a lot of fun
hanging out with these people who work with
this old stuff,
and, I really have enjoyed it. Sunday, my
goal is to edit those three
and, and, start scheduling them to release. They'll
(03:09):
they'll come out on the on the regular
channels I have now because we haven't even
funded the Automation Museum yet.
So if you have a an extra dollar
or 2 this month, please consider going to
automationmuseum.org
and making a donation. I wanna thank everybody
who has already donated.
Last time I checked, it's been a few
weeks, but,
we were, like, 7% of our goals. So,
(03:30):
I mean, we're we're you know, there's no
rush on this. The old stuff's not going
anywhere.
So, and I have a lot of people
asking if they can send stuff in. I'm
asking them to hold on to it into
their in their attics for right now,
because I just I don't and when when
when they when when you get taxed as
a business, they wanna tax everything that's in
in your business. Right? And so it's hard
(03:51):
to explain to them that this is stuff
that's for a future museum. So to avoid
getting taxed on stuff that I don't use
for my business, I'm asking people to hold
on to it. Now if you absolutely have
to get rid of it, I do have
room in my attic at home, and, I'll
stick it up there for the meantime. But
in any case, you can imagine I hate
their that stuff all the way up and
then bring it back down later. So in
any case, with that said, I do appreciate
(04:13):
everybody who sent stuff in. And now I'm
gonna try something new. I wasn't happy with
the the the way StreamYard, which is a
software I use to livestream. I wasn't happy
with the way they were doing the graphics.
So I'm trying to put a little bit
different today. And so I'm gonna switch over,
and try it this way. I hope this
is better resolution for you. I don't have
as much control when I use StreamYard natively.
(04:35):
Like, I can't crop myself out instead of
having the whole studio here, but I'm hoping
the graphics are better for you. So here's
an example.
And I wrote this program. I wanted it
to be something that my VUEs students could
understand. I don't wanna make, like, some new
algorithm that was, like, gonna win a Nobel
Peace a Nobel Prize or anything like that.
But in any case,
(04:56):
I don't know if it would be a
peace prize, but some other prize. But in
any case so it's a very simple program.
Basically, I have a bunch of JSRs in
the main routine. So many people are used
to that. I figured I would just go
with that.
And,
because, this had to run on a Michelogix
1,000,
I put all the simulation in one ladder
program. Now this is the 1,400 version. I
(05:17):
didn't change it. I just you know, I
did it all in the 1,000, tried to
cram everything in there. Actually, could not fit
everything into the 1,000,
but I came close. So in any case,
that's why you'll see the, the the lead
numbering here of the
of the files.
And, I did separate the molding machines here
because,
you know, you only have 15.
(05:39):
You know, I think it's, fifteen and sixteen
is your debug. So,
that's why I did it that way. So
if you're asking, hey, Sean, why'd you do
it that way? That's why I did it
that way. So this is a program we're
gonna convert to Micrologix.
And to do this, I'm gonna first do
a file save as,
and I'm gonna save it as a SLC,
a library file.
Okay? Even though it's even though it's a
1,400, we're saving as an SLC.
(06:01):
It doesn't mean slick 500. It means library
file.
At at one point, it probably meant slick
500 library container or something, but in any
case now
I have found that if you have the
free software. Right? So if you have the
RS Logix micro starter light, I found that
that option is not in there. So you
may wanna reach out to your local Rockwell
(06:23):
rep, and usually, they have a real nice
guy named the PLC specialist. That's a job
I did for twenty five years, and they'll
do that for you. Look at it just
takes some you know, it's so, I mean,
we're talking seconds. Right? So in any case,
usually, that's something I would do for my
old customers, you know, over morning coffee. So
in any case, I'm gonna save this. I
have a folder, my VSC basics folder. I
downloaded all the files just a few minutes
(06:44):
ago, and, I'm going to go ahead and
export with comments, and I'm just gonna leave
all the defaults there, and voila, it's all
been exported. Okay? So now we're ready to
switch over to CCW.
And in CCW,
this utility used to be able to be
downloaded separately. A matter of fact, I put
all the links because I have covered this
(07:05):
quite a bit. I put all the links
in the description so you can see all
the different
links to all the articles and videos I've
done on this in the past. But now
in the mic in connect components workbench, I'm
gonna go to tools,
micro
MicroLogix
to micro 800 converter.
Okay?
And so and if you guys can't hear
me or you can't see me, let me
(07:25):
know in the chat.
