Help Please with AutomationDirect Driver

[Alex80]

Hello Khalid,

I really need your support. I want to communicate with an instrument equiped with a rs485 port in serial modbus using nimodbus library.

Q1: Is it possible to use the ethernet port of my pc or I must have a converter?

Q2: Can I use this library with oPC server?

thank you in advance!

Alex.........

[Khalid]

Hi Alex,

1. If the instrument only has a 485 port, then to talk to it via Ethernet you would need a Serial-to-Ethernet converter. Even if you were to talk to it via Serial, you would need a RS485-to-RS232 adapter (or a RS485 plug-in card) since most PCs' Serial ports are RS232 only.

2. OPC Server, typically, connects to a device -- either Serially or via Ethernet using the proprietary protocol, Modbus in this case -- and then serves up this data for any OPC Clients. So, if you have a Modbus OPC Server then you could use this option. Lookout is an OPC Server. And LabVIEW 8.0 has a Modbus OPC Server as well (you may require DSC module though??).

Please post if I misunderstood your queries.

Regards,

-Khalid

[REM1]

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@Khalid wrote:
Hi Alex,

1. If the instrument only has a 485 port, then to talk to it via Ethernet you would need a Serial-to-Ethernet converter. Even if you were to talk to it via Serial, you would need a RS485-to-RS232 adapter (or a RS485 plug-in card) since most PCs' Serial ports are RS232 only.

2. OPC Server, typically, connects to a device -- either Serially or via Ethernet using the proprietary protocol, Modbus in this case -- and then serves up this data for any OPC Clients. So, if you have a Modbus OPC Server then you could use this option. Lookout is an OPC Server. And LabVIEW 8.0 has a Modbus OPC Server as well (you may require DSC module though??).

Please post if I misunderstood your queries.

Regards,

-Khalid

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DSC and RT 8 both ship with the modbus server.