Profibus, Modbus, Profinet and Powerlink

[Sim.]

Hi,
On a project, i have to assess the possibilities of communication directly from a Labview application on a computer.

Profibus: you need a PCI card. NI, REF: 780160-01 is 1650€, is it possible to use others PCI cards (Siemens's ones are around 400€) ? I'm not very familiar with the drivers possibilities an such.

Modbus on TCP/IP, easy with the "NI MODBUS Library 1.2.1 ". On big projects, the DSC labview module could be useful. No questions about modbus.

In theory, you could use powerlink and profinet on an Ethernet port of the computer (both works on TCP/IP)... But i did not find any driver/soft that allow you to do such. Is there any? 

I found a PCI card for profinet (Labview friendly), is it the only solution?

Powerlink, i did not find anything significant about this subject, what's your opinion?

[a_clucker]

Hey Sim,

You are correct on many counts:

Profibus - NI sells C Series, PXI, and PCI form-factors for Profibus masters and slaves. These work with the drivers we provide. Other companies' cards do not work with our drivers, but the other company may have a LabVIEW driver or a driver that you can call into via LabVIEW (e.g. C or .NET).

Profinet - NI sells PXI and PCI form-factors for Profinet slaves. These also have a specific driver. We do not have a driver that allows you to use a computer's Ethernet port. If you need a Profinet master, KUNBUS has one in PXI and PCI form factors that have LabVIEW-compatible drivers.

As of now, NI does not offer a solution for Powerlink. My understanding is that it's build on TCP/UDP, so you could try to build up a driver on top of VISA TCP and VISA UDP. However, I expect this would be time intensive.

Kind Regards,

[JB]

If you want to use Modbus, don't miss the newer LabVIEW Modbus API.