But any case, that brings up this little
guy here. This is version five point o
five. I'm in CCW version 22. It just
happened to be what was installed.
Okay? So in any case, let's go ahead
and choose the MicroLogix
file. I put it into my
I think it's in documents, VSC basics. Boom.
(07:47):
I have this checkbox checked because
the files match. K. Those the the files
have the same name. I'm gonna go to
well, I happen to have here the
I think I have
the
L24QBB.
Yeah. That's what it looks like.
(08:07):
Yeah. So that's what I'm gonna use there
just because that's what I have on the
workbench.
And we're gonna do, okay.
And I wanna thank everybody for tuning in.
Guys, if you have suggestions
on what you would like to see for
future episodes, please
contact me, throw them in the chat. Also,
if you wanna come on the show and
share a trick that you learned, I'd love
to have you on the show. This is,
(08:29):
my new lunchtime thing that I do to
learn. You know, why browse the web and,
you know, read the bad news?
But I can share tips with the with
you folks. And this is something I was
doing anyway, so I had to do it
for my I wanted to add those lessons
to my VSC course. So figured, why not
do this with the, with the audience as
well? And so one of the things you're
(08:50):
gonna notice now there is a really good
go back to full screen here. Did it
go back to full screen? You know what?
I think that's the other thing is too.
With this, you have to select the
browser. So one of the things that you'll
find the links in the description is that
Rockwell has a phenomenal
phenomenally phenomenally well documented guide to doing this.
(09:13):
So I'd super appreciate as I was reading
through it, and it's they've done a great
job. They updated it over time,
and it really does a great job explaining
what the differences are. So if you do
take on a project to do this, whether
it's internal or for somebody else, get that
guide. Read it the cover to cover. It
is excellent.
And, I just really appreciate when a vendor
puts that much effort into it. You know,
(09:36):
I I I talked about other vendors where
I was looking up trying to look up
just how a single instruction worked, and it
was so frustrating.
But when you're working with people like Rockwell
and Siemens and other big companies,
they just have great documentation, and it's it's
hard not to have that. Right? You want
that good documentation.
But, they have great documentation
on this process,
and you can see it came in, but
(09:57):
we got a lot of errors. Now
I wanna look at these errors,
and
I don't know why
go to the stop page. How do I
see my errors, people? Why is it hiding
behind?
I'm just gonna open up the main program,
see if we can get the error list
to be on top. There we go. Okay.
Great. So and I know a lot of
(10:18):
you may be listening while you're driving, so
I'll try to go through these.
So
first of all, no status file. Right? There's
no status file in the, like, gray 100.
Now there is a first pass bit.
So we've talked about this a lot lately,
and so we don't have to worry about
that. It's it's in there. Like, they used
to say what was it? Prego? It's in
(10:38):
there. So in any case, we don't have
to worry about that. But there is no,
like, status file. So one of the things
I would use in the Micrologix and, really,
all the PLCs is that free running clock,
to to flash different lights on and off.
And so, because I encapsulated in this program
the program out of my PLC basics course.
It's a subroutine.
And so, typically, we don't use it because
(10:59):
we're
and but I wanted to put it in
there. So if somebody wanted to go in
and, and and create a screen and view
for their for the PAC basics or POC
basics, they'd have it. But in any case,
it also talks about arithmetic status bits are
not supported in the 800 as well. You
can, like, have a math overflow or something
like that.
So you're gonna be cognizant of that. And
(11:22):
then this is revised usage of the timer
accumulate value.
Now it talks about this thing called an
RA ton, MicroLogic's,
user defined function block.
And so I wanna get into this. Let's
take a break here,
and let's look at what happened here.
So first thing is we have a main
program. There is not really a subroutine with
(11:43):
the micro 800. It's you just have all
these programs. Think of think of,
ControlLogix
and just having a bunch of routines
that all run at the same time or
a bunch of programs that each have one
routine in them. Okay? And that's all they
have in them. So yeah. So there's not
a exact this to that, but in ControlLogix,
let's say you had you could only create
(12:04):
programs, and every program has a single routine,
and every program would always run. That's what
you have with the POUs,
program organizational
units
inside of,
inside of, the CCW and the micro 800.
And, you know, I think if you had
let's say you had,
Siemens and you had a bunch of OBs,
and they were all scheduled to run continuous.
