Watlow F4 Controller Setup

[kcallen]

I need help, I have a CSZ Cincinnati Sub Sero environmental chamber with a Watlow F4 Controller. I have a Dell laptop with labview 8.5 on it. I made a cable that goes from the DB25 pinout on the chamber to a DB9 for the PC. I downloaded the Watlow drivers from NI and installed them into the Labview 8.5 inst.lib folder.

What should my port settings be?
What vi should I open to test my settings?
I am not sure what Watlow software from the watlow website that I should download to test my cable communications?
I would like to do something as simple as writing a setpoint to the chamber, how do I go about doing this?

If I try to run any of the VI's in for the Watlow F4 I get a Modbus RTU Recieve error message.

I have read all of the discussion forums and most of the discussions don't help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Keith

[NathanT]

Hello Keith,
       You should be able to find the port settings for the device in its user manual or by contacting the manufacturer.  Since there is already an instrument driver written for it, you can also look at the Initialize VI for the standard port settings that the developer chose.  Some instruments have configurable settings, so you might need to manually change settings on the instrument to get things talking.

To test the settings you can just use the Initialize and Close from the driver, use the Instrument I/O assistant, Serial Read/Write example, OR VISA Interactive Control.

I would like to do something as simple as writing a setpoint to the chamber, how do I go about doing this?
Wait until you can sucessfully communicate with the instrument, and then try some of the examples from the driver.

If you still have trouble communicating with the instrument, triple check that your cable is correct.

Cheers,

NathanT