Allen Bradley Flex 1794 I/O and an ASCII Com Module.

I have a ControlLogix system that has a few Flex I/O over contorlnet. I want to setup a device that requires ASCII data to be sent to it. Unfortunately it's too far for me to connect to the actual Serial port on the processor, so I want to use the Flex I/O. Allen Bradley doesn't sell ASCII modules for the Flex I/O.

Searching around, I found one from Prosoft Technology.
http://www.prosoft-technology.com/p...well_automation/platform/flex_i_0/mvi94_gsc_e

It says it is compatible with 1794 and that it can be in any slot. Does anyone have experience with these, how well they work (maybe ease of use?) and maybe any alternatives?

I am using the 1794-ACN15

I'll let you know when it gets here. It's what I've recommended to fix a similar issue. We need to add a serial device to a Flex I/O panel. We've got spare ethernet ports in a switch there as well.

I do wonder if some point I/O solution would be cheaper. Has anyone tried that? A point I/O stage, with an ethernet card, and a serial one?

The concern raised also is that if we use an ethernet-serial adapter, like this from Phoenix:
[FONT=&quot]
http://www.phoenixcontact.com/global/news/248_7957.htm

[/FONT]Will the serial device appear on the PLC's network map, as ethernet, or serial?

We're going ahead with the Prosoft MVI94-GSC-E, found it on AB's website: http://www.ab.com/db/encompass/bps_dir_update.show_page?x_directory_id=1940&x_region=AMERICAS

I plan on phoning the tech support guys this morning if I have time, but I'd like to hear from anyone here who's dealt with this before.

It's not exactly the same problem, Tharon's got ControlNet and we're using ethernet, but chances are it'll shake out the same.

We ended up buying it, and installing it. But I have yet to program it. It took a little bit of fiddling to find out the correct messaging in/out settings for the controlnet scheduling, but it is installed and everything is happy.

It's one of those "back burner" projects, and update to an existing machine that has been running problem free for 8 or so years. There are always things more important that it going on, so it keeps getting pushed back. I have not been able to test sending any ASCII data out yet. I'm hoping it will be pretty easy, but the code examples for RSLogix 5000 that came with it are pretty scary, hopefully they are using a lot of thing that I won't need to be using just to send out some data. Their code looks nothing like the code I've used in RSLogix 500 to send ASCII Data to printers on a Micrlogix 1500.