CX-Server LITE/OPC v2.0

CX-Server LITE/OPC
v2.0
James Riley
Software Product Marketing
OMRON EUROPE

V2.0 - In a nutshell!
• CX-Server LITE
– Upload/Download program now includes FB
– No serial version
– NEW low price!
• CX-Server OPC
– PLC redundancy configuration
• Including example function block
– New Ethernet/CLK communications driver (using FGW2003)
• Designed for:
– high data volume
– Large number of PLCs
• FGW2003 is now included on the CX-Server OPC disk
– New ‘silent’ running mode
– No serial version
– NEW low price!

Installation
• New version only supported on
Windows 2000, XP & Vista
• New licence numbers are required
– No downloadable patch
• Previous version needs to be uninstalled to install v2.0
• Old projects can still be loaded with the new version

CX-Server LITE (FB up/download)
• CX-Server LITE has only a small but significant change in v2.0
– Now it is possible using UploadProgram & DownloadProgram to also upload
the function blocks into a .fbl file
– Using the source/destination parameter the user can specify what to upload
or download respectively: “”, “ALL”, “PRG” & “FBL”
– Why?
• Customer can easily add to their software the ability to ‘backup’ their PLC
programs and download new programs when required without CX-Programmer.

CX-Server OPC: Redundancy (1)
• New configuration for redundant settings
– If the checkbox for ‘This is a redundant
configuration’ is not checked, this will work
in the same way as previous versions
• To configure a level of redundancy,
the ‘Redundancy On’ checkbox must
be checked and the details entered
– 1st network is automatically taken from the
CDM file
– 2nd network can be used when there are
two network connections to the same PLC
e.g. EIP & ETN21 unit
– The ‘partner’ PLC must be of the same type
and the user just sets the IP, network & node
– 2nd network option also applies to the partner
• CX-Server OPC is provided with a FB that
monitors the health of the PLC
– The status is written to a word (e.g. D100) which must be set in the redundancy settings

CX-Server OPC: Redundancy (2)
• Redundancy tags are created automatically
for each device
– These come from the status word configured
• The OPC client can use any of all of these
tags to monitor the situation of the OPC
server
– For a description of each of these tags refer
to the help

CX-Server OPC: Device Tags
• New Device Tags are automatically created for every PLC in the project
– An OPC client can then easily read the following:
Mode Number indicating the PLC mode
IsOpen Boolean indicating if PLC is open for comms
Status OPC quality value (as per OPC spec)
StatusText English textual representation of status
NetNum Network Number
NodeNum, Node Number
UnitNum Unit Number
FatalError (whether PLC fatal error, boolean)

CX-Server OPC: FGW Ethernet/CLK
• Requires FGW2003 to be installed (included on the CX-Server OPC disk)
• Simply click the option “Use FGW…” in the Server Information dialog
– Configuration of PLC, points remains exactly the same (still using CX-Server)
– At runtime, CX-Server OPC communicates directly with FGW to read/write
– Still supports data optimisation (concatenation - multi points in single frame)
• V2.0 only supports Ethernet & CLK with
this driver, but other FINS networks
could be supported in the future

CX-Server OPC: Silent Mode
• No splash screen is displayed on start-up (when launched from OPC client)
• No icon in task bar
• Why?
– Prevents unwanted changes to configuration of server
• Allowing the server configuration to be controlled
– Allows start up to HMI application
to hide communication start-up
– Clients who make their own
software can hide communication
method from users

Product Codes
Model Description
CX-LITE-EV2 CX-Server LITE (single licence)
CX-LITE-EV2-XX CX-Server LITE (annual runtime site licence)
CX-OPC-EV2 CX-Server OPC (single licence)