citect & etn21

[valerio81 0]

hi! i'm new on citect. i'm using it for supervision.. i have a little question... what's the best protocol for communication between Citect and a cj1(g or m) with ETN21?? someone have some little example of configuration??? thanks Valerio

[BobB 58]

FINS Gateway for sure. I would not even use Ethernet for Citect but would still, and have always, use Controller Link. Can not really see any benefit in using Ethernet. Controller Link works great. The cost of the PLC Ethernet card is far greater than a PLC Controller Link card but the NIC in the computer is cheap and the Controller Link card for the PC is not. I might add that I normally have multiple PLCs with a SCADA system and use Controller Link exclusively for peer to peer communications so extending it on to the PC is the best way out. You can get the FINS Gateway CD from Citect as a complementary CD. Just make sure you download the lastest Citect FINS Gateway driver from their web site.

[Nibroc 4]

.... Not sure about CS1-ETN's but the CJ1-ETN is half the price of controller link down here in NZ!! guess it depends where you live!! Nibroc

[valerio81 0]

thank you for answers. i install version 3.2 of fins gateway but i never use it. there's a guide or example for communication with citect? with serial communication works good. but i cant do this with ethernet. by now i have 1 plc omron cj1g cpu43 (192.168.0.30) and a pc(192.168.0.1) thank you. valerio

[valerio81 0]

i've found the answers i'm searching for... using the "DRIVER HELP" in the Citect Explorer Windows. the address to write in I/O Devices was 0/30/0 (FINS PROTOCOL) --> 30 because PLC's IP address was x.x.x.30 and not in TCP/IP mode with IP address... but now i have another question... if i use a bit as a tag i have many tags!!! it's possible to read a 32bit tag and extract a bit or more than one from it??? there's a function that do this??? thank you again!!! Valerio

[BobB 58]

You could probably write something in Cicode although I understand the latest version of Citect does have array handling but I have not used it. 32 digital tags over Ethernet would not be a problem anyway. The time taken to read them would be absolutely insignificant, particularly if they are contigious. I have over 3,500 tags on one job on Sysmac Link to 9 PLCs and Citect is reporting 15,000 digital reads per second. Sysmac Link only runs at 750kBaud.