I need to read OMEGA CNi series temperature controllers via their ethernet (-EI) capability.

[stephenh]

The OMEGA controllers are model CN116D43-EI. My system has 5 temperatures to control and I got the controllers as well as NETGEAR 10/100 switch.

I thought this would be a good way to control my system using a LAN.

I can connect to the controllers using Newport's iConnect utility and get readings. I can also connect and configure the parameters using their iSeries and MICRO-INFINITY Configuration utility.

They provide Excel DAS using ActiveX and VB DAS using ActiveX software as examples. However, these do not work, at least I can't get them to work.

I downloaded a trial version of LabView 8 to see if I could use that, but have not been successful. NI does not hav a driver for these instruments.

I am looking for some suggestions for example or third party software or code to allow me to log these units.

stephenh

[Laura F.]

Hello Stephenh,

Actually, there are instrument drivers for some Omega CNi series devices, they just happen to have a serial interface for communication.  Keep in mind that Omega may create these drivers, so you could check with them to see if they have a LabVIEW driver for ethernet communication for your device.  You can also request such a driver be created. 

The other option to communicate with such a device is to create your own VIs to communicate with the instruments using TCP/IP.  Since you can connect to the instrument via ethernet with some configuration utility, you should be able to connect via TCP/IP.  You can find examples that use this communication by opening the example finder in LabVIEW (Help >> Find Examples) and search for TCP or TCP/IP. 

Hopefully this helps you get started!

Laura

[falkpl]

You might be able to modify the serial drivers to use visa instead of serial communication.  Visa will allow you to communicate with many different serial communication protocols without changing your code.  A visa driver is very easy to write, a driver function is as simple as opening the visa resource (Ethernet connection to the instrument) writing the command string (code should already exist in the serial driver) reading any response parsing the response and then closing the visa resource.  I have written several visa drivers and even converted a few from serial or GPIB to VISA with good success.  I have not had to use VISA to communicate with Ethernet based instruments but I think it was added with VISA 2.5 so it should work.  Goodluck,

Paul