Can the Ethernet I/P toolkit be used to control a slave deivce (ie. a valve pack)?

[mfgk16]

I'm looking at using either an SMC or Festo valve pack on an upcoming project and I would like to cut down on my digital output cards.  I've used both brands before over EIP with PLCs but not Labview.  I've used the EIP toolkit a number of times to connect Labview to a PLC but in those cases Labview was always the slave device.  I've seen a few posts that seem to indicate it may be possible to use the toolkit to control a slave (Fanuc LR Robot) but I'm not sure if that was a specific case.

[LewisL]

NI's EIP toolkit can work as Explicit Message Server and Client, and I/O Adapter, but NOT an I/O Scanner.

So NI EIP toolkit can not initiate an I/O connection, whose work is usually done by a PLC. 

You can use explicit messaging like set/get attribute to access another device. I'm not sure this could satisfy your need though.