Determining the current status of a license dongle

Determining the current status of a license dongle 1:

Outdated information on the license dongle

The dongle status is not updated automatically. This update must be triggered manually. The information displayed via the dongle may therefore still originate from the last time that this dongle was accessed and does not necessarily match the dongle currently being used.

  • Update the status of the license dongle manually.

These are the following (normal) TwinCAT 3 system states:

  1. TwinCAT is running in Run Mode: In this system state, the dongle window cannot communicate with the dongle
  2. TwinCAT runs in Config Mode with "Free Run": In this system state, the dongle window can communicate with the dongle
  3. TwinCAT runs in Config Mode without "Free Run": In this system state, the dongle window can only communicate with the dongle if all drivers for the IO devices of the EtherCAT bus are loaded.

To receive information on the current dongle status, open the License Device window by clicking on the corresponding dongle entry in the License subtree under SYSTEM:

Determining the current status of a license dongle 2:

Make sure that TwinCAT 3 is running in Config Mode (blue button in the System Manager toolbar is active):

Determining the current status of a license dongle 3:

If TwinCAT 3 is not yet running in Config Mode, click on the blue button. Information: This stops any user program that may be running.

If the system has been started directly in Config Mode but not in Free Run mode, it may be that not all drivers for the IO devices of the EtherCAT bus have been loaded yet. Click on the Reload Devices button in the System Manager to load all drivers:

Determining the current status of a license dongle 4:

Now you can click on the Reload Info button in the dongle window to read in the current dongle information.

Determining the current status of a license dongle 5:

Determining the current status of a license dongle 6:

The Reload Info button must be pressed after changing the dongle, as the data of the new dongle is not automatically displayed.