FTView Studio SE - Serial Comms

One of my current projects requires serial (RS232) comms to a RF power controller. The unit is available in devicenet and profibus versions but in this instance we must use RS232 by customer requirement.

Scada: FTView Studio SE
PLC: RSLogix5000

One option would be to add a serial comms card to the PLC rack but that seems expensive.

Does anyone have any alternative suggestions for integrating the Serial Comms in to FTView Studio SE?

I've done similar things in the past (RSView32) with TCP comms by writing a VB6 Application and using DDE to get the data into the SCADA. I'm fairly certain I can do this with again with MSCOMM.OCX but I'm concerned that VB6 is very old now and the application may not even run under 64 bit windows.

Nick

Why can't you use the serial port on your PLC?

You have to evaluate the tradeoff between the engineering effort and the hardware cost. Prosoft modules sometimes save a lot of money by being simple, easy to implement, and reliable.

My first instinct would be to add an EtherNet/IP to RS-232 interface to your ControlLogix control system.

The 1734-232ASC is good for basic ASCII, especially if you're using POINT I/O.

The HMS Fieldbus "Communicator", and the Real Time Automation ASCII interface boxes are also very good.

If you want to go a software route, I would recommend the "UCON" user configurable serial driver, which I think is still part of the KepServer Enterprise license that's an option for FactoryTalk View SE>

Thanks for the replies.

We need two serial ports and there are none available without adding two pro-soft modules.

I like the sound of of the Ethernep/IP to RS232 gateway. I found this one with a quick google search:

http://www.rtaautomation.com/ethernetip/435nba/

Does anyone have experience of it?

Nick

The RTA device has the reputation of being the easiest to configure and fastest to deploy of all the EtherNet/IP to ASCII devices I've seen. My experience with it is indirect.

Take a close look at the serial data you intend to exchange between the RF power controller and the control system.

If it's ordinary ASCII with carriage returns or line feeds or some other non-printable character as a delimiter, the data should be very easy to exchange with a general purpose ASCII module (like the RTA device).

If the data is encoded in hex without regard to ASCII character meaning, and doesn't have easy-to-use characters at the beginning and/or end of the data string, it's going to be a harder challenge and might require a more sophisticated device.

I have been burned several times by choosing an ASCII device then finding out later there was a checksum or other hex data feature in the serial protocol instead of ordinary CR/LF at the end of the line.

Eddie,

Thanks for the info. From the manual it is just plain ascii with a CR at the end but no LF. The RTA device seems like a good bet.

Thanks,

Nick