User`s guide

characters, put a backslash and the three digit code. For example, if you needed

to send it “Give me data” and a carriage return, you would put:

Give me data\013

13 is the ASCII code for carriage return, so \013 sends a carriage return at the

end. Other common codes are \010 for a line feed (LF), and \009 for tab. If you

have no idea what to send, start with a carriage return: \013. No matter what

you send, you should see what your output appear in the monitor error preceded

by “Tx:”, and hopefully your device’s response. If you don’t see what you

outputted and the Tx, then the connection failed. With serial RS232/422/485

comm ports, this usually means another piece of software is using the port or you

specified a non-existant port and you probably got an alert already indicating this.

With Ethernet, this means a connection could not be established, which means

either the IP address was wrong, or inaccessible, or the IP port was incorrect. Or

you just forgot to turn the device on. Either way, you should keep the monitor

window open and tweak your settings until you get it transmitting.

If you get Tx: and your output string but no response, then things are a little

better off. First, check your command and make sure you have it properly

formatted. Many devices don’t respond to invalid commands. Second, the

communications settings could still be off. With serial, this typically occurs when

you have the wrong baud or other setting. With Ethernet, it could be that you are

simply communicating with the wrong device because you put the wrong IP, or

your device has multiple Ethernet ports (some Ethernet encapsulation devices

have this), and you connected to the wrong one. Or, perhaps while you weren’t

looking your cat ate the cable. Again, leave the monitor window open, tweak your

settings, check your cable, and check the device’s manual. Until you get a

response, there is no point in moving forward with the rest of this guide.

Polled data with a complex protocol:

If your device uses a complex protocol, such as Modbus, you probably don’t know

off hand what a proper message is. If you do, perhaps you’d like a job with

AzeoTech? If not, fortunately we do work for AzeoTech and so here are a couple

example commands that might work. You could also simply jump ahead to the

section on prebuilt protocols, leaving the monitor window open.

ModbusRTU: assuming your device is at Modbus ID 1, to read the first holding

\001\003\000\000\000\001\132\010

ModbusTCP: you can actually send 6 characters and the device will likely echo it

back. But here is the same command as the above example for RTU using

ModbusTCP:

\000\000\000\000\000\006\001\003\000\000\000\001

Allen Bradley: assuming your device has an ID of 1 in CRC mode, to read N7:0

do:

\016\002\001\000\015\000\042\000\162\002\007\137\000\000\016\003\136\065

Mitsubishi FX serial: to read T0, do:

\0020080002\0035D