Apex Cleco driver troubleshooting

The features and functions available in a node are controlled by the licenses that are installed in the node.

To verify that the Apex Cleco driver license is installed:

1. From the Workbench left pane, expand the node whose license you want to check, and then select the Administration icon.
2. From the Administration window, select the Licenses tab.
3. Select the appropriate license. Details of the license appear on the tab.
4. View the Features column to identify the device driver.

If you do not see the correct license, or if the license is expired, you must request a license from your license key provider.

For information on how to install a license, refer to System Administration > Licenses.

The Apex Cleco driver is not part of this node's installation. The Apex Cleco driver is installed as a package separate from the base product installation.

You may be working with different levels of nodes, each with different levels of support for devices. Ensure that this node is the one with support for Apex Cleco controllers.

For information on how to add the Apex Cleco driver package, refer to System Administration > Packages.

The Apex Cleco controller needs to be configured to communicate via the Open Protocol with the driver. The complete description of this configuration is beyond the scope of this documentation.

Ensure that the IP address in the network settings is correctly configured for your network setup. There may be cross subnet issues depending on how the PLCs were configured.

Ensure that the correct port value has been entered. The default Open Protocol port for an Apex Cleco controller is 4545.

Try using the Ping function on the Workbench Administration panel, Diagnostics tab for your node to see if that level of communication is successful.

Heartbeat messages between the Apex Cleco driver and the physical Apex Cleco controller are needed to maintain the ethernet connection. The controller will break the connection if there is no communication from the driver after 15 seconds. During definition time a value is specified in the Keep Alive field, which is used as a basis to send a heartbeat message to the controller. The driver will attempt to send this heartbeat message as close to this value as possible, but there are times where the message may be sent one or two seconds later than the value specified in the Keep Alive field. This will only be a problem if your Keep Alive value is greater than 12. If you find that your device becomes disabled because it did not communicate with the controller and the Keep Alive value in the device definition is larger than 12, change this to a value of 10. 

Apex Cleco controllers support many different protocols, such as ModBus or Ethernet/IP. The Apex Cleco driver communicates to the controller using the Open Protocol. Attempting to communicate to a controller that is defined to use a FieldBus protocol will prevent the Apex Cleco device from starting. Ensure that the Open Protocol setting has been enabled on the physical Apex Cleco mPro400 device.

This section describes the error codes that you might encounter when using the Apex Cleco driver.

These error codes are available from the Devices window in the Extended Status column. The error codes are also referenced in the Exceptions Log. Note that these error codes are not the error codes displayed on the front of the Apex Cleco controller.

When the system experiences an abnormal condition (such as a device failure, disconnect from a controller, or software error), an error code and extended error code are recorded in the Exceptions Log.

In the Devices window, the Status column will always be a generic error code that can tell you if the error is a communication error, a data error, or some other internal device error. The Extended Status column provides the error code from the driver. These error codes can be basic runtime error codes or specific to the Apex Cleco driver.