Failure to save settings to a sensor with Anybus Configuration Manager (Eth/IP to CANopen AB7306)

Anybus Support Anybus Gateways
#1

Hi I’m Richard,

I work for a small company in the Midwest supporting industrial automation. We recently purchased an AB7306 with the goal of using it to communicate I/O data with a PLC on a die-casting machine. I am using the device as a slave, my PC software, when running, is the CANopen NMT master, and I have an array of sensors that are on a CAN bus along with the slaved AB7306.

We are successfully able to use SDOs to send outputs to the AB7306, and the PLC guy is able to see each bit on his side, we went through bit-by-bit to verify that portion was working.

Now, though, I need to configure a PDO on the device. I’ve made a PDO that has an event timer of 500 ms, and thus should pulse every 500ms and be visible on the “line listener” portion of the ABC software. But I’ve had to create that PDO with a different piece of software which made it look right, but can’t seem to set it “valid” whereas ABC has a very clear checkbox to set a PDO as valid, so if I can get ABC working that would be really helpful.

I haven’t been able to save with ABC because it says “no licensed manager in configuration”. It wants some device to be assigned as the master node or it won’t save anything. I tried hooking up an old random CAN device and assigning it as a master, but then it would still say that the manager wasn’t “licensed” (whatever that means in this context I don’t know). Is there some way to tell it my PC is the master? Or trick it into thinking the other device is “licensed”?

Or do you have any advice on making my PDO active in some other manner? Maybe from the ethernet side or something? I’ve been consulting with a CANopen expert who does things like CANopen device certification and is very proficient in the field, and he said the COB id of the PDO had something to do with it, so maybe if I can edit that somehow that will do the trick? In the other utility I’ve been using (CANopen Device Explorer, a Systec product) every time I try to change the first bit of the COB id it gets automatically changed back, even though I’ve assured that the network is in pre-operational mode, so I thought I had it all right and ready to save, but maybe there’s some other step I’m missing?

Any help at all with this would be very appreciated, if we can just get this PDO going then

#2

You need to have a master defined in the configuration file. Do you have a working EDS file for your master?

Can you could share your configuration file and the EDS files that are being used?

1 Like
#4

My PC uses an API that our sensor developers wrote. To give some backstory - we manage an array of sensors that report things like temperature, pressure, flow rate, etc. on water lines. The company who made our custom sensors also made us an API that is essentially a wrapper around the SYSTEC .NET API which handles NMT master duties and so forth. As far as I know there is no associated EDS. The PC is always assigned node 0 and it manages the rest of the network from there. I do have an EDS for the slave sensors on the network, but I don’t think that would be of any value, and also I don’t know if I can share that particular EDS because of IP reasons anyways.

Was just talking to my manager, and he showed me where AnyBus has a CANopen Master Simulator where you use a DB9 dongle to connect your PC to the CANopen network and assign it as the master. That certainly seems like it would be a solution, but I’m hoping to do this without purchasing anymore hardware, we’ve already gotten the device itself and an IXXAT USB-CAN module to support it. Which is cool, I get you need compatible hardware to configure devices, not trying to complain at you, just being honest about my goals here.

tl;dr - can we trick the software into thinking it actually does have a master assigned? All I need to do is enable this PDO and I am done configuring this, I am so close haha, just need to get past this last barrier

#5

Have you tried setting the Anybus as Manager and disabling the NMT master so that the PC can continue to provide that?

image
image743×474 122 KB

This should allow you to save at least. I may have to check with a colleague for his opinion on the best solution here.

1 Like
#6

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for the help. I’ve been consulting with a CANopen expert and using software he helped develop, and I’ve come a long way in understanding this device. I’m at the point where I can ask a more educated, specific CANopen question that I’m hoping you or a colleague may be able to help me with. The problem description/question is as follows:

I wrote a new value to the ‘producer heartbeat time’ index at 1017h, and then wrote save to entry 1010h (sub-index 1), cycled power, and the setting was persisted, and the heartbeat enabled. Then I wrote mapping values to TPDO 1, enabled the PDO so it was being transmitted, wrote save to the ‘store parameter field’ at index 1010h (sub-index 1) cycled power, and the setting was not persisted.

From what I’ve been able to tell it looks like the TPDOs are pretty much readonly and hard-coded to use certain indices, which is fine, every time I turn TPDO1 on in the other software it auto-populates its mapping with bytes 1-8 from index 2000h sub-indices 0x01h to 0x08h. And every time I cycle the power and set it operational TPDO1 is disabled again. Is there any way to make it stay enabled permanently? I see in the documentation for the device that we’ve been working with all the right indices and everything, I just can’t get that setting to persist even though I can get others to persist (for example the heartbeat setting saved fine).

If I can get TPDO1 to become enabled and start transmitting data on a 500ms event timer every time I start the device I will be so beyond happy, I feel like I’m really close and I hope we can get there. Regardless I appreciate your time and help, and hope you’re having a great day.

Thanks,

Richard

#7

Hello @rburrough1 ,

Sorry for just getting back to you Kyle is on vacation. This is is a bit out of the norm for using this device, but I think I might be following what you are trying to do.

Reading though your posts here this is what I understand. You have a CANopen bus setup with a a few slave nodes, a PC as a NMT master and a ab7306. the AB7306 is being used to send TPDO’s with data from Ethernet/IP. Currently you can get it to send the PDO but the configuration is not retained on a reboot.

How are you mapping the PDO? Are you using Anybus Configuration Manager-CANopen (ACM) or are you writing the configuration from the PC master? What transmission type are you configuring the PDO? If you are using ACM can you share your configuration?

Deryck

#8

Topic closed due to inactivity.