Considering Labview for Battery Monitoring

[sbistline]

Hello,

I am looking for a way to monitor and send commands to a power control center (PCC). This PCC has two batteries and a photovoltaic system connected to it. It has an existing energy management system, but lacks a GUI for user control. The system uses a RS232 serial connection which I plan on converting to a TCP/IP ethernet connection via a serial converter box.  

I should not need to buy any additional hardware, only software capable of communicating with the system. It seems LabView is more than capable of accomplishing this - I am just wondering what steps would be involved in doing this (with LabView) and how difficult it will be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[RTSLVU]

IF your RS-232 to Ethernet adaptor operates seamlessly

AND you have a good manual that covers comunications, all the commands, and how to interperate data for the PCC

THEN it should not really be that hard at all

[sbistline]

I have been provided with a memory map - protocol. Would I need any other information to allow labview to communicate with the energy management system? Is there an existing RS232 driver in labview? or is this something that I need to develop?

Thanks,

Steve

[smercurio_fc]

It's unlikely that there would be pre-existing drivers, but it wouldn't hurt to look. You can either check the Instrument Driver Network, or from withing LabVIEW do a Help -> Find Instrument Drivers.

If you need to develop your own drivers it's not that hard. I'd suggest starting here: Getting Started with Instrument Control.

[RobCole]

LabVIEW can communicate with about any port you can think of on a computer. RS232 is implimented as well as ethernet communications.

As long as you know the command set of the instrument, you can send commends to it and get data from it via LabVIEW.

[Ben]

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@sbistline wrote:

I have been provided with a memory map - protocol. Would I need any other information to allow labview to communicate with the energy management system? Is there an existing RS232 driver in labview? or is this something that I need to develop?

Thanks,

Steve

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A memory map is often associated with modbus and if that is your case there are modbus drivers available.

Ben