Graphite Edge or DataStation Plus ?

Any Red Lion Graphite Edge Controller users here ?

I have an application where Prosoft MVI46-GSC Generic Serial modules were used with an SLC-500 to communicate with two serial devices; a set of position indicators with a simplified poll/response protocol, and a couple dozen Yaskawa "XtraDrive" servo controllers.

The implementation that the SLC-500 programmer did was... adequate. I think I can do better, as the system frequently has comms problems to these devices and nobody knows if they're wiring or protocol or damage to the slave devices.

To my delight, Red Lion has a driver for those XtraDrives, already in their protocol list. Sweet.

And the Poll/Response protocol should be fairly easy to write using Red Lion's built in language; PortSendData and PortReadData are about all I need.

I don't actually need a "virtual HMI". It's nice to have if you want to check on the status of your serial devices, but it's not going to be used except for engineering.

I don't need the IEC1131 control engine, or the USB or SD ports, or the e-mail, or the data logging, or the SQL integration.

The price of a DSPLE with an Serial Expansion module is about half of the price of the GRAC001 with two serial ports.

So I think the compelling arguments to use the Graphite Edge controller instead of a DSPLE or DSPSX would be:

1. Its a lot faster and the DSPLE can't handle two drivers simultaneously
2. The DSPLE will be unavailable in the near future
3. There's something impossibly awesome in the Graphite Edge controller that I have not yet discovered.
4. The Graphite Edge RS-485 serial ports are impervious to lightning, saltwater intrusion, and rodent attacks.

Any input from folks who have used the Graphite Edge controller and can comment on its RS-485 performance ?

Interesting, they seemed to expanded the list of protocol they support since the last time I checked a few years ago. Now they support DNP3 Master and Slave. I'm still working on my Logix L62 to Modbus project so I'll take a serious look at this as well.

You mentioned that DSPLE doesn't handle two drivers simultaneously, what's that mean?

The link is here:

http://www.redlion.net/sites/default/files/1170/6607/Crimson Drivers List_2.pdf

I meant "what if".

The module can nominally handle one driver per serial port and up to 4 on the Ethernet port. What I meant was "does it have enough power to really run three protocols simultaneously, or does it bog down in practice ?"

While looking at the differences in Crimson 3.0 and Crimson 3.1 I did notice that the USB host on the Graphite Edge Controller appears to be able to be configured to load a new *.ci3 image file onto the controller by plugging in and cycling power. I'm not sure if this feature is already present on the CF cards of the DSP; there is a "save image" function in Crimson 3.0.

One of my sales reps was trying to push the Weintek CMT-G01 as a replacement for the Datastation. May be worth a look. IT has 3 built in serial ports and 2 ethernet ports. Price was better than the Red Lion, especially if you consider the 2nd Ethernet port which is a very expensive option on the Datastation.

So, my first redlion project is online and I thought I stop by to give my impression on it.

I'm using a Edge controller to do data conversion from Contrologic to Modbus slave. There are a lot of devices out there that can do this but I'm most interesting in Redlion because the Edge can handle DNP3 which is quite popular in my industry and I want to see how the programming environment is. For this project, I haven't really touched other ability of this controller like virtual HMI, IEC-61131, edge IOT.. etc.

Pro:

- Hands down, one of the easiest multi-protocol data-converter/concentrator I worked with. SUBNET Solution's Windows based software is better, allowed direct copy-and-paste from Excel but they don't talk to AB directly.

Con or Suggestion for Improvement:

- hard to tell which project or hardware I'm working on. Should list that as the top object in the org tree.

- Limited serial expansion ability. Yes, I could use some serial-to-Ethernet converter and set up virtual serial port but.. why can't this support additonal 5 or 6 serial ports as expansion?

- Can't link to bit level of an integer, ie. to INTERGER.2 without creating a native redlion Flag(Bool) tag to INTERGER.2 first.

- Lack of ability to scale without going through internal tag first.

- Lack of power? this is a maybe. I have some data-conversion that peak out a window machine at 40+% consistently. Not sure if an Edge can handle that.

Reading that myself, I don't want to give a negative impression just because there are more con vs pro. I'm quite impressed with it but there are room for improvement as well.

I ended up building that application with a DSPSX that I had in my lab, and it handily out-ran the existing custom devices, due to some choices made by the firmware and PLC program authors that limited them to 250ms cyclic updates. I was able to get 100ms updates with ease from the DSPSX.

It slowed down when I started hitting the DSPSX with HTTP requests for the virtual HMI.

Then I built the same application but with just one serial port, on a G304K2 Kadet. That was of similar cost, and gave us a shiny little screen to see the important position variable.

And then... the customer managed to get a bunch of rebuilt hardware in, and canceled the project. I fully expect them to re-start it on an emergency basis when their repaired hardware fails in the next few months.

Literally two minutes ago, a Red Lion marketing e-mail hit my in-box, with the new, improved, low-profile, Graphite-3.1-supporting edition of the DataStations: DA10D and DA30D.

http://www.redlion.net/about-us/pre...a30d-protocol-conversion-and-data-acquisition

Red Lion does sometimes jump the gun with announcing products before they are commercially available, so I'm not going to get too excited. But I'm interested in seeing what these new versions of the product can do.

Thanks for the info, I'll be interfacing a control logix 1756 to SEL-735 meter and a 'SCADA' system using unknown protocol so the red-lion edge controller that also does DNP3 could save us also buying a SEL-3505 RTAC which we normally use for modbus to DNP3.

V0N_hydro said:

Thanks for the info, I'll be interfacing a control logix 1756 to SEL-735 meter and a 'SCADA' system using unknown protocol so the red-lion edge controller that also does DNP3 could save us also buying a SEL-3505 RTAC which we normally use for modbus to DNP3.

Click to expand...

I run into the RTAC product manager during PEAC and complained about the lack of Ethernet/IP support. From the talk, it seems unlikely they will focus effort on supporting Rockwell product, however, they did hint that OPC UA support might be coming.

The Edge support OPC DA as a client and OPC UA as a server so it could be useful as a intermediate device as well.

You can download Crimson 3.1 and play around with it. The Edge support both serial and ethernet DNP.