A customer has several UDC 3200 loop controllers with newly added Ethernet cards.   He needed to configure each of the controllers’ IP addresses using Honeywell Process Instrument Explorer (PIE) software.  Because the controllers are working in a 24×7 continuous process, he was concerned about how making those changes would affect each controller’s performance.

So he asked me:  Would a PIE action of uploading config files from or downloading them back to a controller affect the controller’s performance?

In the past, I’d only ever changed a controller’s IP address when it was on my workbench, not when it was actively controlling a process. So I’d never paid attention to whether PIE communications would affect the controller’s output or its PID action. Since I couldn’t answer the question, I told the customer I’d run a test to find out for sure.

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