(12:26):
So OB1, then OB2, then OB3, and then
OB4. I know you can't some of those
numbers you can't use, but you guys get
the point. Right? So that's what a POU
is. All the POUs run. All the POUs
run. I think, you can change your order
by reordering them, but they all run, and
each POU is really a language.
So you can have a POU that's a
think of a POU. It's like a program
(12:47):
and a routine together. Anyways, with all that
said,
you can see the main POU. This is
my jump to subroutines, except instead of jumping
the subroutines,
it's jumping to
user defined functions.
So this is very similar to, like, a
function block in Siemens. Right? And I I
guess you would call it in logic, say,
they,
(13:08):
you know, you kinda look at it as
a as a a subroutine, right, as a
routine that you have to jump to, a
routine other than the main, but it's not
in that group. It's in this other list.
Okay? And so you can see that looks
that looks like my original code except for
one big difference.
Okay?
Is that
some of the timers like, I don't have
(13:30):
my tons, didn't come over as tons. And
when I was doing,
factor IO, when I was doing the quest
for, you know, Micrologix, Micro 800, and ControlLogix,
it was like, hey. Some of these instructions
operate differently. Coners, timers,
slight little differences. Well,
I addressed that by just changing the way
I wrote the program for a factor I
o. But here, if you're if you have
(13:51):
an existing plant, you don't wanna have to
figure that out. So what Rockwell does here
is they give you
all they create all these
user defined function blocks.
They have a countdown function block. They have
a copy,
a counter function block. Right? This one's a
structured text.
So,
very simple. They just do that that line
(14:13):
of text. Right? Just checking over there, make
sure you guys can see this. So here's
one that's called the count up CTU.
Now there is a CTU
inside of the,
micro 800. I wouldn't have wrote all this
code to to to make it work, but
they wanted to operate identically
to the way it was in the Micrologix.
And so here you go. And so you
(14:34):
can see all the code. It took several
lines of code,
eight lines of code to replace to make
the CTU
in the mic in the microHunter act like
the like the one in the,
MicroLogix.
In any case but some of these, like
the LEM instruction,
this is like you can just look at
this and say, okay. Yeah. They they did
(14:54):
exactly what we're looking for. But when it
comes to, like, the one shot, it's kinda
like, nothing.
It's like,
yeah. Maybe you should not use the ONS.
Maybe you should use the OSR.
And there was another one too it didn't
do. Oh, sequencer.
The sequencer is just like, yeah. We don't
have one, so make your own code up.
(15:16):
So in any case,
there's two of those in there. Out of
all these
instructions it created for me to to to
mirror what was in the micro 800. What
was to mirror, actually, what was in the
Micrologix inside of the micro 800.
You know, it created all those, those new
instructions for me.
So let's go back to the error list
(15:37):
because there's a couple of very other interesting
things you guys would probably wanna know about.
First of all,
the only symbols that can convert it to
aliases,
sadly,
are for the inputs and outputs. So all
my inputs in slot zero went to the
input, the underscore I, underscore I o, embedded
(15:58):
I o, and same thing with the outputs.
But those are the only ones who got
the symbols brought over. I had symbols on
timers, presets,
and counters, and I had a lot of
symbols in there. None of those came in.
It's very sad. And,
we can see here the warning about the
time of the accumulate value.
So,
you know, some of the changes there, the
(16:20):
status files, these are the two flashing bits
I would have to replace, which is not
a problem. I get all the bits I
can use in the program.
You see a lot of information about the
timing timer accumulate value,
how how it operates differently.
Here's the two, the ONS and the SQL
that didn't work.
And then,
the every place that did find the s
(16:40):
one fifteen bit, it did convert it over
to the first scan bit. That's good. Right?
That was really good.
There was also,
in the one I did this morning,
there was also some truncating
of my descriptors.
Okay? So with the descriptors,
you know, they're limited to 255
(17:01):
characters.
And so I don't know why this one
was different. Maybe I already truncated it, but,
with the, with the descriptors, if you had
a lot of descriptions,
comments and and whatnot, they would get truncated.
And not a big deal, but,
you know, you gotta be aware of that.
The good thing is they
(17:21):
totally document,
you know, in the
that file. We were looking at that
conversion file. In there, they tell you everything
that doesn't convert over. So I know at
home this morning,
I know that,
all of the all of the,
comments and descriptions that get truncated,
(17:42):
it's totally documented. That's a CSV file that
gets saved to your hard drive. And so
you know everything you have to go and
fix. But, I just thought it was very
interesting how
to address the slight nuances between the counters
and the timers and whatnot that they create
all these at, like, what you would think
of as an add on instruction in Studio
5,000.
