Loose communication with FP 1600 version e

[Joseph_Loo]

I have firmware version 3.20 installed on the FP 1600 on version E of the device. I have a simple application reading te banks tied to the company intranet. I have lab view application run overnight it stops communication in about 10000 seconds. I try to restablish communication with the module by using Max 3.01 but to no avail. I have a computer that shares a hub with the device and tried to ping it. It will not respond to it either. I can only restablish communication by powering on and off the device. Then everything seems to work again. I had installed on another module with the 5.20 version of the firmware, the failure occurs in about 10 to 30 minutes.

The read rates is about 1 second so the data rates are not that high
.

Are there any fixes to the 1600 or do I need to go to a 160x version?

[Ames]

Joseph,

How many different tags are you reading and how many computers are connected to the controller? If there are many tags being read/written as well as multiple computers connected, the FP-1600 can exhibit this type of behavior. What version of LabVIEW are you using? If you are using LabVIEW 7 or later then I would recommend installing FieldPoint 4.1 as well as upgrading the firmware.

Ames

[Joseph_Loo]

I am running Labview 6i with a single computer and single tab and doing only a read on the system. I have found out the firmware for Fieldpoint 4.1 actually causes the communication failure occur even faster.

[Sean_C.]

Hello Joseph,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments.

What type of measurements are you making with your FieldPoint bank? How many and what kinds of modules do you have connected?

Please reply with these answers and I will be glad to help you trouble shoot this issue.

Sincerely,

Sean C.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[Joseph_Loo]

I am doing temperature measurements. Thus, all of my reading is inputs from the fieldpoint module. I have a fp-ai-100 and 2 fp-tc120 modules with the fp-a-100 closest to the ethernet module. I have the fp-tb-3 on the tc-120 modules and the tb-1 on the fp-a-100.

What is interesting is that the 5.02 version ethernet module has the status red light blinking 6 times. Once the system locks up, it stops blinking. The 3.20 version does not seem to have the status light blinking. After 3 hours, it just stops functioning.

We are both on the same net, x.x.130.x. If I try to downgrade the firmware on the 5.02 version, it always stop after 8% and complain it lost communication. I even tried to place the computer on a hub connected directly to the ethernet mod
ule, and it still fails.

[Sean_C.]

Hello Joseph,

Have you tried this on a different FP controller (not a 1600)? Also you might want to go ahead and download and install FieldPoint v. 4.1. This is the latest version of the driver.

Another thing to try would be connecting directly from the FP module to the computer with an ethernet crossover cable, and seeing if the error occurs again.

Please respond with the results of the above suggestions.

Sincerely,

Sean C.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[Joseph_Loo]

This is another reply. Evidently the first replay did not make it.

I do not have any other FP controller other than the 1600.

When I was first working with Fieldpoint, I was using 4.1. That is when I noticed that I was loosing communication with the module. In fact, I uploaded the latest version of the firmware 5.02. I have found out that the earlier version 3.2 works a lot more robust than the latest version.

I did not do the crossover cable. I setup a seperate nic card and had the equipment tied to gether via a switch. I have found that the FP 1600 did not seem to have any problems. I was able to see device for 5 straight hours with no problem. I tried also to downgrade the firmware to 3.2 but I keep getting a communication
error. It seems to me their is some kind of bug in your firmware where it is not able to handle the tcp-ip traffic within the internet and also to do the upload to the firmware.