Lookout lock up

[swrea]

We are still experiencing lock ups with out Lookout program. It also seems

that when we want to shut down the program it will not close properly we have to

either shut down the computer or do a CTRL+ALT+DEL to shut the program

down. Thanks Jason

[Doug M]

Jason,
Can you give more information, such as what version of Lookout you are using, whether this occurs if you are using a very simple process, if this has always happened or just started, what the text of any error messages are, etc.  Thanks!

[swrea]

We are using version 6.0.2 (Build 1) of Lookout we use Lookout to control and monitor an electrical substation. We use radios, phones, and frame relay (DSL) to communicate with our RTU’s at the Substation. This seems to have always happened that why we went to the 6.0.2 we had 5.1 and was hoping that by upgrading it would quit locking up but it did seem to help. We really don’t get any error messages; we just get the hourglass and can seem to get stable again until we restart the computer. I have been noticing that if we do not restart the computer it seem to lockup more. I don’t know how much help this will be to you but hopefully we can get the program to be more stable. Thanks Jason.

[Doug M]

Jason,

Mmm, it is very difficult to know what would be causing your computer to lock up without any error messages, but here are some ideas that may help you troubleshoot.

Monitor your CPU and memory usage to see if anything looks out of normal, such as the CPU taking up more than 25% of the processor consistently.  If the CPU is in heavy use note which processes are taking up a lot of time.  If it is the lookout or citadel process, this means there is code in your Lookout Process that may need to be modified -- some things that can take a lot of CPU is if you are logging tons of data to the database, in which case you may want to adjust your deadbands, another thing which can take a lot of CPU is if you are doing lots of animations on your panels, if so reduce the number of animations. 

Also check to see if there is some process that continues to use more and more memory.

[swrea]

Doug I Was wondering if maybe you could help me in another problem that we are having. We are trying to communicate with a RTU at a substation over a phone line. We are getting a error massage that states Modbus exception response 2 (Illegal Data Address) – function code 1 (start=2042, count=3). So I went to the help menu and typed in function codes. I look at all the results that the help came up with so I went to the Modbus advanced button and change the fc1 read coils to like 5 and we got 4 good response but we still have 3 exceptions that keeps us from getting the 100% of valid response frames. I really don’t know what we need to do. We have other substations that are on phones and are not experiencing these kinds of problems. Maybe its something about the way we are trying to get these substations to communicate for the first time. Thanks Jason.

[Doug M]

Jason, I probably wouldn't change fc1 coils parameter so low, but it all depends on your device.  The illegal address message means that you have requested information from a register that your device doesn't use or support, so I would make sure the registers you are trying to access are actually supported by your device.