rs232 problem

[Ryan.S]

upload to ftp://ftp.ni.com/incoming

[stevegg]

Ryan,  I dragged the 4 files that Lookout creates everytime I save It to the incoming folder in the FTP site.

[stevegg]

Is there anything else we can do at this time to help resolve this issue?

[Ryan.S]

You were right that Lookout doesn't do any of the radio polling. It even doesn't know there is a radio network between the 1700 and rtu. Lookout just sends Modbus data frames to the controller through serial port, and then waits for response. The 1700 controller translates the Modbus protocol and sends to the RTUs.

It is expected that the controller polls for hundreds of times on 23 sites, because lookout doesn't get valid response and retries for several times for each site. Each time Lookout retries, the controller will translate the modbus protocol data and sends out to the RTUs. From the log file, Lookout was waiting for a response, but got nothing and retried after 8 seconds.

Does Zetron have test program for Modbus communication? If Zetron has such kind of software, and it works in your system, we can log the data it sends and compare with Lookout.

I also notice that the 1700 controller needs to install the Modbus option. Make sure that you have this.

[stevegg]

Ryan, I put 3 files in the incoming folder of the FTP site. They all begin with "Montville WWTP 05-06-09". The one labeled diag is the Lookout rs232 log file. The other two are the log files from Listen32 software, one is saved as a text file, the other is saved as a listen32 file.

   The actual Zetron polling of sites began 05-06-09 12:53 to 12:58. This is one of the best polls I've seen in a while, but it still wasn't just 23 polls the way it should be. I have all the logs still recording to record an actual comm failure. Please note the times are not synced, the diag file is 2min and 45sec ahead of the listen32 files. I have synced the clocks for the future.

    Do you have any Idea why the log we sent you last time was referencing Modbus1 as a modbus object since we don't have any labeled that way?

    Were you able to open the Lookout file I put into the FTP site Monday?

     Yes both the main Zetron controller and the backup controller have the modbus option.

    Is there a way to not have comm Failures give an audible alarm. Preferably not even log as an alarm. But still display on the graphical interface.

[Ryan.S]

I'm confused now... From the diag log file, lookout seems to be working perfectly...

From 05/06/09 12:08:48, to the end of the log file, all 23 modbus objects are working fine. Each poll has valid reponse, and one polling cycle has 23 reading commands sent out. For example, from 05/06/09 12:08:48 to 05/06/09 12:08:59, 23 polls were executed for 23 sites. One polling cycle is about 11 seconds. I'm not sure when the Zetron started to poll, but from the log file, from 12:08 to the end of file, Lookout kept polling the sites and always got valid response. So I think the Zetron controller were always working from the 12:08. Maybe we have some misunderstanding here.

Do you still get the communication failure alarm? What's the alarm message? Which object is the alarm on?

I don't know why the Modbus1 was logged. But I guess that there was a Modbus1 object in Lookout made by someone mistakenly. In the log file, I don't see Modbus1 anymore on 05/06/09, I also don't see this object in the process file, so I guess it has been removed.

Yes, I got your process file. Each modbus object's poll rate is 10 seconds. So they are working correctly now.

[stevegg]

Ryan, since we change the receive gap to 200 on May 1st, the comm failures changed from random sites to always the same site. Sorry for overlooking that at the time. I found a problem with that RTU last week. Since then there have been no comm failures at all. Thank you for all your time and patience.