Communicate with a field device via Profinet in Labview

[Sun87]

Hi all,

I have a field device which was controlled by a Labview program running on a PC via interbus standard formerly. Now this device is upgraded to the Profinet standard. And my task is to communicate with the new device and still control it using the Labview program. I am not familiar with Profinet standard at all and I have several questions regarding to this topic.

1. According to my knowledge, Profinet uses the same physical layer as normal Ethernet. So can I directly communicate with this Profinet device via TCP/IP? For example, it's I get the ip address and build the tcp connection directly.

2. Is there any special VIs or toolbox that can be used for this communication?

3. If I want to achieve a real-time communication with this device, do I need any additional hardware for the PC?

Thank you very much for the help!

Best regards,

Sun87

[Vans]

Hi Sun87,

yes, you can communicate with your field device using LabVIEW. Concerning question two I like to provide you the following link:

PROFIBUS Overview

https://www.ni.com/en/shop/seamlessly-connect-to-third-party-devices-and-supervisory-system/profibus...

In order to achieve a real-time system you need a processor. You can integrate your field device in your real-time setup using the following slave module:

NI Compact RIO Profinet Slave C Series Module

https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.crio-pn-s.html

If you have further questions please feel free to come back to me.

Kind Regards,

Vanessa

[Raul2203]

Hello all,

In my project i want to communicate with PROFINET devices (laser sensors) and read data from them on my Host PC through the RT Target (PXI).

Can anyone help me with the simplest example vi to execute this task?

Any help in this regard would be very much appreciated.

PS: I have already tried the example vi that i got with the COMSOFT installation CD but was not successful.

Thanks,

Rahul

Knorr- Bremse Sfs GmbH

Germany

[Miro_T]

Rahul,

What ProfiNET hardware are you  using? Is it the NI offered cRIO PROFINET Module?

[Raul2203]

Hi Miro_T,

No its from COMSOFT.

Its a ProfiNET card DF PROFINET IO. I have installed this card in my NI PXIe- 1085 which is my RT target. I want to communicate with this card from my laptop and read data from the laser sensors through this card.

Thanks,

Rahul 

[Miro_T]

Rahul,

Profinet PXI card is not provided via NI so I'm not entirely sure what you have or what you installed. I'm assuming you are running Comsoft LabVIEW PROFINET VISA Driver, is that correct?

I know Comsoft usually includes getting started material and some examples to get started. Do you see anything? Documents and examples are usually located under Comsoft folder in the Start menu.  

Also have you configured your network in the Comsoft Configurator? I'm assuming PXI Profinet card will  be the master and laser sensors will  be slaves....?

[shakeel123456]

Dear Sir/Madam, I work with an automobile firm. They make marking machines and laser machines for different companies around the world. All the process is controlled by the software. For communication with slaves they use Profinet card CP1616 (these days). I am new to this field and never worked with Profinet card. I want to change the IP address of the Profinet card from our program. For the situation when one machine is out of order then we wanna use the replacement machine to start the production at the plant. We don’t want to use NCM manager to set the IP but it should be done from our program which is written in Delphi 7. How can I do this? It would be nice if you can suggest me a solution in detail from where I should start. Thanking in advance.

Regards,

Ahmad

[Miro_T]

Ahmad,

Thank you for question. This forum is mostly dedicated to National Instruments hardware and software, but maybe there is some on this forum who might have experience with this setup. However If I was in your position I would try to reference CP1616 manual or help documentation for NCM manager. If you are unable to find your answer there then I would contact the manafacture of the apropriate hw or sw.

[shakeel123456]

Thanks for your reply. Yes I will