Square D to Citect Comms

This is a long shot....Has anyone recently connected a Citect SCADA package to a square D PLC using the SPE4 port expander. I could really use some goggles to see through the mud.

What type of problems are you having? Everytime I have used a Niobrara Research & Development (NR&D) SPE4 to talk to a Symax controller, it has been a very easy installation. Remember to check your cabling especially RTS and CTS (pins 6 and 7).

The SPE4 acts just like a 5 port network card. Each port is assigned an address (default is 0, 1, 2, 3, 4) so your Citect needs to be set up to handle networking rather than peer to peer communications. The Symax standard is to define your starting address and then the destination address (i.e. 002, 004).

If your SCADA software does not support network addressing you will have to program the SPE4 to act as a "collector" instead. Using the software from http://www.niobrara.com, you can create a lookup table using the 2048 mailbox registes in the SPE4. The SPE4 will automatically populate these registers with data from/to the specified port(s) and make it available to/from any other port.

Steve,

I used the Citect software with an SqD model 400 processor back in 1990. Unfortunately all I can tell you is that it did work with the SPE4 port. It was so long ago and I have not done it since I can't remember how I did it. I know that there were no problems doing so because if it was I would have remembered that, you always tend to remember the problems.

I would call Citect or the Modicon help line, as I am sure you are aware that Modicon and Square D are all part of Schneider.

Sorry I could not remember more.