DL205 Ethernet Upgrade to 5.0

[tommy_scharmann]

I am in the process of upgrading a co-branded version of Lookout- Automation Direct- to the NI version. 4.x to 5.0. The co-branded version communicates with DL205 PLCs via Ethernet. It has a custom driver- the object file is DSComm.cbx. This is the Direct Logic Ethernet driver. I thought the process would be as simple as copying the DSComm.cbx file to the Lookout 5.0 root directory. This method did work with another custom object- Meter.cbx. When I create a Lookout process and then create a new object- I can see the Meter object in the create object dialogue box. I cannot see the DirectLogic driver object. I thought maybe a custom ini was needed or a custom entry in the Lookout.ini. Investigating the older installation reveals no such custom in
i files nor entries.

Is this even possible?
Does anyone know how to perform this kind of upgrade?

Regards,
Tommy Scharmann

[Khalid]

Hi Tommy,

This is definitely not a matter of just copying over the DSComm cbx.

There's more to it than just the CBX. There are associated DLLs and EXEs which the DSComm CBX depends on. For instance the CSMain.exe, ESMain.exe, DevEther.dll, CommServ.dll, etc. You'll find all these in your LookoutDirect folder.

Not sure if installing DirectSoft would install these. When I was working on this, I was given an actual installer for this which apparently installed the associated files. Also, I must mention I had a DSComm4.cbx -- this "4" version was supposed to support all the then new Lookout 4.0 features like Quality, etc.

May be this is designed to not work.. i.e., copying over of the DSComm CBX to any Lookout. I say this becau
se Host Engineering (who wrote this DSComm CBX) is now selling an add-on-to-Lookout "DSPlus" package:

http://www.hosteng.com/SW-Products/DLPlus.htm

But, we could argue that the CBX should at least show up in the list of Objects in Lookout albeit it may not work without the other files. Again this could be by design. I will try testing this and post the results when time permits.

Hope this helps in the meanwhile,

Regards,

Khalid 🙂

[tommy_scharmann]

Thanks Kahlid!

I look forward to hearing more of your insights!

Regards,
Tommy Scharmann

[Roli]

Tommy,

we tested it here.

There seem to be two dependencies.

First, you have to have the DirectSoft32 installed somewhere on the computer. The installer will set the search path for the required DLLs (e.g. host42.dll).

Second, you need to delete the lookout.dat file. This forces Lookout to rebuild the whole CBX list. (Normally, with version 4 CBX and above Lookout should rebuild the CBX into this .dat file automatically. AutomationDirect might not be correctly handling this)

With these two dependencies addressed, we see the DSCOMM4.cbx as DirectLogic object in the list.

Hope this helps
Khalid and Roland

PS: Here is the link for the mentioned SW as add-on to National Instruments Lookout:
/Catalog/Software_Products/Lookout_Direct_HMI/PC-DL-PLUS>Lookout Direct Plus Driver Object Software