I’ve got a question regarding the Anybus OPC server and I was wondering if someone can help. Keep in mind I’m not familiar with Profibus at all. Do .gsd files come into play with an OPC server or is that only applicable when setting up a Profibus network through nettool? My company manufactures a product with Profibus communication and we’ve developed a new product that is supposed to be identical to our original product besides the .gsd file, but we can’t get our testing to work. All we do is read a tag via the Anybus OPC and verify we get good quality data, but we’re getting a status of 24 instead of 192. Any advice would help.
Hello @dillonw,
What anybus gateway are you using? The Anybus OPC server is most likely configured to read data off of the ethernet interface of the gateway. If the Profibus interface has changed you might need to update the configuration on the profibus side to read the new device.
Deryck
I’m using an AB7629-B. I’ve tried modifying the configuration in nettool but when I go to download the configuration I’m getting a message that says error in download, cant create transport path. When I go to configure the transport path I get a message saying that it is an administrator handled path and I need administrator privileges, but I have given myself administrator rights to all of the directories that seem relevant. If I go into the Anybus OPC server I can configure the transport path without getting this message and I can see the X-Gateway under remote hosts.
Could you share a screen shot of the error? It sounds like the software is not able to run as an admin are you an administrator on the PC?
For you setup you should be creating a parallel transport path to the ethernet side of the gateway. Make sure you have an IP in the same subnet as the gateway.
Deryck
Under the diagnostic tab I’m getting a cfg_fault and station_not_ready status. I’ve loaded the .gsd file into the project and downloaded the configuration to the gateway though.
I was able to create a new transport path and I can now hook our product up and monitor it through nettool. The device is showing a blue connection and a “Diagnostic” status instead of good, so I’m still doing something wrong, but I seem to be making progress.
If you perform a scan of your network do you find both the master and the nodes?
Deryck
I’m new to this and not sure how to scan the network for the masters and other nodes. The status does change if I change the profibus address on my device so I feel like it has to be connected, but not sure if that actually verifies it or not.
Hi @dillonw,
There is a Network scan section in the help menu of the software it should help you scan and understand the results.
Regards,
Deryck
I saw that in a manual somewhere but when I right click on my Anybus Module I don’t get the scan network option. Not sure if I have an older version of Nettool or if there’s something else going on. Either way, I found out what I was doing wrong. I was mapping the cyclic data incorrectly. I was missing a float parameter that was added to our new product that I had glanced over and didn’t know I needed to modify my configuration to include it. Once I did that I got an OK status and the OPC server now recognizes it. Thanks for all of your help! We are now up and running.
Glad to hear you are up and running!
Regarding not being able to scan you might not have had the transport provider setup so the option wasn’t available yet.
Deryck