Communication with Additel ADT161 pressure transducer

[Terry_S]

Does anyone have any experience with communicating with an ADT161 pressure transducer?  I have three transducers that I need to communicate with.  All the manufacturer was able to supply is a list of commands and the serial port settings.  In this list of commands there is a command to assign an address to a transducer, so I would like to daisy chain these together so I only have to use one serial port.  I am assuming these are RS232, how do I wiring this so they are daisy chained?

[santo_13]

Please share the information you got from the manufacturer, as long as you've the programming information and the interface details, you can find a way to use it from LV.

[RA-Steve]

Hi Terry,

Any luck with these ADT161 LabVIEW VIs? We are also interested in using these sensors on our systems but Additel does not currently offer LabVIEW support as of our phone call with their engineer today. Based on the documentation, we could develop our own VI package but it would not be worth the software DEV time compared to just buying a comparable device that comes with LV support. 

[Terry_S]

My intention was to be able to connect these to a PLC that only has RS232 com ports.  I found out that the communications from the transducer is TTL.  I purchased different models of TTL to RS232 convertors but I could not get any of them to work.  Therefore I had to change my plan and use the USB cable that is supplied by Additel.  This creates a COM port and I was able to create a VI to communicate with the transducer transducer through this com port.  However these cables are expensive and I need to read three of these so I took the cable apart and traced the wiring and created my on cables using a USB to TTL adapter and a powered USB hub I was able to communicate with all three and achieve the cable length that I required.

Additel did supply me with the command set and the pinout for the connector, but that was all they did.  They did not offer any assistance on getting it to work.  After I disassembled the cable I purchased from them I discovered the pinout drawing they supplied me was incorrect.  We are on site now getting the equipent set up so I hope this will work without any issues.

I believe that the reason I could not get the TTL to serial to work is the I do not have much experience with wiring and this transducer is powered through the USB port.  Serial ports to not supply power.  There is only 1 wire for ground and I was unable to figure out how the power and the COM could share the same ground.