JP3400920B2 - Program reading device - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for reading out a program in a programmable controller, investigating a cause of a failure, and correcting / restoring the program in an FA field in which a program controller is used.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When monitoring a ladder diagram format program that is most used in the field of FA, a programmable controller (hereinafter abbreviated as a PC) inside a programmable controller (hereinafter abbreviated as PC) is used in order to speed up the subsequent development display and search of the ladder diagram. Read all of the program (Fig. 1) into the program storage area (Fig. 1) of a programming device (Fig. 1) operating on, for example, a personal computer (Fig. 1) using an interface (Fig. 1) such as RS-422. After that, it is general to display ON / OFF on the ladder diagram or display data in a data register or the like.
In this case, the program uses the program read by the programming device, and information such as data is read from the PC in real time and monitored.

In the above-mentioned procedure, since the program in the PC is read out from all the programming devices before the start of monitoring, it takes a long time to start monitoring.

To reduce this time, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-5181
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 0 discloses a program in which a program in a PC and a program existing in a programming device are compared by an identification code, and if they match, reading is not performed.

However, the programs inside the PC are frequently rewritten not only by the programming device operating on the personal computer described above but also by a handy type programmer that can be easily handled, and in many cases, they do not match. Eventually all the programs P
Since it was read from C to the programming device, it was often impossible to monitor at high speed.

[0006]

As the control contents have become more complicated, the required program amount and data register and file register amount have increased, and along with this, the maximum program capacity and data register that can be described in the PC. The amount / file register amount is increasing, and it takes a lot of time to read the data (program / data register / file register) of the PC.

Therefore, even when the program of the PC has to be corrected promptly due to a trouble in maintenance or the like, there are cases where the program reading time is limited and early recovery becomes difficult.

Further, since it takes time to read the program from the PC to the programming device, in order to quickly find and restore the failure point, the programming apparatus does not monitor and check the failure occurrence point, but a rotating lamp or A method of making a notification using a notification device such as a display may be used. In this case, it is necessary to create a program for the PC for displaying, and there is a problem that the program is further increased.

Further, when exchanging the PC main unit, it is general that all the data including the program is once read out and stored in a programming device or the like, then the PC main unit is exchanged and sent again to the PC. However, it takes a lot of time to read this data, and there is a problem that the downtime of the equipment increases because of the replacement time.

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention uses P
The problem is to transfer the program in C to the programming device as soon as possible.

[0011]

In order to solve the above problems, it is necessary to promptly load the program in the PC into the programming device. Further, in order to perform processing such as development into a ladder diagram display and instruction retrieval at high speed, a method of using a means for reading out a program in the PC to a programming device using an interface such as RS-422 before starting monitoring. Is effective.

In order to read the program in the PC at high speed by the programming device, the program in the PC required for the programming device is selected and RS-4 is selected.
It is necessary to use a means for reducing communication performed at 22 or the like as much as possible.

Therefore, in the present invention, the programmable controller is
And the controller stored in the programmable controller.
Communication between devices that read and monitor the stored programs.
In the communication, the monitoring device is the program
Clear the program in the program storage area of the
Data indicating the specified program range from the
It is sent to the programmable controller and the programmable
The controller will identify itself based on the data indicating the range.
Partially read the stored program and
To the monitoring device, and the monitoring device
Program the program sent from the programmable controller
It is designed to write to the gram storage area.

By efficiently transferring only the necessary data to the programming device, the time for using the interface such as RS-422 can be shortened, and the program can be changed / corrected / countermeasures promptly, and the down time of the equipment can be reduced. Can be shortened.

[0015]

1 is a diagram showing an outline of an embodiment of the present invention. Reference numeral 1 is a computer, which is provided with 4 programming units and 5 programs. Reference numeral 2 denotes a PC (programmable controller), which executes a control operation according to a ladder program created by the computer 1.

The computer 1 and the PC 2 are RS-422.
The computer 1 can appropriately read or write the ladder program stored in the PC 2 by an operator's operation.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of the contents of a program input or transferred into the PC 2. Actually, it is stored with a defined bit configuration. Here, for convenience, it is represented by a mnemonic.

The range "STR NOT 07"
366 "" OUT 07365 "" F-XX [ABC
D] ”and the like are programs necessary for controlling the operation of external devices connected to the PC.

