iQ-R Series System Recorder Module

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. announces the new iQ-R Series System Recorder Module that efficiently assists programmers in determining a machine’s malfunction root cause by recording all program and mechanical state changes before and after an event or error takes place.

As any programmer knows, the most difficult errors to troubleshoot are those that are non-repeatable and/or occur at seemingly random times. Traditionally, these issues were resolved by a programmer creating program “traps” that capture key process information at the time of the error and hoping it gave them enough information to track down the root cause. 

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc.’s system recorder eliminates the ambiguity in diagnosing issues by recording all changes in their programming code for several minutes before and after an event takes place. Users can review the changes that took place in their code leading up to and after the event. In addition, the system recorder allows users to record the data visually, in video format, directly to the module to note environmental conditions that the code cannot see. Users can save significant time and money with the iQ-R Series System Recorder Module by being able to resolve machine errors with a wholistic view of the event in both recorded code and visual play-back. 

“Every so often we used to run into certain errors we called ghost issues. Maybe 1 in 30 customers would experience an issue, but narrowing down the root cause was difficult. It wasn’t uncommon for us to travel to the customer site and dedicate multiple days to hunting down exactly what took place to cause the issue. If I had access to a solution like this, it would have been a game changer. I could send this module to the machine site, and it would trigger/save every state change of my ladder logic before and after an event took place. This would allow me to remotely investigate/track-down what happened to cause the unexpected behavior and allow me to make the error easily repeatable so that I could improve my code to address the issue moving forward.”, said Rob Ruber, senior product manager at Mitsubishi Electric Automation.