FTV and Kepserver modbus tcp comms to 3rd party

does anyone have good experience with FTV Panelview Firmware version V8.1 & V9.0 and Kepserver modbus tcp comms to 3rd party?


i have an PV1500+ existing application (FW V8.1 with flashed Kep modbus TCP driver) a few years old that is running fine i need to add a few new pages (with rockwell tags not 3rd party) but when i "Test' the existing page of application with Kepserver tags in FTV the comms does not work.



i also have a new PV1500+ application to do on FW 9.0



i have uploaded & restored the runtime .mer and restored the backup .apa files to try both options to no avail.


i have the original default.pfe file and added the kepserver in the tree of the application and the Kepserver status tells me its running, i can see the tags through the OPC client in the Kepserver utility and the quality is displayed as good.


I did do this a few years ago and remember it was "clunky" but once set up stable. just cannot remember the procedure


it would be so much easier if rockwell just provided the Modbus tcp driver without needing kepserver as a 3rd party .



thanks in advance.

ok it looks promising now. its clunky at best and i would suggest stay clear of this unless you have to.


issue was compatibility of FTV firmware Vs Kepserver version.


between FTV FW6 and 10 there is 4 different versions ( V4, V5, and 2 other minor release versions of V5) of Kepserver to be used with a compatibility chart on the Crapwell site to cross reference.


i had to download the full install of FTV V9.0 to get the kepserver files as its bundled 1.5 hours to download it and i think it was only 250 odd Mb i needed from the whole 3Gb download.


also beware that the "test" screen utility does not always work with Kepserver, i spent about 2 hours testing and could not get it to work on my development machine but once i compiled the runtime file and downloaded it it worked on the terminal.


very clunky and not easy for me.


integrators beware !

It's worth mentioning here that Kepserver wrote the RSLinx enterprise driver for Rockwell and I believe that's what in your PV, albeit an older version. It's simply rebranded and crippled Kepserver. So this thing you are experiencing is still Rockwells doing (i.e. a way to push upgrades), not really a third party compatibility.