profibus com error

[jhibma]

I have not used ProfiBus before, so some growing pains here.  Have a PXI chassis with a ComSoft Profibus card, LV 2013.  Installed drivers 1.37.3.  Using Comsoft Configurator II, we set Slave address to 3, baud to 1,500K which matches Siemens S7 PLC master.  When selecting 'Monitor' we immediately get a communications fault.  In Config II, selecting the slave module, right clicking, choosing Online Properties, selecting Diagnostic tab, we see Bit 1.0: Station_Not_Existent.

Suggestions?

[Jesse_D]

You shouldn't need to use the configurator with a slave - it is only used for masters. 

The shipping examples should show how to set the slave address from LV. I suspect you are placing the card into master mode and it is conflicting with the S7 master. 

[jhibma]

Jesse,

I was also trying to use the example .VI and seeing similar problems.

It turns out that I was selecting the wrong Module type.  Selecting the 240/240, instead of the 240/240 consist. module, made the issue go away.  What is extremely frustrating is there seems to be almost no documentation that I could find that might have shown me how to set up the communications.  There is no user manual for the profibus card on either NI's or Consoft's web sites, just a few .PDFs that seem to assume everyone knows everything about Profibus.  I have no idea what the difference is between the modules with or without the abbreviation consist. in the name.  I had no idea I didn't need to use the configurator.  Seems to me NI really needs to provide better documentation on this product, especially for first time users like me.

[Jesse_D]

Thank-you for that feedback. 

I know that is a point we need to improve on. We have been improving the documentation and examples for cRIO but I think we need to revisit PXI also. There is a tutorial that might help some here: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/6958/en/

Consist just has to do with assuring data integrity. It makes sure that you get the latest IO before they are overwritten with newer values from the slave. Unless you have a special application you probably don't need it.