all right so in this video we're going to show you how to use the factory talk a logix echo dashboard now i'm going to show you this in a very simple way again uh this is version one so the software is newly developed and again it will get better as the time goes forth so what i've done is i've actually changed my processor i've changed my plc processor and i'll explain why i done that in just a minute so we've you've seen i've done the batching station project before i've changed my processor from an l73 to an l85 now i don't actually have an l85 processor right so i've only done this for this simple process of using the echo software okay so how do you use this echo software i'm glad you asked so here we go we go open it up factory talk logics echo dashboard so when you go to the the dashboard i want you to understand a couple different things about this right there's going to be empty when you first get it again when you do um this is approachable software you have to have a license for it again but it is something that you can purchase from rockwell off their e-commerce start again so it is a very uh productive thing if you're the benefits to it so let me let me describe the benefits to it versus emulation so the the cool thing about factory talk uh logic's echo is you can take your project in whole the way it is meaning the way it's gonna run in the field the way you designed it to run in the field permanently right and you can echo that all in an emulated environment without using an emulated processor so what does that mean for us all right that means we don't have to actually change our processor right here you don't have to change our processors to a emulated processor like we have then i've done in the past the drawbacks to this is it's only only going to be an l8 processor or above so when we come up here and we go to devices we can add a controller okay so when we add a controller it's going to show you that it only does a control logix 55580 emulator okay and the current versions again that are basically what you have installed on your computer um are going to be 31 33 and above right so think about this is going to be l8 processors and above if you're using anything less than l8 you're going to use the standard process of what we used to use as far as emulation i have tons of videos showing you how to do emulator showing you how to use that this is moving forward using project echo where you don't have to change a single thing so this being said you have two drop downs up here you can add a controller or you can add from an acd file which is a very cool process let me show you this so we're going to add from an icd file i'm going to select my project okay i already had it pre-pointed to the destination that it was already looking for okay save us some time now we're going to open that up and the cool thing about adding from an acd file is it pulls in the project name okay it already knows it's going to be took with a controller it already knows the version is running and again this is what slot you are in you can change your slot number right here if you're in a different slot this does and use factory talk links as the communication path this is so it doesn't use rs logic or rs links anymore right as far as the communication path so if you're using project echo which is factory talk echo and you're trying to mimic your actual your project you're going to use fact links we'll show you this and again so we can change our ip address up here on which one you want to use for your communications path right so in our case you have a loopback a natural loopback inside of the os um the operating software which is windows right with the loopback is naturally127.0.0.1 that's a natural loopback okay so that's always there you can use that let me show you this so we're not going to change it to our our default you know what we've currently been using which is basically the 192.168.1 we're going to change it we're just going to leave it like it is slot 0. so let's add our project we're going to double click our project and see that it's quickly added okay now we can come in here at any time change our processor we can change or change the ip address change anything we want to right a user sd card um what's the controller instance online offline okay now you can come over here to device status device status you can see right here you can click on it and you can change from remote run to run to program that's where you would change that all right so now we we know how to add it our project to project echo that's how easy it is okay so what do we do right so if we're coming in here and i'm going to show you this and we're looking for the our factory talking links right so we talked about factory talk links so here's the software right so we're going to go to factory talk we're not going to go to rs links we're going to go to factory talk links okay so effect result links now if i open up factory top links again very very similar and can be used and and basically as a substitute for uh rs links but it does have a little bit of drawbacks it doesn't have the older drivers and stuff like that if you if you're you're currently using older drivers but if you're using this project echo this is what you use you can see right here i'm currently live this is my project that i have in here so my project theoretically that i have open right now i can go ahead and get online but if i go who active i'm currently using the um who active i'm currently using the software of rs links classic so i can't go online with it so how would i do that i would go file i would close i'll come over here to communications then i would go to select communication software change that to factory talk links hit ok then i'm going to come over here and open that back up right so i'm going to open up my file so you can select your file or you can open it just like you did and let's just go back and close this out because it's easier i already have it pulled up let's do the files and let's open up my file what i'm gonna do is actually get this online and show you how it works so we're opening up our file again after we've changed our communication path for who active really simple real easy to do but something that's kind of mandatory if you're going to use the factory talk um echo software right here what the reasons for that is obviously you're going to you're going to actually be able to test your whole software or test everything without changing anything so we're going to go who active now you see who active is pointing to factory talk links right so what we want to do is go to our driver right here now we want to download now what this is going to do is it's going to download the controller to the using the software okay so it's going to do its natural functional downloading it's going to show all the warnings all the errors if anything it's going to link all the routines then it's going to finalize and when it does it's going to leave it in the state the last state we left this controller in echo okay so in echo we left the controller in remote run right so let's let this finish right so echo is really really really easy to use you can use multiple projects i believe at this point in time uh you you can use up to 17 projects i'm not dead set on that number because i know they're gonna probably get things better and better and better as time goes on uh they always do with rockwell software right so let's let this thing download and as soon as it finished downloading okay so here we go about to say it was it's a really really small program so it shouldn't take long at all so it's going to finish downloading it's linking all my routines right now you can see the the current status up here it's from a uh it's remote run program so it's going to change based upon what you're doing um this is a really good side to this because again you're being able to test it without having to change your processor that's that's the coolest thing so if you're in the the way of testing or trying to do like a system test you don't have to change your processor your processor is 100 exactly what it's supposed to be in the real in the field and you can get everything talking so now i'm gonna go to remote run okay now in this this environment right i can easily come over here and now i'm in my and this does talk to everything right so it talks to factory talk uh you know studio and so if i have a factory talk studio and i try to make sure i have a good connection i can open up this and let me just do like a test real quick and see if everything works so currently you can see everything is working you know because it did actually show my driver now it does show communication peer-to-peer so you can see that this is uh this is the factory talk view studio this is the hmi project it's talking to this that was designed that we designed before to work with the the uh patching station project before but again this time we're using project echo you can see now if we open up project echo right and we have our we you can see we're right over here if you go to your little plug status which is device status you can open that up click on that you can see it's in remote right so it's actually running so if we want to throw in a program let's throw it in program you can see it swaps up here you see how that is see it's a very easy tool to actually use um let's see remote run okay so what it's a very easy tool to use and again all of this is functionally working okay so all this is just working just like it was on emulation we built it before i just want to show you a quick and easy way to actually communicate and use factory talk echo because again it's a brand new tool out there's not much information out there about it when it comes down to it here's how to use it here's how to you know base based upon you know my experience what i'd see the benefits of it but i see the drawbacks of it um really kind of what you should do what you can do you can do if you're in the business of doing multiple projects this is great to keep adding your projects in here and they will all communicate to the backplane right they will all communicate with no problems there's no changes that has to be made i'm going to actually show this on a plant p a x 5.0 and get that running on that as well so just to show you how that works now that process is going to take a little bit more time so i wanted to show you on a project that i personally built and show you that everything works now we we did get our process our plc program downloaded without changing to an emulator there's a real processor again we don't actually have that processor and we got it talking through our hmi really simple real easy using the factory talk logix echo again it is a paid software it's not a free software just like anything but it is a very valuable software if you are in the you know process of actually testing and making sure your system works you know you can always go back if you have emulator and use emulator just like you would um again if you don't have echo and you don't want any you kind of want to save some money or whatever the case may be then i would recommend staying with your you know your emulator but again this is a very cool tool because you don't have to change anything so it makes factory like testing your systems as they would work in a factory or as they would work in manufacturing perfectly simple really easy without changing anything making it work properly so hopefully you enjoyed that video and we'll see you guys on the next one