Cloned Mac Address On Allen Bradley PLC

Anybus Support Anybus Wireless
#1

First a little background. I’m using an Anybus Wireless Bolt AWB2030-B, firmware version 2.06.03 and an Allen Bradley 1769-L33ERMS PLC. We have been adding Bolts to our machines to wirelessly network them for production data collection purposes. So far they are doing everything we need.

The problem. The three machines I’m working on now are fairly complicated and identical. They all three use the same IP addresses and they have over 20 different ethernet devices. I’d really like to not have to go through and change all the IP address and programing for all the devices if I don’t have to.

Using the cloned mac address function, can I just clone the PLC without changing anything else? I’ve followed the A.5 procedure and it seems fine but I don’t know how to go about connecting to the PLC or if what I’m trying to do is even possible. Thanks

#2

Hi @bwilson13087,

You can use the MAC cloning method if you just need data from the PLC. This will allow the PLC to communicate with your existing wireless network. This will cause a problem though if you are trying to add 3 devices with the same IP address to the same network. That’s not really a problem that the Bolt is going to be able to solve.

If you need access to the other ethernet devices, you should use 2 Bolts to create a wireless bridge to the existing network.

#3

To be more specific… I have three identical machines. Each PLC has the IP address 192.168.10.2. The network needs 172.23.24.xxx. I was hoping I could add a bolt to each machine and those would get unique IP addresses. Would this still not work?

#4

The Bolt bridges the wireless and ethernet adapters, so it can only have one IP address. It can’t act as a router or NAT gateway.

For these machines, you could use a Cosy+ WiFi with NAT 1:1, which would give the PLC an IP address on the 172.23.24.x network, and then forward that traffic to 192.168.10.2. You would just need an available IP address in the 172.23.24.x range.

I believe when the Bolt v2 is released it will have NAT capability, but that won’t be until later this spring/summer.