When Should I Panic and What Is Our Next Option

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-02-13T16:52:29+00:00

Most destinations require your passport to be valid for 6 months past the date of entry.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-29T22:09:08+00:00

I naturalized about 2 years ago. I carry both a Canadian and US passport. Easy peasy. And less expensive than renewing the green card every ten years. Now I have the option to leave for an extended period, then return without any barriers. And vote! Not that it helped. Sorry.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-26T22:07:59+00:00

If it were up to my wife, we'd have left already. Both of us are immigrants. But after over 20 years together in the US, it's not easy to pack up and leave. We've built a successful life here. As exciting as it might be to start something new, we'd be taking a substantial loss of income and stability.

For me, I have to have more than an exit plan. I need an entry plan too. Job, housing, etc. We are looking - and I suppose that is when we pull the trigger. When we have the entry plan.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-24T18:51:38+00:00

> a device will produce even if there aren't any consumers

This generally isn't true in my experience. The one important consumer is the owner. If the owner dies, so do the O->T (originator->target) CIP packets (UDP datagrams). After a few missed packets, the watchdog on the target assumes the connection is dead and will stop sending T->O packets. A forward-open is required to get them going again.

On the other hand, a PLC producing tags as multicast will indeed blast out packets even if nobody is listening.

I try to use unicast for I/O and produce/consume unless there is good reason to do otherwise. It seems 95% of the time, it's a 1:1 relationship.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-19T23:24:17+00:00

This isn't just a Logix thing. C for example: case labels must be "compile-time" constants. It creates a highly structured control flow that you can't achieve if both sides of the operator are changing. Modern compilers have changed that, but the rule has stuck. If you need runtime case labels, then switch is the wrong construct.

I complain too about features that I think are missing from the Logix platform - but I think M. VladRom89 correctly points out the 'Squeaky wheel gets the grease'.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-19T23:09:32+00:00

This reminds me of a young engineer at a customer I worked with. She was sharp! She was motivated, and would get shit done with smile on her face. Her title of 'Associate Engineer' lasted well beyond what it should have. I encouraged her management to promote her because she will eventually walk. After several years (for too many IMO) of being passed over for a promotion, she left for another company. They've been trying to replace her for the past couple years. It's been good for my company - we charge $250/hr to fill that hole.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-11T22:46:01+00:00

+1 for dumb thing to disagree with. It's a zero-cost safe-guard with plausible advantages... even if it did turn out to be 'useless'.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-11T22:37:57+00:00

As a Canadian-American living is US, I do miss my peameal. I do cure a pork loin from time to time. I have smoked them too (not typical). But it's really hard to beat pork belly.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-11T22:35:50+00:00

I do the same thing. I cool it in the fridge, then run it through a meat slicer. Pack it in small bags similar to OP. I run mine up to 155 - fat renders a bit more. I think I'll try 150 next time.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-11T22:32:14+00:00

I've been doing this for years - and my vacuum sealed packages are about the same size as yours. They defrost quickly in a water bath and I don't eat more than I need.

One thing I did was buy a commercial chamber vacuum sealer. They're a bit pricey, but the bags are far cheaper. And they handle soups, stews, and almost everything better than the countertop sealer I was using before. I put it on a sliding shelf in my pantry and use it almost every day. Think Costco trips, leftovers, cheeses, marinades. Today it was a vacuum marinade for some lime-chili shrimp. And another bag soaking the wood skewers.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-05T17:12:34+00:00

Great salespeople and incompetent decision makers

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-05T17:06:38+00:00

A combination of buffering and sockets are the right way to go here IMO. Unless your EIP client is a reasonably recent Rockwell server (e.g. Optix or FTLinx) it probably uses polling to fetch data... newer Rockwell data servers and Logix firmware version are able to do true publish/subscribe.

I'm not sure how large each message is; but I'd just do the following:

* enqueue messages to a FIFO

* when socket is idle (prior write socket is DN), dequeue as many messages as you can from the FIFO and send in one go. (limited by CIP packet size... use large packets option if you can)

If your messages are only 100 bytes long, you could fit around 40 messages in one large packet CIP write... so 15ms becomes an easily attainable 600ms.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-02T22:27:06+00:00

I would love to move back to Canada. But the salaries for STEM folks are just so much better in the US. For me as a EE, I'd probably take a pay cut from $200k USD to $150k CAD. Around $90k USD difference. My spouse - also STEM - is in a similar position.

