Boldly Crossing the Line...

Between the frustrating and the absurd...

I've spent two days in front of this computer trying to locate classes, books and seminars for devicenet. It's an established system, with a broad user base. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong. After all this effort, this is all I have to show :

1. Allen Bradley. They made it, they teach it. Unfortunately, we don't use it - ours is PC-based cards from SST.

2. Nobody provides SST instruction. Including SST.

3. No, I take that back. The Open Devicenet Vendor Association, ODVA, does. They have an expansive 2-day seminar, featuring the man who invented the CIP information method. The documentation at the website looks very promising, and SST is part of the curriculum

4. If only it weren't documentation from 2002. I contacted the ODVA to see when the next classes for 2003 were being offered, and heard back from Don Pieronek himself. The class is tentatively scheduled for July. But a tentative month is not what I need right now - I need an enrollment form!

5. Searching for books, I found numerous texts on CAN, with references to devicenet. This is reversed to what I am after. I do not want CAN with a little DN thrown in. I want Devicenet, with only as much CAN as I need to know to understand Devicenet. I don't need to understand the architecture of a a Pentium 4 chip to use MS Word.

6. Lastly, I found many short seminars in Devicenet. The ones that weren't from 2001 and earlier (honestly, the internet is like a small town at the end of summer - littered with garage sale signs dated back to april! Does anybody clean this **** up?!) are in GERMANY!!

Thanks for letting me rant. If anybody knows a currently scheduled, reputable class on devicenet, held anywhere in the US, I'm intensely interested in hearing about it.

In the meantime, I'm just going to bang my head on the keyboard for a while.

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Thanks.

TM

Have you called SST? Do they have a recommendation? The SST doesn't come with manuals? What about the vendor that sold you the SST?

Yes, yes, and more yes...

Hi Rick

>>Have you called SST? Do they have a recommendation?<<

The first thing I thought of. They told me to take it up with our local distributor.

>>The SST doesn't come with manuals?<<

The card came with virtually nothing. The help files in the SST software would be fine, I suppose, for somebody with a sound knowledge of devicenet - which I lack.

>>What about the vendor that sold you the SST?<<

This is where it gets really cute...

I contacted our local vendor, and they do training - but not on SST products. If I ever want to learn about Wonderware, though, by golly, give them a call!

Thanks for the interest, Rick, and yes, I do sometimes overlook the obvious - but not this time

TM

One more thing...

In my pursuit of Devicenet erudition, I found this spiffy web site

http://www.htservices.com/default.htm

High Tech Services is an integrator, but their site include a host of useful info for free, introductions on PLCs, PCs, communication systems (ethernet oriented, demmit-all).

The most interesting spot for me was the books page. They've prowled through Amazon.com and collected links to just about every PLC, Process Control and Networking manual they sell. Just click and look.

Oh, yes, there's also a book listed at the very bottom that I was pleasantly suprised to see listed with all these collegiate-level luminaries, heh heh heh...

TM

Re: Yes, yes, and more yes...

TimothyMoulder said:

Hi Rick

Thanks for the interest, Rick, and yes, I do sometimes overlook the obvious - but not this time

TM

Click to expand...

I hope I didn't offend. I have found that sometimes we (and I have been guilty of this) forget the Internet isn't the only source of information.

No offense percieved or taken

Timothy,

At what level do you plan to use DeviceNet? As a remote I/O network? As a communications network tying together products from multiple vendors? Do you need to write the code interfacng your product with the CAN chip?

If you're looking at the end-user level, you might try getting a demo version of a 'soft PLC' that can communicate with the SST card you have. The demo should have some sample applications that you can study to see how they map the data from the field device to variables in the software. It should also let you create small runtime applications so you can learn how to do things on your own.

For the price of attending a two or three day seminar, you could probably accumulate enough hardware to put together a basic DeviceNet system to teach yourself the basics.

My humble suggestion is to make friends with the Technical Specialist at the nearest A-B office or A-B distributor.

I'm saying that mostly because that's my job, and I know that the men and women who have my job title in various sales offices around the U.S. are probably the best versed in DeviceNet technology, both from an A-B product perspective and generally with other products.

I routinely get called upon to fix or explain multivendor installations, including one where the only A-B content was the cable.

The class that Rockwell GMS teaches really is A-B based; it's focussed on 1747-SDN or 1756-DNB DeviceNet scanners and uses A-B slave devices and RSNetworx for DeviceNet software. Only the wiring fundamentals and data framing parts will really be helpful to you if you're using an SST-based system.

I sometimes present ad-hoc DeviceNet seminars to our local trainers, salesmen, and integrator's engineers.

