Symptom → most likely cause
| Symptom | Usual suspects | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Touches land in the wrong place | Calibration drift | Recalibrate from the system menu (below) — free |
| Touch ignores you entirely, display fine | Digitizer or touch controller; field reports exist of CR3000 touch dying after months of service | Gasket check first, then repair quote |
| Ghost touches / one zone always active | The bezel gasket: a small fold or warp presses the overlay and reads as a permanent touch — a documented field case | Loosen the mount, reseat the gasket, recheck — free. (Same physics as PanelView's Fatal 3A) |
| Screen dark | Power or backlight, not touch | Black-screen triage |
Getting into the system menu
- CR3000 / units with a reset button: hold the reset button on the side while applying power, and keep holding until the system menu appears. Touch calibration lives there.
- G3 series: hold the first two soft-keys while applying power; after the copyright page the screen goes blank — release, and the system menu shows.
The free-Crimson advantage
Crimson 3.x is a free download, and the project database transfers to a same-family spare without licensing pain. That changes the economics: a shelf spare plus the project file beats most repair timelines. Touch-layer repair itself runs the usual $300–$1,000 and 1–2 weeks — worth it on larger units, marginal on small ones. Keep the .cd3/database file off the machine and labeled; the panel is replaceable, the project is the asset.
Keep producing while you wait
Have the panel project export? Drop a FactoryTalk View, TIA Portal, Weintek or CSV export into our free HMI project converter — it runs in your browser, the file never leaves your PC, and every display becomes a page of buttons, indicators and values for the app, with the real tag names already in place.
Today, from a phone: the free LineKeeper app for iPhone and iPad speaks EtherNet/IP, Siemens S7 and Modbus TCP. On Allen-Bradley Logix it reads the controller's own tag list automatically; on S7 and Modbus you add the addresses you care about. Build a dashboard and an operator panel with start/stop buttons in about 15 minutes, mount a spare iPad in full-screen panel mode, and the operator has a screen before the first repair quote arrives. Reading is free; writes are a one-time unlock with confirmation and limit checks on every value.
The 15-minute temporary panel
Zero-config tag browser for Logix, drag-and-drop dashboard, operator panel, alarms — no changes to the PLC program.
On a desktop? Scan with your iPhone or iPad to get the free app.For the machine itself: the LineKeeper device — in development — is a self-contained 7″ or 10″ touchscreen built to live on the machine permanently — the same drag-and-drop screens, plus what a phone shouldn't carry:
- Live view of every tag, refreshed twice a second — plus write access with a full audit log
- Operator panel: start/stop, indicators, setpoints — hold-to-run buttons release safely
- Stays useful after the repair: data logging, dashboards, machine diagnostics
Small hardware that helps while the panel is out
- GL.iNet Opal travel router — Wi-Fi into the machine network from a spare switch port, so the phone app can stand in as the screen today.
- Anker USB-C to gigabit Ethernet adapter — wired straight into a spare switch port, the phone sees the controller in seconds; USB-C iPhones and iPads need no drivers.
- VIVO pole-mount VESA arm — puts the temporary screen at eye level on a machine post instead of a chair.
- TICONN IP67 enclosure with clear cover — houses the gateway or Wi-Fi bridge on the machine without bare boards on the rail.
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