pv300micro to PC communications problems.

[Alex1277 0]

Hi, I have been trying to set up communications between VP300micro and PC using 1761 -cbl-pm02 programming cable and real COM port at laptop. Panel Builder 32 with WinPft . I tried DF1 Point to Point as well as RSLinx. No success at all! Error messages were about check the cable connections. Tried with another cable -no success. What I am doing wrong? Thank you!

[paulengr 44]

First, ignore Panelbuilder/WinPFT for now. Work with RS-Linx. Make sure that RS-Linx Enterprise is not running. It hides in the Services menu, so you might have to find it and kill the service...it doesn't have a nice "shut down" menu like RS-Linx Classic. Second, connect everything up as you expect. Check to make sure you have NO other serial devices within RS-Linx already running or there will be conflicts. If they are, select each in turn and Stop it). Then run RS-Linx and configure a new driver, an RS-232 DF1 Device. Select the COM port and under Device, select "SLC-CH0/Micro/Panelview". Now select "Auto Configure" and it should latch onto the device. If it doesn't, click OK or Cancel, then manually Start and then Stop the device driver before trying again. On many versions of RS-Linx if you auto-configure twice in a row, it locks up and will eventually corrupt the Harmony files. Don't know why this is but it is what it is. The only way I've found around it is the manual start/stop routine. If not, manually set Parity to none and stop bits to 1. Set protocol to full duplex (half duplex is only for radios and some other oddball stuff), and error checking to CRC (most common). Try 9600 and 19,200 baud, followed by just about every baud rate setting that is allowed and see if you can get it to connect when you click OK. After you try that if you don't see it under RS-Who, then manually Stop the device. Finally, if worse comes to worse, buy an RS-232 tester. B&B Electronics (www.bb-elec.com) sells one for about $10. All this consists of is some indicator lights on a small DB-9 dongle that flashes red for a "0" and green for a "1" with some LED's. Very useful in diagnosing bad cables, bad ports, null modems, etc. Don't forget and I'm not 100% sure on the cable you specified, you will need a straight-through cable for Panelviews because they are configured for direct connection to a PLC. The PLC serial port is designed to plug into a modem so it is always a DTE device, same as a PC, while Panelviews are DCE (data communication equipment) devices, meant to plug directly into PLC's. So you need a crossover (null modem) cable for a PLC to connect to a PC, but you need just a straight-through cable to plug a PC into a Panelview.

[Mickey 71]

As always very good info, but for FYI see link below. The OP's PV has DH485 protocol. http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=49846