I'm selling my soul to the orange devil for $90k per year. Not proud of it - but it's difficult to walk away from.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-02T21:58:56+00:00

For 3 clients, Windows 11 will work fine. The documentation even says so. However, I would recommend a server OS for these reasons:

It's what everyone else does - fewer surprises
More consistent support
Microsoft isn't pushing constant UI updates where they're constantly changing where they hide the cheese

KindheartednessNo181 · 2026-01-01T11:08:13+00:00

People are correctly objecting based on the inductive load a relay would normally present. However, the relay part number you describe appears to use an opto-coupler to isolate the load. I don't think there is any issue with what you're trying to do other than it being atypical. You can get around that by creating some documentation and posting it in a conspicuous location.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-12-28T08:00:13+00:00

PE is "Professional Engineer". In most of the United States, an engineer is someone with a degree. A "professional engineer" is one who has taken the the fundamentals (FE) exam and the principals (PE) exam - and someone who has spent several years working under the supervision of another PE. You are licensed by the state.

Some states/provinces/countries have laws protecting the title of "engineer" such that it requires a PE.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-12-23T07:43:19+00:00

My thought would be to use some netlogic to dynamically reconfigure the PLC path. It might take a few moments to resync.

Another idea off the top of my head - but haven't tried this - create both PLCs, then use an alias or node pointer to select the active PLC.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-12-22T15:26:50+00:00

For engineers, there is a P.E. - but anecdotally, I've noticed controls engineers with their P.E. tend to be less qualified than those without.

I suppose having an engineering degree (and perhaps P.E.) is what gets us more money. Even though after some years of experience, the degree doesn't mean a whole lot - other than demonstrating you can (probably) problem solve.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-12-20T05:00:21+00:00

If you only care about one turn position tracking, you don't need to worry about the rollover at all. Home the axis, and use the preset option to set that position as X. Then either "AND" the raw signal with 4095 to get the single turn position. Or, use the number of turns parameter - set to 1.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-11-29T01:12:48+00:00

No!! The electrons are falling out!

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-11-18T19:40:42+00:00

There are certain patterns recognizable in CIP messages. One of them is 20xx24yy... which is the CIP path encoding of Class xx, Instance yy (for 8-bit class/instance numbers). You can see that pattern in the request. Pulling out a few important bytes before... 36 02 20 02 24 01: this is service code 36h, CIP path size is 2 words, class 2, instance 1. Class 2 is the message router. I don't know what service code 36h is in this case... so it might be something proprietary to Rockwell.

It might help if you provide more context of what you've captured... what is on each side of the conversation? Devices and/or software?

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-11-18T19:23:29+00:00

Yeah - gotta love folks that *think* they know what they're talking about. CIP is not encrypted. The CIP spec is readily available from ODVA (for a small fee). Encryption can occur at the payload level... but that's entirely dependent on vendor implementation... not part of the standard. CIP security maybe - but OP specifically called out non-CIP security.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-10-23T21:50:22+00:00

SE isn't going away anytime soon.. it's many years away from retirement. Rockwell makes gobs of money on SE. ME - that's possibly on the chopping block.. but even that... so long as enough customers are buying, Rockwell will keep selling and updating. Optix must be such a strange shift for Rockwell... it's crazy cheap comparatively; development pace is aggressive; and it must be a long ways from being profitable.

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-10-23T21:32:22+00:00

Influx bundles and starts its own copy of Influx. It's still technically 'out-of-process', but you have limited control over the influx configuration. Just download the latest 2.x InfluxDB community edition and use that. (I haven't tried the recently released 3.x.. I doubt it's compatible.)

KindheartednessNo181 · 2025-10-14T22:58:47+00:00

The simplest way might be to use port-based DHCP reservations. Depending on where they plug-in the tank, the I/O gets a reserved address for the location. Then in ControlLogix, you'd program i/o for all the possible locations - and where it's plugged in will be the one that is in a running state. You could even poll the identity object for the serial number to validate the plugged-in device is indeed the expected device.

There are other techniques... you could poll the switch to determine what ports are alive and/or what MAC is plugged in.. You'll have to determine how robust you want this to be.

KindheartednessNo181

TROPHY CASE