anyone have experience with Prosoft Modbus cards on Allen Bradley PLCs?

defcon.klaxon said:
Man that sounds like it could be a lot of work, a lot of headache and hassle. I was wondering how exactly the data would be provided to the CompactLogix controller being that the tutorial video I saw just showed INT arrays. Yeesh.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure which device Dock is talking about but the Spectrum Controls Gateway is not limited to one data type. It supports all of the data types available in AB PLC's and the four basic MB words (among others) and in fact while you need to be careful in doing this, you can read one data type from one controller and write it to a different controller as a different data type (read a USHORT from a Modbus RTU device and write the data to a CompactLogix as a DINT for example). The only data types you can mix are Strings, a String has to go to/from another String.
Using the Spectrum Controls Gateway is no different with regards to moving data between PLCs (and other devices) except that the Gateway does the work for you, you don't have to do any messaging in the PLCs (other Gateways operate in a similar fashion).
 
I'm using the Spectrum Gateway for the first time right this minute.

-You can convert datatypes in the GW before sending them to the target. Thats a nice touch.
-GUI is nice enough - little annoying to be able to overwrite an existing tag map so easily but that wont matter in a week.
-Easier to set up than Prosoft.
-I was able to crash it once by renaming an existing tag it was writing to. engineering Ticket has been created. Lets see how long till a fix is offered.
-NTP server has to be internet based - not local.
-Docs on uShort and Short are typoed - says both are signed.
-Cheaper than Prosoft
-Support guy is fantastic (Randy)

This is giving Prosoft a run for their money in my book.
 
Firejo said:
I'm not sure which device Dock is talking about but the Spectrum Controls Gateway is not limited to one data type. It supports all of the data types available in AB PLC's and the four basic MB words (among others) and in fact while you need to be careful in doing this, you can read one data type from one controller and write it to a different controller as a different data type (read a USHORT from a Modbus RTU device and write the data to a CompactLogix as a DINT for example). The only data types you can mix are Strings, a String has to go to/from another String.
Using the Spectrum Controls Gateway is no different with regards to moving data between PLCs (and other devices) except that the Gateway does the work for you, you don't have to do any messaging in the PLCs (other Gateways operate in a similar fashion).
Click to expand...

It was a prosoft slave module in a compactlogix chassis. It was in 2015, the only data in and data out was in INT. Everything had to be manipulated before or after. Obviously I got through it but I spent several days moving all the data around until I got it the way I wanted it.
 
I have never had a chance to use the Prosoft Modbus modules for CLX but I have used my share and a few other people's shares of the SLC 500 version from Prosoft and always had a great experience with them and they have always been rock solid.

The prosoft documentation leaves much to be desired sometimes but the hardware is robust IMHO.
 
No disagreement on ProSoft being rock soild but their setup is a pain. Part of it is due to their atrocious written manual and part of it is due to their design.

If one want to make a change to a ProSoft setup without detailed documentation that cross-references end-to-end then it's a very painful process. There are just so many other players now with better setup design. Redlion, RTA Automation, Spectrum Control... Frankly, they are my choice of last result these days.
 
Firejo said:
I'm not sure which device Dock is talking about but the Spectrum Controls Gateway is not limited to one data type. It supports all of the data types available in AB PLC's and the four basic MB words (among others) and in fact while you need to be careful in doing this, you can read one data type from one controller and write it to a different controller as a different data type (read a USHORT from a Modbus RTU device and write the data to a CompactLogix as a DINT for example). The only data types you can mix are Strings, a String has to go to/from another String.
Using the Spectrum Controls Gateway is no different with regards to moving data between PLCs (and other devices) except that the Gateway does the work for you, you don't have to do any messaging in the PLCs (other Gateways operate in a similar fashion).
Click to expand...
In Allen bradley if I remeber correctly you can read the two words from the mobus and put them into a 2xDINT's in Memory and they use the MemCpy instuction to copy thoes 2 DINTs into the a Real Tag in Memory. You may have to play with order of words to get it correct but does work did find a reference years ago online but can't find it now. Works the other way for encoding aswell. Just creat a ReadFloat and a WriteFloat conversion Addon/Function and call that.

other trick is multiple the Real by a 10 before sending in Modbus and then Divide by 10 on recipet but this limits the size of the reals you can transmit to Max of a 6352.5
 
harryting said:
Huh? I remember using a full 1756 chassis w/o a processor to do this back in the 90s. Maybe we are not talking about the samething...
Click to expand...

This was unrelated to the rest of the thread except that this is a gateway kind of thread.- I found a ETH I/P to DH+ gateway in a drawer and that works just fine.
 

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