Module Discovery and Reading IO Config: Automation Tech Talk for 09/03/25

Shawn discusses Module Discovery and Reading IO Config in today’s episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

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NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5).

Links mentioned in video:

– Online Courses: https://theautomationschool.com
– In-Person Courses: https://theautomationschool.com/live

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): Happy Wednesday. Right? I was gonna say Tuesday. It’s not Tuesday. It’s Wednesday.

I hope you’re all doing good. I hope, my mic and video is coming out okay. Let me know in the chat if it’s not. But in any case, I do want to, wish you all a great lunchtime here. And it is Wednesday, and, this is Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition.

And, feel free to chat in the, both on YouTube and on LinkedIn. And, of course, you’ll always find the audio, the video, and the transcript up on the automationblog.com later in the day. Typically, right after the show’s done, I try to get that all up there before going back to work. So in any case, today, I was gonna do one thing, and I decided to do something else. So, we’re actually gonna take a look at discovering IO, automatically discovering IO so you don’t have to crank in all those different part numbers.

And, we’re gonna do it today for Rockwell. And I did have some things that, I’ve been telling myself, Shawn, you gotta kinda remember to mention some things to everybody, when you’re doing the show. So let me just pull my notes up here and bring them over to the screen right below here so I can read them. So, first of all, the idea for today’s, discussion about discovering IO, adding IO, reading IO was, based on some lessons. I’m I actually had to I found some bugs in them, so I had to rerender them.

So I’ll be updating them, and, several of the courses over at the Automation School are getting updates, including my CompactLogics and ControlLogics. They’re getting the most updates today. But in any case, I also wanted to mention that I already have two industry veterans who I’m talking to about coming on the Automation Museum’s History of Automation podcast. And so I mentioned this because we already have three shows in the, in the can. We talked to experts about the history of Triconics, the history of InTouch or Wonderware, and the history of Rockwell PLCs.

But, again, these are things where we want to have multiple guests on about each each product and, to share their own experiences with them. And, you know, everybody remembers things differently. Like, some people remember some features, other people remember other features, and so on. So, we have two new people who I’m talking to to get them to come on the show. And I wanna invite you, whether you’re a vendor, user, integrated OEM, if you have done something with automation before the year February, I’m just using that as a kind of a benchmark.

Right? So, you know, we’re talking legacy stuff. We’re not talking, you know, fifty three seventies and fifty three eighties or a ‘7 you know, fifteen hundreds or December, or m two sixty twos if you’re a Snyder guy. But, we’re talking we’re talking, you know, older stuff, legacy stuff. The automation museum is not gonna be a museum of what just came out this this year.

It’s gonna be a museum of all that old stuff. And I wanna thank everybody who sent me stuff in. I will be doing more automation museum videos on the stuff you guys send in. I got a PCMK card. I got a net alert or or net net alert, I think, device too that I wanna show off.

So, in any case, thank you everybody and, for that. So what else do I have to cover here before we get started? There is no podcast today. The next podcast it takes, like, a day to produce every podcast. So, I’m taking this week off because I just got so much other else going on.

The the next podcast will be next Wednesday, of course, we release on Wednesdays, and that’ll be on IO Link. And that’s gonna kick off a bunch of IO Link coverage. So, I’ve been working after hours and weekends getting all the IO Link hardware I have together built into demos that we can not only use as labs here in the office, but also to do videos on. So, we got Siemens, we got Rockwell, we got IFM, Even had a a good friend of the show send in some stuff, so we’ll be looking at the stuff he sent in too, which just depends if I can get it working at 05:00 in the morning. We’re not drinking my coffee, but, hopefully, I can.

And, also, I’m looking at some really cool three d simulation software I wanna use in the school, but it can also be used as a digital twin, and it’s affordable. It’s not like the 10,000, $50,000 packages you see out there. Right? So, I’m actually been working on that, working with the vendor on that after hours as well. And a lot of things going on.

We are getting ready. I just got off the phone with the vendor, actually off a meeting with the vendor. We got a exciting new, episode coming up on, OPC. And then we have another episode coming up on Ethernet push buttons. This one actually was re requested.

We actually have the equipment here, but we’re waiting for the vendor to schedule that. I’m also guys, you probably remember the, military trade shows demo I have in there. I’m just gonna work through a couple of bugs, and that should be that video should be coming out. And, I actually have a major vendor approached me and said, Shawn, come and interview our folks at our trade show. And so we’re finalizing the details on that.

So that’ll be in several weeks from now, but I did wanna share that with you guys. So in any case, hey. Before I forget too, and I wanna say greetings to Nicholas. Before I forget, anybody, any of you guys out there, if you’ve learned something you wanna share with the rest of the community, please just send me a message. I know we had people sign up, and then they couldn’t make a customer’s call, the boss calls.

I totally get that. Totally get that. But if you are using I saw one person said he was he had created a video showing people how to use safety in a Siemens drive, and he got a lot of really, good feedback from it. I mean, those are the type of things. You know, a lot of you probably don’t even know what that video is.

Right? So we wanna get people like that on the show to talk about, you know, what they’ve done and and sharing, useful tips. And I think it’ll be easier, on the audience if they’re not always hearing from me all the time because I’ve been doing this for full time now for over ten years, going on eleven years. And, so you guys you know, I got thousands of videos in Ako, so you guys know all about me. But in any case, let’s go ahead and go over to the computer.

And, again, feel free to, chime in on the chat. Let’s see if I have everything set up here correctly. I think I’m in the top right. So, of course, this is a live thing right over my face, but that’s okay. I don’t think you guys see that.

So in any case, what are we gonna look at? We did not wanna see my desktop. We wanted to see VMware. Okay. And I’m actually in, and if you guys didn’t notice here on the, workbench, I have an old Suck 500 full of stuff, just full of IO.

And I try to pick up so many different types of IO modules for my course, which I’m filming now in the slick 500. So I wanted to pick up a a a real, you know, assortment of of IO cards. You know? And I could go in there and I could say, you know, let me type in each and every model. But one of the great things we got with the slick 500 that we didn’t have with the PLC five, now correct me if you think I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s any redial thing on the PLC five.

Maybe I’m just having a senior moment, but I don’t think it existed. But in the slick 500, it did. And this also worked for the compact for the, Micrologics as well. And so what you could do here in this old platform from the nineties, early nineties, late eighties, is you could go across RSLogix 500 didn’t come out until, like, 9596. Right?

I was actually I beta tested it. It was really cool. When it first came out, it was like Winlogix five on steroids. Right? So in any case, what I’m gonna do here is I got I got Studio 5000 open in the background.

Let me hide that a little bit. I’m gonna go to IO configuration, and I’m gonna do something called a read IO config. K. This is, again, a feature from the nineties, early nineties. Right?

And what’s what’s this work? Right? Now I do have to have the path to the PLC correct or I can’t read IO config, but I’m just I’m not online, but I’m giving it the path to where the PLC exists. Read IO config and look at that. It started off with a four slot chassis, and it was like oops.

Let me minimize that. Get that back. And it was like, nope. He has a 13 slot, I guess. And look at it.

I have an IB, ITB, IB, IB, IV, IV, IV 32, OBOV, NI 4, NI 4, NI four, I, NI four, I, NI four, INO4I, blah blah blah. But look at it. I read it all in. I didn’t have to type that all in. Now how often are you gonna have all the equipment on your desk before you actually create your program?

Well, maybe not tha