Often I'm simply showing up and doing Q&A until I run out of breath.

But when I have more time to prepare, I have a literature list:

1. A-B Publication DN-6.7.2 (DeviceNet Cable Planning and Installation Guide). The Installation Checklist on page 1-17 is underlined, flagged, and dog-eared for visibility.

2. Nick Jones' excellent "How to implement a DeviceNet network"
http://www.odva.org/10_2/05_tech/index-howto.htm

3. My own "Ten Stupid Things DeviceNets do to Mess Up Their Lives" troubleshooting document. It's really just examples of the things on Page 1-17 of the Cable guide.

4. A DeviceNet technical overview paper I picked up from Cutler-Hammer a couple of years back. I have it on CD at home but not at my fingertips right now.

5. The Bob Law DeviceNet Technical Bible. This is a mammoth compendium of DeviceNet information compiled by A-B's senior DeviceNet commercial engineer. This isn't available publicly, but as I said if you're on good terms with an A-B office they're likely to be generous.


Good luck with your training pursuit. I hope you share your experiences with this new system, both good and bad, with this Forum !

Hi, Steve

>>At what level do you plan to use DeviceNet? As a remote I/O network? As a communications network tying together products from multiple vendors? Do you need to write the code interfacng your product with the CAN chip?<<

The system is already in place, my task is to maintain and expand on it. It's being used to communicate between a PC running Entivity VLC, via an SST card, to Wago and Numatics I/O devices. And thank god, no, I don't have to code this turkey

>>If you're looking at the end-user level, you might try getting a demo version of a 'soft PLC' that can communicate with the SST card you have. The demo should have some sample applications that you can study to see how they map the data from the field device to variables in the software. It should also let you create small runtime applications so you can learn how to do things on your own.<<

Ah, if only... but time has become critical. I need to get up to speed as fast as possible. Moreover, the machines in question are 24/7/365 runners. They won't let me have them long enough to make requested program changes, so getting time on one "just to poke around" is right out the window.

>>For the price of attending a two or three day seminar, you could probably accumulate enough hardware to put together a basic DeviceNet system to teach yourself the basics.<<

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but all things considered, a class is really the only route open to me.

I'm not averse to taking the AB class - I'm sure everything will be addressed. What worries me is how much of it will be applicable, since the only thing on this system from AB is the flat bus cable.
If the essential function of the commissioning software is the same, I should be able to adapt what I learn.

Above all, I don't want to spend a grand on this course and look at my boss afterward with scratch marks on my head.

Thanks!

TM

Hi Ken!

>>I routinely get called upon to fix or explain multivendor installations, including one where the only A-B content was the cable.<<

Deja-vu. Was that you I spoke to?

>>The class that Rockwell GMS teaches really is A-B based; it's focussed on 1747-SDN or 1756-DNB DeviceNet scanners and uses A-B slave devices and RSNetworx for DeviceNet software. Only the wiring fundamentals and data framing parts will really be helpful to you if you're using an SST-based system.<<

Yeh, I was afraid of that. Unfortunately, it's about the only route left to me at this point.

Here's a question - Are the basic tasks that RSNetworx fulfills for an AB application universal? For instance, node commissioning - every system has to do it, and while there is bound to be some variation in style, are the methods applicable across the board?

I've saved this page to my computer and will check out the information you described... thanks!

>>Good luck with your training pursuit. I hope you share your experiences with this new system, both good and bad, with this Forum !<<

I have in the past, and doubtless will in the future.

Thanks again!

TM

The battle plan

I've exhausted every resource available to me, and here is the end result : I'm going to take the AB class to break the ice, then come back home and use our backup hardware to research on my own.

This is frustrating, since it's not what I wanted to do, but there is just nothing out there right now for end-users. banghead

Interesting... I contacted the guys who made the machines for us to ask where they got their training. They said they were self-taught.


Thanks for the information, guys.

TM

Tim I believe you can handle it once you understand the basics. I never got the AB training but have implemented a Devicenet system using AB products...SLC5/04 and AB 160 drives with an SST card. The system also has AS-I using IFM Efector I/O devices. I was terrified when I first started using this stuff but WOW its the way to go.

Hey Tim; I just bought a surplus SST ISA-style DeviceNet scanner card off e-Bay. We can have an on-Forum "Learn about SST DeviceNet" thread if I can get my hands on the configuration and diagnostic software.

Exactly which model card from SST are you using ?

Hi Ken!

My card is : 5136-DN-ISA

You can get software and manuals by registering at

www.mysst.com

We'll get something going here yet!

TM

Ken, that would be great. I am probably going to end up supporting Devicenet before it is over, so any info I can get would be good.