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| The history of the EASY logic relay >> by Olaf Dung |
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In January 1997, Moeller who were still known as Klöckner-Moeller decided to put an intelligent switchgear component on the market that was situated in the market segment with the "Logo" from Siemens. What was more appropriate than to analyse the existing system and test its ergonomic features.
Comparisons were made between January and April which analysed the programming of the function components, and which examined ways to more »easily« program and enter the circuit-diagrams. It took six months before the button input, character repertoire, display supplier, instruction set, enclosure, etc. were defined and the way forward had been decided. It took from November 1997 to May 1998 before the first hardware was available and a user interface – for Windows 3.11 at the time – had been created. The latter originated from an experimental operating system and simulated the full functional range of the Easy 4xx series. |
 Circuit example |
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In May 1998, both were available, i.e. four device types of the 4xx family and the Easy-Soft V1.0 user interface in five languages. As the logic relay was similar to the Siemens display, and had a few operating elements less for menu guidance, it was not absolutely necessary to have Easy-Soft V1.0.
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 EASY 412-AC-RC |
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Soon further types were to join the family, which made ergonomic support with an extended instruction set and extended operands for the circuit diagram input a highly desirable feature. Easy-Soft V1.0 developed into V1.1, a manageable software package which was available on diskette. In April 1999, the Easy 6xx saw the light of day together with the Easy-Soft V1.1. |
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The highlight of the 6xx device family was the text operand "D", which could be used to present a four line plain text together with two definable parameters on the display.
Easy-Soft V1.1, which had been developed for Windows 3.11 required a fundamental overhaul. The 16 Bit version which was developed under Visual Basic 3.0 was intended to be transformed into a mature, up-to-date 32 Bit version which no longer needed to run under an Interpreter-Runtime system, but which was available as a compiled program. And thus, the 32 Bit version 2.0, a complete operating package developed under C++ was the result. It no longer displayed a pure simulation, but rather a user interface with emphasis on the input, archiving and documentation of Easy circuit diagrams. From September 2000 Easy-Soft V2.0 was delivered to customers. The successor version 2.1 in February 2000 mainly featured implementation of bugfixes, and still no simulation which was known from V1.1. It was high time to expand the simulation. Almost a year went by until December 2000 when version 3.0 with simulation, a completely reworked installation feature and up-to-date help system in six languages became available. |
 EASY 619-AC-RC with decentral expansion via EASY 200-EASY |
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In the meantime, the Easy 6xx devices, which could be expanded locally by some digital inputs and outputs became available for delivery. The Profibus DP expansion module which required an address appeared. Easy-Soft version 3.0 became version 3.1, which made it possible to set a Profibus DP address on a DP module connected to an Easy 619/621. Version 3.1 has been available since June 2001. Much to their praise, Moeller made some software patches available for download on the Internet for owners of version 3.1, which eliminated some minor bugs. |
 Screenshot of the EASY-SOFT version 3.0, which includes a Simulation Toolbox |
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