(18:02):
They create them as,
user defined function blocks
inside of CCW.
And,
apparently,
if it's not on that list, if there's
an error not an error in that list,
then you're gonna expect the same type of
operation, but you'll also see that they warn
you that you do have to test it.
You cannot assume that everything translated perfectly. Right?
(18:23):
And some things you gotta know is, like,
what is the,
what is the speed of the controller? You're
gonna assume that the micro eight hundred's faster.
Does that cause any issues? You also have
to understand about, like, what's the response time
of the IO. Right? So in 90% of
the applications, that may not be a big
deal. But in some applications,
you know, you may start seeing multiple counts
where you only saw one, you know, multiple
(18:45):
posts where you only saw one.
You may have current limitations on the new
inputs and outputs versus the old ones. So
a lot of things you had to do
to do one of those conversions. I think
the first thing you would typically do is,
you know, get the and they actually have
this in IAB. It'll convert
from one to the other, and that manual
I mentioned has even the wiring diagrams from
one to the other. Just they just did
(19:06):
a phenomenal job. So that's what I'm working
on here. I wanted to share that with
you. It's actually pretty user friendly, but, again,
don't discount the amount of time you're gonna
have to do to test the converted code.
Same goes when we talked about converting PLC
five or six five hundred to ControlLogix, CompactLogix,
or soft PLC.
You always have to test out the code
because,
(19:27):
these people make these importers and exporters. They
don't they don't know everything. Right? They're not
perfect.
I will say this, though. Doing what we
just did was
so much easier than manually retyping everything into
Siemens and the Codesys.
So,
yes.
Would I do this and then go and
debug it? Yeah. I'd much rather do that
than have to manually reenter all the code.
(19:49):
That was a real drag. I'm glad it's
done, but it was a real drag. So
tools like this, yes, definitely. I know some
people like, no. I'm gonna do it. Everything
bit by bit. I'm like, well, go for
it. Have fun. But, I would rather use
something like this. And so any case, it
looks like, we're running over twenty minutes. So
I wanna thank everybody who joined us today.
Again, if there's something you would like to
(20:10):
see on a future lunchtime show, let me
know. I usually when I'm drinking my coffee
first thing in the morning, I'll go over
things and try things potentially to do at
lunchtime
and, be happy to share anything I can
with you guys.
I do wanna show now that I I
I still have to refine this and get
it working.
Once I do, I will be adding those
lessons to, both my migrate hunter course on
(20:31):
how to do this and my VSC course
on how to connect to it. And I
probably end up connected to it two different
ways through LinX Classic and LinX Enterprise.
But,
I'm I still I didn't get that far
this morning. But in any case,
there will be a what's new in school
this afternoon. There will be no episode of
the lunchtime show tomorrow.
Don't know if there'll be one Monday, so
(20:53):
that's we'll play that one by year. Just
depends on how much work I have left
over tonight that I don't get through this
weekend. But with that, I just wanna thank
you all again for tuning in. I wanna
wish you all good health and happiness.
And until next time, my friends,
peace.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime
edition.
Sean Tierney here from Insights. And today,
we're gonna take a look at something different.
We're gonna take a look at migrating
a Micrologix
program to a Micro 800 program,
and we're going to do this because,
I had somebody ask a question about connecting
(00:21):
to a Micro 800
from a SCADA package.
And, you know, when I did my VSC
course, I did I think every Allen Bradley
PLC except for the Micro 800. So I
thought, you know, this would be a good
time to convert my my VUSC
application
that I use to simulate the data for
that for that course.
And, anybody in my VUSC course can download
(00:43):
that,
in Micrologic,
PLC five, ControlLogics, CompactLogics,
multiple versions.
You know, you know, I recently converted it
to Siemens because I wanted to add those
advanced
graphical lessons to my unified comfort panel and
unified,
a basic panel course.
So I need to convert it to Siemens,
and then somebody asked me to test their
(01:04):
SCADA package with Codesys. And as you know,
I had a couple of vendors step up
and send me Codesys PLCs.
So I converted well, not all of it.
There's five molding lines. I wanted to do
something different than a bottling line or, you
know, a a widget maker. And so, I
only did one molding line into the into
the code Sys because, you know, I I
I we all we've talked about that before.
