CompactLogix Gen 2: Automation Tech Talk for August 20, 2025

Shawn discusses the Second Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition: Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Automation Tech Talk Show Notes: Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link. 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 stand? That's because I am filming the new twenty twenty five courses. So, I got a lot of wiring to 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,...