2 Ecom Cards in the Same Base Blues

[sgsims]

Having trouble getting one of 2 H2Ecom-100 cards working.  I've got a DL205 9 Slot base with a DL260 CPU.  Ecoms are in slot 5 & slot 6.  The two cards are on their own network with nothing else attached to them but a Cognex Dataman camera.  (we have two cameras both the same model Camera A attached to Ecom # 1 ,  Camera B attached to Ecom # 2)

Using Modbus TCP/IP with the camera as a slave.

So,  Ecom # 1 & camera A work great.  I can communicate via netedit to both ecoms to do the General configuration and Peer table Set-up.  Ecom # 2 won't show any activity.  Checked all my Ecom Config I-Boxes and ladder program first.  Talked to AD support next.  They sent out a new ecom card.  Same problem.  They are sending out another one (third 0ne).

Troubleshooting..I connected camera # 2 to the good ecom # 1 and everything worked great.  So not a modbus addressing issue.  Although I think I already knew that because I can't get any activity at all on the Ecom # 2.  So no error bits going high as I poll the ecom card with a read I-Box.

So was thinking maybe the base has a problem.  So I swapped the cards.  Put the good ecom in the other slot...it continued to work great.  Put the bad ecom card int he other slot..still no coms.

Anyway,  going to work with the new card and try a bunch of different combinations to see if I can ever get the card is question to respond.

Any ideas??  Yes,  DS # 7 is in the ON position.  Yes,  I updated the firmware.

[ATU]

I just finished a job with a 260, 1 ECOM100  and 2 Cognex Cameras on the same network and it's working fine, but it took some trial and error. Can you attach the part of the program that has all of the IBOX's.

[sgsims]

Yep..here you go.

[ATU]

I noticed you have some conditionals on the enable for the ECRX boxes. I had problems with this.  The communications would just stop.  It has something to do with the way the IBOXs are setup. Maybe Franji can explain it better. So I put them all in a row at the top of the program and had them running all the time. This works, but later I found this to be a problem, because in my application the cameras where taking 8 consecutive images very quickly and buffering them for processing after the last image. I discovered that the Cognex camera's missed triggers if I had continuous communications. So I had to disable communications during the acquire, but if using I-Boxes this has to be in an orderly fashion. You have to make sure you complete the transmission before disabling the IBOX instruction. What I did was place each Ibox in a stage. Then wait for either a success or failure bit to continue on to the next stage for the next read or write. At the top of my loop, I had a check whether I wanted to begin the next pass. This way the tokens don't get screwed up. It picks up where it left off. Also, I recently found out that unfinished Modbus transmissions may cause an accumulative memory leak in the camera.  You always want to make sure the write or read is complete before you disable the instruction.
 

[sgsims]

great info for when I finally get the cpu to talk to the ecom!

[ATU]

Sure you got the slot numbers right? I've gotten that messed up before.

[sgsims]

yep..checked that several times.

[ATU]

Do you have the same IP addresses set in both cameras?

[sgsims]

nope...different ip addresses for each camera....although I don't think that would matter even if they were the same IP address because the ecom cards are on two completely differet networks.

Anyway..........

[ATU]

Right, but when you did the swap, did you change the IP in the PEER To PEER CFG?

[sgsims]

yes

[franji1]

Please post a screen shot of your I/O Config page (PLC->Configure I/O)

[sgsims]

will do in a couple of hours when I get to the project site.  Although we have looked at that page and it is seeing an ecom in both slots if that's waht you are wanting to see.

[franji1]

Don't make a special trip - just want to make sure everything is good from a backplane/slot standpoint.

[sgsims]

going anyway so no worries there...thanks