(01:26):
But in any case, needs a little love
and tender love and care to the code
sys, IDE does. But in any case,
yes. I figured, hey. Let's use this
to convert my existing program, which I which
I wrote from scratch to the micro 800,
and let's see how it goes. Now I
did this this morning around 04:30. I went
through it once, and it seemed to work
(01:47):
okay. So I figured, we would do this
during lunchtime. And so if you guys have
any questions on this or anything, let me
know. Oh, a couple of housekeeping things. There
will be no episode of the show tomorrow.
I'm kinda backed up trying to get through
a couple of videos that I'm, sponsored videos
with vendors. And, also,
I have to, just get all the stuff
(02:07):
to do with the the automation school, but
I do I did record this morning an
update for any students at the automation school.
So that I'm gonna schedule that to go
out this afternoon because I said September 4
in it. Now looking backwards, I probably should
have said September 5. But in any case,
that'll come out this afternoon, and I kinda
update a lot of the new lessons over
at the automation school. So, especially customers and
(02:28):
PLC courses,
PAC courses over there, you wanna check that
out.
I did have a great conversation with a
gentleman who was who knew what a Symax
300 was, so we'll try to get him
on the automation
museum
podcast, which is I'm calling the history of
automation.
I have we've recorded three already. History of
Triconics, history of Wonderware,
(02:49):
history of, Rocco PLCs. And these are all
from people's perspectives.
This is, like, the definitive history, but, you
know, it was been a lot of fun
hanging out with these people who work with
this old stuff,
and, I really have enjoyed it. Sunday, my
goal is to edit those three
and, and, start scheduling them to release. They'll
(03:09):
they'll come out on the on the regular
channels I have now because we haven't even
funded the Automation Museum yet.
So if you have a an extra dollar
or 2 this month, please consider going to
automationmuseum.org
and making a donation. I wanna thank everybody
who has already donated.
Last time I checked, it's been a few
weeks, but,
we were, like, 7% of our goals. So,
(03:30):
I mean, we're we're you know, there's no
rush on this. The old stuff's not going
anywhere.
So, and I have a lot of people
asking if they can send stuff in. I'm
asking them to hold on to it into
their in their attics for right now,
because I just I don't and when when
when they when when you get taxed as
a business, they wanna tax everything that's in
in your business. Right? And so it's hard
(03:51):
to explain to them that this is stuff
that's for a future museum. So to avoid
getting taxed on stuff that I don't use
for my business, I'm asking people to hold
on to it. Now if you absolutely have
to get rid of it, I do have
room in my attic at home, and, I'll
stick it up there for the meantime. But
in any case, you can imagine I hate
their that stuff all the way up and
then bring it back down later. So in
any case, with that said, I do appreciate
(04:13):
everybody who sent stuff in. And now I'm
gonna try something new. I wasn't happy with
the the the way StreamYard, which is a
software I use to livestream. I wasn't happy
with the way they were doing the graphics.
So I'm trying to put a little bit
different today. And so I'm gonna switch over,
and try it this way. I hope this
is better resolution for you. I don't have
as much control when I use StreamYard natively.
(04:35):
Like, I can't crop myself out instead of
having the whole studio here, but I'm hoping
the graphics are better for you. So here's
an example.
And I wrote this program. I wanted it
to be something that my VUEs students could
understand. I don't wanna make, like, some new
algorithm that was, like, gonna win a Nobel
Peace a Nobel Prize or anything like that.
But in any case,
(04:56):
I don't know if it would be a
peace prize, but some other prize. But in
any case so it's a very simple program.
Basically, I have a bunch of JSRs in
the main routine. So many people are used
to that. I figured I would just go
with that.
And,
because, this had to run on a Michelogix
1,000,
I put all the simulation in one ladder
program. Now this is the 1,400 version. I
(05:17):
didn't change it. I just you know, I
did it all in the 1,000, tried to
cram everything in there. Actually, could not fit
everything into the 1,000,
but I came close. So in any case,
that's why you'll see the, the the lead
numbering here of the
of the files.
And, I did separate the molding machines here
because,
you know, you only have 15.
(05:39):
You know, I think it's, fifteen and sixteen
is your debug. So,
that's why I did it that way. So
if you're asking, hey, Sean, why'd you do
it that way? That's why I did it
that way. So this is a program we're
gonna convert to Micrologix.
And to do this, I'm gonna first do
a file save as,
and I'm gonna save it as a SLC,
a library file.
Okay? Even though it's even though it's a
1,400, we're saving as an SLC.
(06:01):
It doesn't mean slick 500. It means library
file.
