Stephan's blog posts
"I may not have gone where I intended to go but I have ended up where I needed to be." — Douglas Adams
Siemens Sirius 3RW44 Soft Starter Function Block for Step 7
stplanken — January 13, 2012 - 20:24
Since I couldn't locate any examples to control a Siemens Sirius 3RW44 soft starter via Profibus DP in an S7-300 system using Step 7 without PCS 7 or Soft Starter ES software, I decided to write my own reusable function block.
Since others may be running into the same problem, I decided to post the code here (project archive is attached). This allows communication over Profibus, which is far more advanced than reading and writing the standard 16 input/output bits.
Meet our newest pack member
stplanken — September 25, 2011 - 16:23
Meet our newest pack member, Reba.
She is an eight-week old German Shepherd cross. It is entirely coincidental but the resemblance with our German Shepherd that recently passed away is remarkable.
Tucker, 2003-2011
stplanken — September 18, 2011 - 23:05
Today was the day I had to put Tucker, my loyal German Shepherd, down. He was in pain and no medication in the world could reverse this. It was not an easy decision but a necessary one.
We rescued him in 2004 and it took me a while to figure out what made him tick. But ever since I figured it out, we bonded. He always accompanied me on long horseback rides through the Rocky Mountains and he loved riding in the truck bed.
Over the years, he has taught me a lot. Mainly about myself.
And for that, I am grateful.
iPhone "Cannot Connect to Voicemail"
stplanken — August 28, 2011 - 09:03
My wife's iPhone 4 came new out of the box at the telecom store. Neither of us have visual voice mail, in which case the voice mail button should just dial the voice mail. It does on mine, but it did not on my wife's. Instead, it displayed an error:
Drupal Block Refresh module caveats
stplanken — August 23, 2011 - 11:00
There is an issue with the Block Refresh module.
After installation and configuration I discovered that the auto refresh was not working. Firefox's Firebug extension showed that requests were made at the proper interval and data was actually returned, but the block's content was simply not being updated.
My iTunes gripes
stplanken — August 19, 2011 - 19:44
For me, iTunes is by far the worst software I have currently running on any of my computers. By far. It is such a contrast with the slick iOS devices from the same company.
Here are my iTunes gripes.
Customer service
stplanken — April 7, 2011 - 11:15
I ran into a technical issue on equipment I am not familiar with. I looked in the manual for clues to an error code and it suggested to contact the manufacturer. I chose to send an email because due to the noisy environment calling was not an option.
The first response from SEW Eurodrive: since I am not a "trusted contact" of theirs, I need to take action:
