Wireless RS-232

Hi all,

Can anyone help me source a company that provides a wireless link to transmit RS-232 data from a PLC to my service PC.

We have a number of machines with mostly Siemens or ABB PLC's. I connect to these via a serial port on my laptop (the Siemens via the PC-current loop converter).

The PLC cabinets are not near the machines, so I cannot check the status whilst on the machine, without great trailing lengths of cable!

I would like to find a transmitter/receiver pair that will transmitt the serial info from the PLS to my laptop.

Any ideas?

Hi,

See the link, its from Phoenix.

http://www.phoenixcontact.com/global_scripts/reload.jsp?template=mainTemplate&url=http%3A//www.phoenixcontact.com/nl/products/signal-level-matching/36021_2188.htm%3Fland%3Dnl%26lang%3Dnl

Ed

The link above came up in German and I couldn't find an alternate language button.

Here's the US web page for the same Phoenix Contact radios I've used.

http://www.phoenixcon.com/wireless/detail.asp?l0=WIRELESS&ProdGroup=29&l1=Wireless+Data

2nd from the top. You need two, one for each end, and and an antenna for each. The short 1/4 wave antenna should work fine for within a site.

There are issues about frequency allocations that vary from country to country, so you need one that's legal whereever it ends up.

Dan

DeviceMaster AIR

I'm not sure if you've seen the DeviceMaster AIR or not, it's a flexible, wired, or wireless 802.11b to RS-232/422/485 device.

If interested, feel free to contact me for a 60-day free evaluation.

Maxstream makes some RS-232 radios that I have messed around with, they have pretty good range and you can run them off a 9-Volt battery, not sure how long you can do that for but you can do it.

Alternatively if you have an ethernet connection you can connect an access point to it temporarily and use ethernet to communicate. Assuming of course that the software and PLC support ethernet communications.