At at one point, it probably meant slick
500 library container or something, but in any
case now
I have found that if you have the
free software. Right? So if you have the
RS Logix micro starter light, I found that
that option is not in there. So you
may wanna reach out to your local Rockwell
(06:23):
rep, and usually, they have a real nice
guy named the PLC specialist. That's a job
I did for twenty five years, and they'll
do that for you. Look at it just
takes some you know, it's so, I mean,
we're talking seconds. Right? So in any case,
usually, that's something I would do for my
old customers, you know, over morning coffee. So
in any case, I'm gonna save this. I
have a folder, my VSC basics folder. I
downloaded all the files just a few minutes
(06:44):
ago, and, I'm going to go ahead and
export with comments, and I'm just gonna leave
all the defaults there, and voila, it's all
been exported. Okay? So now we're ready to
switch over to CCW.
And in CCW,
this utility used to be able to be
downloaded separately. A matter of fact, I put
all the links because I have covered this
(07:05):
quite a bit. I put all the links
in the description so you can see all
the different
links to all the articles and videos I've
done on this in the past. But now
in the mic in connect components workbench, I'm
gonna go to tools,
micro
MicroLogix
to micro 800 converter.
Okay?
And so and if you guys can't hear
me or you can't see me, let me
(07:25):
know in the chat.
But any case, that brings up this little
guy here. This is version five point o
five. I'm in CCW version 22. It just
happened to be what was installed.
Okay? So in any case, let's go ahead
and choose the MicroLogix
file. I put it into my
I think it's in documents, VSC basics. Boom.
(07:47):
I have this checkbox checked because
the files match. K. Those the the files
have the same name. I'm gonna go to
well, I happen to have here the
I think I have
the
L24QBB.
Yeah. That's what it looks like.
(08:07):
Yeah. So that's what I'm gonna use there
just because that's what I have on the
workbench.
And we're gonna do, okay.
And I wanna thank everybody for tuning in.
Guys, if you have suggestions
on what you would like to see for
future episodes, please
contact me, throw them in the chat. Also,
if you wanna come on the show and
share a trick that you learned, I'd love
to have you on the show. This is,
(08:29):
my new lunchtime thing that I do to
learn. You know, why browse the web and,
you know, read the bad news?
But I can share tips with the with
you folks. And this is something I was
doing anyway, so I had to do it
for my I wanted to add those lessons
to my VSC course. So figured, why not
do this with the, with the audience as
well? And so one of the things you're
(08:50):
gonna notice now there is a really good
go back to full screen here. Did it
go back to full screen? You know what?
I think that's the other thing is too.
With this, you have to select the
browser. So one of the things that you'll
find the links in the description is that
Rockwell has a phenomenal
phenomenally phenomenally well documented guide to doing this.
(09:13):
So I'd super appreciate as I was reading
through it, and it's they've done a great
job. They updated it over time,
and it really does a great job explaining
what the differences are. So if you do
take on a project to do this, whether
it's internal or for somebody else, get that
guide. Read it the cover to cover. It
is excellent.
And, I just really appreciate when a vendor
puts that much effort into it. You know,
(09:36):
I I I talked about other vendors where
I was looking up trying to look up
just how a single instruction worked, and it
was so frustrating.
But when you're working with people like Rockwell
and Siemens and other big companies,
they just have great documentation, and it's it's
hard not to have that. Right? You want
that good documentation.
But, they have great documentation
on this process,
and you can see it came in, but
(09:57):
we got a lot of errors. Now
I wanna look at these errors,
and
I don't know why
go to the stop page. How do I
see my errors, people? Why is it hiding
behind?
I'm just gonna open up the main program,
see if we can get the error list
to be on top. There we go. Okay.
Great. So and I know a lot of
(10:18):
you may be listening while you're driving, so
I'll try to go through these.
So
first of all, no status file. Right? There's
no status file in the, like, gray 100.
Now there is a first pass bit.
So we've talked about this a lot lately,
and so we don't have to worry about
that. It's it's in there. Like, they used
to say what was it? Prego? It's in
(10:38):
there. So in any case, we don't have
to worry about that. But there is no,
like, status file. So one of the things
I would use in the Micrologix and, really,
all the PLCs is that free running clock,
to to flash different lights on and off.
And so, because I encapsulated in this program
the program out of my PLC basics course.
It's a subroutine.