The NOP instruction in the range of (1) is an instruction that does not perform any operation in the PC 2, that is, an unnecessary portion that does not affect the operation of the PC. Is an END instruction of the final program address, and is always the last in the program of the PC, that is, it exists at the final program address.

FIG. 3 is a structural example of data transmitted from the programming unit 4 to the PC 2 through the interface 3 such as RS-422. Is the name of the program read command, and is a fixed code used when reading the program from the PC. Is the start program address for reading. Is the number of words to read.

The flow of the present invention will be described in order with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5. A certain program range (hereinafter, the number of read words) is designated from the program address 0 (step A1,
A2), a method of repeating the reading process up to the final program address is used (loop process up to step A9).

For example, when reading 256 words from the program address 00100, the start program address (FIG. 3) of the transmission data is set to 00100 and the number of read words (FIG. 3) is set to 256 (step A4),
It will be transmitted to the PC 2 (step A5).

A command as shown in FIG.
2 is transmitted to the PC 2, the PC 2 side performs the processing shown in the flowchart of FIG. First, the PC 2 side analyzes what the received command (FIG. 3) is (step B
1) In the case of a program read command, the head program address (FIG. 3) and the number of read words (FIG. 3) following the command are acquired (step B2). Here, the program of the requested range is read from FIG.
It is set as reply data having the contents shown in FIG.

Next, the start program address and (FIG. 3)
And the number of read words (FIG. 3) are obtained to obtain the final program address for reading (step B3), and the data of the program address is checked. When the final data is other than the NOP command, that is, within the range of FIG. 2, the generated reply data is returned to the programming unit. If the data of the final program address to be read is the NOP instruction, it is judged whether or not all the data up to the final program address after the program address up to and including 1 is the NOP instruction (step B6), In the case of the NOP instruction, a special code is added to the reply data shown in FIG. 6 (step B7), the reply code as shown in FIG. 7 is changed, and the reply is sent to the programming section (step B8).

On the programming section side, the number of received bytes of the data returned from the PC2 is compared with the number of bytes expected to be returned from the PC2 calculated from the number of read words (hereinafter, the estimated number of received bytes) (step A6), and they are matched. If so, the range is as shown in FIG. 2, and the received data is stored in the programming unit (step A7).
Then, the number of read words is added to the head program address (FIG. 3) (step A8), and the reading of the program is repeated until the final program address is reached (step A9).

On the contrary, when the number of received bytes of the data returned to the PC 2 does not match the estimated number of received bytes, the data of the estimated number of received bytes is acquired and it is determined whether this data is special data ( Step A10). If the data is not special data, error processing is performed because the data received by the programming unit is an error (step A12). In the case of special data, since the end of the read program address is in the range shown in FIG.
Since it can be determined that the instruction is a P instruction, the subsequent program having the program address as the head is not read out, and it is assumed that the reading is completed, and the end flag is set to ON (step A11).

As described above, when the program in the PC is conventionally read out, all the parts shown in FIG. 2 are read out. However, by reading only the necessary part (FIG. 2), an interface such as RS-422 is used. Therefore, the amount of program to be read out is reduced, and the reading time can be shortened.

[0028]

According to the present invention, the time for reading out the program of the programmable controller to a personal computer or the like can be greatly shortened, and when the program of the programmable controller is saved and the operation such as correction / change / addition of the program is performed. The waiting time can be shortened.

Further, when checking the program of the programmable controller for investigating the cause when a trouble occurs in equipment, the check can be started immediately.
It is effective in reducing the downtime of equipment.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an outline of an apparatus and a programmable controller according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a program inside a programmable controller.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration example of data transmitted from a reading device to a programmable controller.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the flow of processing of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the flow of processing of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a configuration example of data returned from a programmable controller to a reading device.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a configuration example of data returned from the programmable controller to the reading device.

[Explanation of symbols] 1 personal computer 2 programmable controller 3 interfaces 4 Programming Department 5 programs 6 programs

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Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. In communication between a programmable controller and a device for reading and monitoring a program stored in the programmable controller, the device for monitoring is a program of its own programming unit.
After clearing the program in the gram storage area,
The data indicating the program range is transferred to the programmable controller.
To the controller, and the programmable controller sends the data indicating the range.
Partial program stored in itself based on
Read out to and sent to the monitoring device, and the monitoring device is the programmable controller.
The program sent from is written in the program storage area.
A program reading device characterized by imprinting . 2. The read program is a NOP instruction or more.
The external program part according to claim 1,
The program reading device described.