Communication with Red PCU Controller

[pwduncan]

I am trying to get the NI measurement and Automation Explorer to communcate with a Red Lion PCU Controller.

I'm using the NI USB-485 cable and the software says that all ports are operating correctly.

I have check the parity, baud rate , and address of the controller and they are the same as the software.

However, when i try to send a command tothe controller via the test panel in Measurement and Automation Explorer I get an error.

The error message is :

Error -1073807339 occurred at VISA Read in Serial Communicator.vi

Possible reason(s):

VISA:  (Hex 0xBFFF0015) Timeout expired before operation completed.

A timeout error can occur if you specified reading more bytes than became available to read before the timeout period specified and/or (if termination was enabled) you did not receive a termination character.

Has anyone had this same problem, and does anyone know how to fix this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Patrick

[AdamW]

Hi Patrick,

One thing that could be causing the timeout error is sending the incorrect termination character.  You might double check your Red Lion documentation and confirm you are sending the correct character.

I do find it odd, though, that the error is saying that it is occuring in a VI when you are running a test panel in MAX.

I hope this helps!

AdamW
National Instruments

[k145a]

I had a simular problem using vb.net. The problem went away when I set the serialport1.readBufferSize = 2 (or more). Also, The Red Lion PCU refuses to send and data to the port (either by command or in out-send mode)