How do I make the Balluff BNI006a IOLink master and it's connected devices PnP?

PreLC · Dec 30, 2020

Hello PLCS.net!

I have the Balluff BNI006a IOLink master in my Rockwell based plant, and there are some aux devices connected to them which require some configurations sent via the web browsers.

Initial configuration is fine, but replacing them becomes a chore.

I have been able to get values via CIP messages to individual index and subindices, and also write them back, but this has to be done as a message per index/subindex and I was wondering if there is a way to upload and store ALL values in the PLC, so if the EN2T, BNI006a, or the IOLink devices go bad, recovery is plug and play.

My code is as follows:
https://imgur.com/O7qMKe1
The content of the messaged device:
https://imgur.com/pUCtnZk

Regards,
PreLC

kolyur · Dec 30, 2020

We had a similar issue but are using the EtherCAT version of the Balluff IO-Link master. The question was, how do you ensure that all of the proper parameters are loaded into the slave devices in the event of a replacement? I started by writing all of the non-default parameters at every power cycle, but I was concerned that this would wear out the NVRAM in the slave devices. Balluff tech support didn't have a clear answer on whether this was a valid concern, but they suggested reading the parameters first and only writing them if they differ. So that's what I ended up doing, which works but seems overblown.

I'd suggest looking into the "parameter server" functionality of the Balluff master. The IO-Link 1.1 standard supports this feature which basically lets you store all of the parameters of an IO-Link slave device in the master, and they will automatically upload or download at boot-up (there are different options). This way you don't have to create extra PLC code to manage the parameters. (I would be using this except that a few of our IO-Link devices don't support it.)

PreLC · Dec 30, 2020

kolyur said:
We had a similar issue but are using the EtherCAT version of the Balluff IO-Link master. The question was, how do you ensure that all of the proper parameters are loaded into the slave devices in the event of a replacement? I started by writing all of the non-default parameters at every power cycle, but I was concerned that this would wear out the NVRAM in the slave devices. Balluff tech support didn't have a clear answer on whether this was a valid concern, but they suggested reading the parameters first and only writing them if they differ. So that's what I ended up doing, which works but seems overblown.

I'd suggest looking into the "parameter server" functionality of the Balluff master. The IO-Link 1.1 standard supports this feature which basically lets you store all of the parameters of an IO-Link slave device in the master, and they will automatically upload or download at boot-up (there are different options). This way you don't have to create extra PLC code to manage the parameters. (I would be using this except that a few of our IO-Link devices don't support it.)

I looked into the parameter server, but if the master fails, I'm dead in the waters.
Is there a way to back up parameter servers? This would solve our issues.

How do I make the Balluff BNI006a IOLink master and it's connected devices PnP?

PreLC

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kolyur

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PreLC

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