And so, typically, we don't use it because
(10:59):
we're
and but I wanted to put it in
there. So if somebody wanted to go in
and, and and create a screen and view
for their for the PAC basics or POC
basics, they'd have it. But in any case,
it also talks about arithmetic status bits are
not supported in the 800 as well. You
can, like, have a math overflow or something
like that.
So you're gonna be cognizant of that. And
(11:22):
then this is revised usage of the timer
accumulate value.
Now it talks about this thing called an
RA ton, MicroLogic's,
user defined function block.
And so I wanna get into this. Let's
take a break here,
and let's look at what happened here.
So first thing is we have a main
program. There is not really a subroutine with
(11:43):
the micro 800. It's you just have all
these programs. Think of think of,
ControlLogix
and just having a bunch of routines
that all run at the same time or
a bunch of programs that each have one
routine in them. Okay? And that's all they
have in them. So yeah. So there's not
a exact this to that, but in ControlLogix,
let's say you had you could only create
(12:04):
programs, and every program has a single routine,
and every program would always run. That's what
you have with the POUs,
program organizational
units
inside of,
inside of, the CCW and the micro 800.
And, you know, I think if you had
let's say you had,
Siemens and you had a bunch of OBs,
and they were all scheduled to run continuous.
(12:26):
So OB1, then OB2, then OB3, and then
OB4. I know you can't some of those
numbers you can't use, but you guys get
the point. Right? So that's what a POU
is. All the POUs run. All the POUs
run. I think, you can change your order
by reordering them, but they all run, and
each POU is really a language.
So you can have a POU that's a
think of a POU. It's like a program
(12:47):
and a routine together. Anyways, with all that
said,
you can see the main POU. This is
my jump to subroutines, except instead of jumping
the subroutines,
it's jumping to
user defined functions.
So this is very similar to, like, a
function block in Siemens. Right? And I I
guess you would call it in logic, say,
they,
(13:08):
you know, you kinda look at it as
a as a a subroutine, right, as a
routine that you have to jump to, a
routine other than the main, but it's not
in that group. It's in this other list.
Okay? And so you can see that looks
that looks like my original code except for
one big difference.
Okay?
Is that
some of the timers like, I don't have
(13:30):
my tons, didn't come over as tons. And
when I was doing,
factor IO, when I was doing the quest
for, you know, Micrologix, Micro 800, and ControlLogix,
it was like, hey. Some of these instructions
operate differently. Coners, timers,
slight little differences. Well,
I addressed that by just changing the way
I wrote the program for a factor I
o. But here, if you're if you have
(13:51):
an existing plant, you don't wanna have to
figure that out. So what Rockwell does here
is they give you
all they create all these
user defined function blocks.
They have a countdown function block. They have
a copy,
a counter function block. Right? This one's a
structured text.
So,
very simple. They just do that that line
(14:13):
of text. Right? Just checking over there, make
sure you guys can see this. So here's
one that's called the count up CTU.
Now there is a CTU
inside of the,
micro 800. I wouldn't have wrote all this
code to to to make it work, but
they wanted to operate identically
to the way it was in the Micrologix.
And so here you go. And so you
(14:34):
can see all the code. It took several
lines of code,
eight lines of code to replace to make
the CTU
in the mic in the microHunter act like
the like the one in the,
MicroLogix.
In any case but some of these, like
the LEM instruction,
this is like you can just look at
this and say, okay. Yeah. They they did
(14:54):
exactly what we're looking for. But when it
comes to, like, the one shot, it's kinda
like, nothing.
It's like,
yeah. Maybe you should not use the ONS.
Maybe you should use the OSR.
And there was another one too it didn't
do. Oh, sequencer.
The sequencer is just like, yeah. We don't
have one, so make your own code up.
(15:16):
So in any case,
there's two of those in there. Out of
all these
instructions it created for me to to to
mirror what was in the micro 800. What
was to mirror, actually, what was in the
Micrologix inside of the micro 800.
You know, it created all those, those new
instructions for me.
So let's go back to the error list
(15:37):
because there's a couple of very other interesting
things you guys would probably wanna know about.
First of all,
the only symbols that can convert it to
aliases,
sadly,
are for the inputs and outputs. So all
my inputs in slot zero went to the
input, the underscore I, underscore I o, embedded
(15:58):
I o, and same thing with the outputs.
But those are the only ones who got
the symbols brought over. I had symbols on
timers, presets,
and counters, and I had a lot of
symbols in there. None of those came in.
