Compactlogix L32E to DF1 Radio Modem

We have an upcoming project which specs call for a L32E. The customer recently had a failure on a phone line controlling their raw water pumps so we whipped up a telemetry solution using two ML1400 talking over UHF radios so they can continue to start and stop the plant with the old controls.

When the upgrade is complete, the main PLC will be the L32E, but we intend to keep the UHF radios and the ML1400 at the raw water pumps. I set them up with DF1 radio protocol but could have chosen Modbus I suppose.

Is it possible to use a serial port on the Compactlogix that supports DF1 radio protocol? I did search a little bit, but I might end up concluding that we may just keep the ML1400 at the plant as a telemetry master and just set up messaging between it and the L32E in the same panel. If there is a better way, or other alternatives, I'd like to know.

Thanks.

Doh! It appears I have been in Micrologix Land too long. I just created an application with the L32E (offline...I have no real hardware to test with). It has a serial port that appears to allow me to select the radio modem protocol. So I think it should work just fine once I set up the appropriate data files to match up with the ML1400.

I've used just standard DF1 successfully over Tait data radios before. My understanding is the main difference on the "DF1 radio protocol" is no ACK or NAK from the sender once a response is received. And maybe a few timing tweaks. That makes it more efficient for low bandwidth radio comms.

But if there is an option for DF1 radio then there's a good chance that will work with the ML1400.

Yes, since there are only going to be two nodes, I suppose regular DF1 protocol would suffice. I may still use the radio protocol since the remote site is already set up that way and has a node number. If we were to need to poll more remotes in the future we would need a way to distinguish them.