Tag-based Ethernet/IP

[johnr]

Using the currently supported Ethernet/IP communications modes, is there any way to configure an H2-DM1E or a BRX to handle tag-based EIP read/write requests?   

I think the answer is no from what I can see in the DmD configuration screens, but I thought I'd ask anyway.  If not, are there any plans to incorporate this?  Thanks.

[MAEdwards]

Currently, the H2-DM1E and BRX do not support ANSI Extended Symbol Segments (tag-based EIP).  Instead, application data is stored in various Assembly Instances.  Access to this data is available through the Get_Attribute_Single (0xE) and Set_Attribute_Single (0x10) services to Attribute 3 of the targeted Assembly Instance. 
As for future plans, I'll have to let HOST answer that one.  Hope this helps.

[johnr]

Anyone from Host care to comment on this?  Any chance this may be added in the future? 

A number of years back, I designed and implemented a set of EIP to Modbus communications gateways for a client, with the EIP interfaces having to be configured as tag-based servers/adapters.   At the time, I didn't see any practical way to do this other than to use AB Logix controllers for the adapters, so that is what we did. 

We are in the early phases of planning some platform upgrades and migrations to this equipment - as a part of that effort, we would like to phase out the Logix units in favor of an Automation Direct solution.  I was hoping that I could now pull this off, given all of the EIP support in the newer AD PLC platforms,  but that doesn't look to be the case just yet.  Do-More would be our first choice for the EIP front end.  This isn't time critical, we would like to do the migration within the next 2-3 years.   Thanks for any insight that you can provide.

[BobO]

Anyone from Host care to comment on this?  Any chance this may be added in the future? 

A number of years back, I designed and implemented a set of EIP to Modbus communications gateways for a client, with the EIP interfaces having to be configured as tag-based servers/adapters.   At the time, I didn't see any practical way to do this other than to use AB Logix controllers for the adapters, so that is what we did. 

We are in the early phases of planning some platform upgrades and migrations to this equipment - as a part of that effort, we would like to phase out the Logix units in favor of an Automation Direct solution.  I was hoping that I could now pull this off, given all of the EIP support in the newer AD PLC platforms,  but that doesn't look to be the case just yet.  Do-More would be our first choice for the EIP front end.  This isn't time critical, we would like to do the migration within the next 2-3 years.   Thanks for any insight that you can provide.

Right this minute we are finalizing a release to support a new version of the BRX CPU we built from parts we were actually able to acquire. Fun times, spending months of engineering effort to recreate what you already have. But you do what you must, and we are thankful we were able to to find a way.

Once that is complete, we will be back in new development mode, and the #1 feature is EIP Scanner. Once that's done, if there is enough interest and there aren't any technical hurdles, we're certainly willing to entertain further EIP improvements.