It's very sad. And,
we can see here the warning about the
time of the accumulate value.
So,
you know, some of the changes there, the
(16:20):
status files, these are the two flashing bits
I would have to replace, which is not
a problem. I get all the bits I
can use in the program.
You see a lot of information about the
timing timer accumulate value,
how how it operates differently.
Here's the two, the ONS and the SQL
that didn't work.
And then,
the every place that did find the s
(16:40):
one fifteen bit, it did convert it over
to the first scan bit. That's good. Right?
That was really good.
There was also,
in the one I did this morning,
there was also some truncating
of my descriptors.
Okay? So with the descriptors,
you know, they're limited to 255
(17:01):
characters.
And so I don't know why this one
was different. Maybe I already truncated it, but,
with the, with the descriptors, if you had
a lot of descriptions,
comments and and whatnot, they would get truncated.
And not a big deal, but,
you know, you gotta be aware of that.
The good thing is they
(17:21):
totally document,
you know, in the
that file. We were looking at that
conversion file. In there, they tell you everything
that doesn't convert over. So I know at
home this morning,
I know that,
all of the all of the,
comments and descriptions that get truncated,
(17:42):
it's totally documented. That's a CSV file that
gets saved to your hard drive. And so
you know everything you have to go and
fix. But, I just thought it was very
interesting how
to address the slight nuances between the counters
and the timers and whatnot that they create
all these at, like, what you would think
of as an add on instruction in Studio
5,000.
(18:02):
They create them as,
user defined function blocks
inside of CCW.
And,
apparently,
if it's not on that list, if there's
an error not an error in that list,
then you're gonna expect the same type of
operation, but you'll also see that they warn
you that you do have to test it.
You cannot assume that everything translated perfectly. Right?
(18:23):
And some things you gotta know is, like,
what is the,
what is the speed of the controller? You're
gonna assume that the micro eight hundred's faster.
Does that cause any issues? You also have
to understand about, like, what's the response time
of the IO. Right? So in 90% of
the applications, that may not be a big
deal. But in some applications,
you know, you may start seeing multiple counts
where you only saw one, you know, multiple
(18:45):
posts where you only saw one.
You may have current limitations on the new
inputs and outputs versus the old ones. So
a lot of things you had to do
to do one of those conversions. I think
the first thing you would typically do is,
you know, get the and they actually have
this in IAB. It'll convert
from one to the other, and that manual
I mentioned has even the wiring diagrams from
one to the other. Just they just did
(19:06):
a phenomenal job. So that's what I'm working
on here. I wanted to share that with
you. It's actually pretty user friendly, but, again,
don't discount the amount of time you're gonna
have to do to test the converted code.
Same goes when we talked about converting PLC
five or six five hundred to ControlLogix, CompactLogix,
or soft PLC.
You always have to test out the code
because,
(19:27):
these people make these importers and exporters. They
don't they don't know everything. Right? They're not
perfect.
I will say this, though. Doing what we
just did was
so much easier than manually retyping everything into
Siemens and the Codesys.
So,
yes.
Would I do this and then go and
debug it? Yeah. I'd much rather do that
than have to manually reenter all the code.
(19:49):
That was a real drag. I'm glad it's
done, but it was a real drag. So
tools like this, yes, definitely. I know some
people like, no. I'm gonna do it. Everything
bit by bit. I'm like, well, go for
it. Have fun. But, I would rather use
something like this. And so any case, it
looks like, we're running over twenty minutes. So
I wanna thank everybody who joined us today.
Again, if there's something you would like to
(20:10):
see on a future lunchtime show, let me
know. I usually when I'm drinking my coffee
first thing in the morning, I'll go over
things and try things potentially to do at
lunchtime
and, be happy to share anything I can
with you guys.
I do wanna show now that I I
I still have to refine this and get
it working.
Once I do, I will be adding those
lessons to, both my migrate hunter course on
(20:31):
how to do this and my VSC course
on how to connect to it. And I
probably end up connected to it two different
ways through LinX Classic and LinX Enterprise.
But,
I'm I still I didn't get that far
this morning. But in any case,
there will be a what's new in school
this afternoon. There will be no episode of
the lunchtime show tomorrow.
Don't know if there'll be one Monday, so
(20:53):
that's we'll play that one by year. Just
depends on how much work I have left
over tonight that I don't get through this
weekend. But with that, I just wanna thank
you all again for tuning in. I wanna
wish you all good health and happiness.
And until next time, my friends,
peace.
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