Industrial Data Xchange

As the renovations are coming to a close at the IDX Academy, the trainers have become eager to get training up and running again at IDX. The first course in the new facilities was a fully-booked Certified PROFIBUS Engineers Course. This week, IDX presented their free Anybus Communicator Training to Eaton covering the following: - Some essential aspects of the MODBUS protocol - What is the Anybus Communicator and what are it's applications - A free lunch! - Real-life practical examples on the newly built training rigs  There is no charge for the training and the attendees found it very worthwhile, especially since they were able to bring their own device and use the training rigs to test how they can use the Anybus Communicator for their specific needs.  The device in question is the  S811+ Soft Starter from Eaton and it was shown that this could be interfaced with PROFIBUS, DeviceNet, ControlNet, Ethernet/IP, PROFINET or any of the other major industrial pro

Hopefully this post will help you if you are having trouble finding the IP address of your Anybus X gateway. The MODBUS TCP Client Range of these gateways enable you to control a MODBUS TCP server and port that information to a whole host of different protocols such as PROFINET, PROFIBUS, DeviceNet, etc.  When you get one of these units out of the box, you shouldn't have any problems searching for and configuring the gateway on your Ethernet network, but sometimes you are given a configuration that has been used in the plant already and now you need to make some changes.  So what is your first step? Install and run the Anybus IPconfig tool (available on the Anybus website or on the the CD that comes with your unit). Assuming your physical Ethernet connection is intact, you should be able to scan the network for any HMS devices that are connected to the network.  Tip: I would connect and Ethernet cable directly to the Gateway from the PC and disable the wireless card to

The first IDX Gateway was successfully commissioned at Bluescope Steel, Wollongong Australia, at the end of February, marking a new milestone for the adoption of the IDX Gateway as a proven legacy StarNET HDLC interface solution.  This particular gateway is configured as a StarNET HDLC slave to PROFIBUS Slave and acts as a single StarNET slave which in turns appears as a single PROFIBUS slave to exchange data with the Toshiba PROFIBUS master. A key customer requirement of a sub-65ms data loop-back turnaround time of 60 16-bit integer values through the gateway was validated through an extensive testing process that had begun in October 2013. Of course, reliable and predictable operation was also a requirement. The IDX Gateway is now available in a new DIN-rail mountable embedded platform, shown above, to be able to accommodate standard length PCI/PCIe industrial data communication interface cards for a variety of protocols.