Bus Down while accessing FF Bus using NIFBus Configurator

[amar123]

The following configuration applies to the control system in my plant

DCS Controller - ABB AC800M

Foundation Feildbus Card - CI852

Fieldbus devices on the bus - Emerson pressure Transmitter (2 Nos), Temperature Transmitters (2 Nos) and Siemens Sipart PS2 FF actuators (2 Nos)

While plugging and starting the NIFbus with the bus plugged in the port, All the devices go out of scheduling and report fault on the  DCS controller(they actually go to OOS mode), however if one waits (for 2-3 minutes) the devices sometimes come back on the bus with auto mode. The above situation happens when the fieldbus is plugged out or NIFBus stopped.

This causes undesirable delay in the process as the due to OOS mode the DCS is unable extract data and stops the process (correctly so)

What can be the possible cause of the problem and what is the remedial solution.

[fieldbus]

Hello,

Would you please let us know what NI-FBUS Configurator behaviors when the bus is down? Can all the devices show up in the Configuration Tree within NI-FBUS Configurator? Is there any screen shot? What is the interface card you use to connect the PC to the fieldbus (NI's PCI-FBUS or PCMCIA-FBUS)? Any information you can provide will be a great help for us to locate the problem.

If the device(s) cannot show up in the Configuration Tree, please refer to "Missing Device" section, Appendix B Troubleshooting and Common Questions chapter in NI-FBUS Configurator User Manual for some initial instructions; if the device(s) shows up but stays in the OOS mode, please refer to "The Fieldbus device stays in OOS mode even though the resource block MODE_BCK.TARGET = Auto and MODE_BCK.ACTUAL = Auto" part, "Mode Problems" section in the aforementioned chapter. Please let us know if these cannot help.

Meanwhile, we would like to suggest you contact ABB at the same time; they are familiar with the AC800M and CI852 module and will definitely help a lot.

Hope both ABB and NI can help you resolve the problem soon and help your project smoothly move on. Please feel free to let us know if we could do more help for you!

[amar123]

The problem has to be restated as : The fault situation in DCS i.e DCS (ABB ACS800M PM864A processor with CI852 FF card) reporting that it is unable to see any FF Devices on its network (error as in DCS 'Device not found') happens when the comm manager is started/stopped or when the FFBus cable is plugged / unplugged on port 0/1 with the comm manager running. It does NOT happen with NIFbus start/restart as stated earlier.

Sorry for the goof - up

The card in use is NI's PCI-FBUS and typically when the situation as stated above happens the DCS is unable to see any devices for 1-2 Minutes and after the time some device come back on the network and some devices do not (typically SIPART PS2 FF - it will never come back on its own having lost comm with DCS). To bring back the device on the network, original state has to be restored, i.e. if the cable was unplugged then the cable has to be plugged back and the comm manager has to be restarted again, or if the comm manager was stopped it has to be started again and etc.

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The MODE_BCK.TARGET = Auto is always true, the actual state is not known at that point of time as NIFBus is updating itself ( comm manager is started by starting the NIFBus).

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ABB was reported with the problem, and they apparently found nothing wrong at thier end

Attached are the bitmaps of the NIFBus tree, with devices , (P = Pressure Tx, T= Temp Tx)

At the end while discussing the same  among colleagues it was felt that the behaviour is due the fact that the PCI-FBUS is configured as LAS, however changing the same to simple device (from 'configuration utility') did not help. Actually NIFbus did not start since the comm manager did not start - just a raw discussion, you may ignore this

Thanks and regards

Amar

[fieldbus]

Please check the node addresses of the DCS and the PCI-FBUS interface card. There might be address conflict between them. For your information, PCI-FBUS uses the fixed address 0x10 as default - Interface Configuration Utility could help you display and change this address, as shown in the attached image.

On the other hand, since there are link master devices currently in your network, we would like to suggest you set the PCI-FBUS to a visitor address (change the Address radio button from Fixed to Visitor) and then set the Device Type of PCI-FBUS to Basic Device. Please restart NI-FBUS Communications Manager if it is running while this configuration.