problems in communicating with SIEMENS AC Drive

[djaya]

siemens AC Drive (with Can bus communication card), I am having problems in communicating with SIEMENS AC Drive, using PC based NI-CAN Bus card. In Max under Devices and Interfaces the SIEMENS Drive is not listed. That may be one of the problems and I don't know how to resolve that. I don't know whether this is the correct approach. My knowledge in NI-CAN programming is very limited. Any help on resolving this matter would be appreciated.

Thank you

djaya

[RobSims]

Hi Djaya,

Thanks for posting on the NI forums.

Are you using an NI CAN device to communicate with the Siemens Drive unit? If so then you will be able to see the CAN card in MAX, but the connected drive unit will not be visible. This is because MAX contains information about NI hardware and LAN-connected NI resources (RT Targets, etc).

Within MAX you will be able to verify the installation of the NI CAN hardware, configure the properties for each CAN port, create or import configuration information for the Channel API, but also interact with the CAN network using various tools. This last point is more for ensuring communication is available rather than for fully-fledged applications.

I would advise taking a look at the NI-CAN hardware and software manual for more information on the above, and also some introductory-type information about CAN. It will be located in 'Start>All Programs>National Instruments>NI-CAN' after installing the NI-CAN driver. Please refer to the link below where some resources to learn about CAN are also suggested.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=30&message.id=243&requireLogin=False

I hope this helps. Let me know how you get along. All the best,

Rob

[djaya]

Hi  Rob,

Thank you for the reply.

I tried to configure the properties of CAN port without any success, I wonder whether that is the right approach.

In a situation like this is it a must to use an OPC server to communicate with the Siemens drive, instead of MAX.

If so which NI Server is the most suitable with Siemens Drive, or do I need to go for a third party server.

Thank You,

djaya

[RobSims]

Hi Djaya,

What do you mean when you say you "tried to configure the CAN port without any success"? And is this an National Instruments CAN card you are dealing with?

If the Siemens drive has a CAN port on it then, from what you have told me so far, your best route to communicate to it would be to write a small program in an application development environment (like LabVIEW or LabWindows/CVI, C/C++, etc) that is able to transmit information to the drive via your CAN card, and receive any response/information the unit outputs. To do this you will need to know a little about the CAN messages the Siemens drive transmits and will receive. These should be documented by Siemens somewhere. The relavent information you will need will be the message name (if any), arbitration ID, frame format and data bytes of the messages. As each message could contain several channels of data you will most likely need to look into the structure of the data contained in each message.

As far as using OPC servers- an OPC server is ideal for situations where data is acquired at one or several points on a network (DAQ cards in a PCs, Fieldpoint devices/PACs/PLCs, etc), but you would like all this data 'reported' back to a specific server on the network so other machines can access this data easily. This server is where the OPC server comes in. Please take a look at the below link for a 3rd party introduction to OPC servers.

http://itcofe.web.cern.ch/itcofe/Services/OPC/GeneralInformation/Specifications/RelatedDocuments/DAS...

Before we go much further I must ask for a little more information from you about your system, and what you want to do with it. I.e. what is the model of this Siemens AC drive unit? I have taken a look at the Siemens website and I can find devices as diverse as AC motor controllers/drives, to electric engines for cars. Also are you needing to access the CAN data accross an ethernet LAN or are you trying to get communication between your drive unit and a single PC? Any other information about what you need to do would be useful also.

I hope this helps, and I look forward to hearing back from you. All the best,

Rob

[akanksha90]

The NI-CAN application programming interface depends on the operating system and programming language. The NI-CAN is used in various programming environments including LabVIEW and C programming. I would suggest to take some information and knowledge about NI-CAN hardware and software and also about USS Protocol.