Ethernet/IP using Opto but not AB

I have a contract to retrofit a system that I installed back in 2000. The existing system uses PAMUX I/O connected to a PC using RTX ( www.intervalzero.com ). RTX is a realtime controller that is installed under Windows. The user interface is Citect Scada. Shared memory allows the scada and the controller to pass parameters and data. I am going to upgrade everything and I will replace the pamux with ehternet/IP. I am just getting started and am a newbie to Ethernet/IP (EIP) so it should be interesting. I have a Hischer Cifx50-RE scanner card and they have a EIP driver for RTX. I think this is going to be pretty interesting and if anybody has comments, ideas, or questions. I would love to hear them - thx

Hi CaptBixley,

Welcome to the forums! I’m curious what your overall goal is here? Do you NEED to rip out the PAMUX I/O? I ask because one of the great things about Opto 22 is how we support many of our legacy hardware brains, etc. so you can save the expense of replacing the I/O, wiring, etc. in many situations.

For example, we have PC boards and toolkits that support PAMUX on modern operating systems, like this PC-PAMUX-SDK.

Is EIP a requirement? Is speed of communication w/the I/O important? Tell us more! Usually there are many options and we’ve love to save you as much time/effort by giving you as many ideas and choices as possible.

Thanks,
-OptoMary

No, but I see ethernet as more vesatile and more state of the art. I deployed a number of snap pamux over the years and I had some problems with the Snap-B6 brain - in a number of my systems the program inside the brain would stop running. This problem was never resolved.
Converting to ehternet/IP is great because snap I/0 modules haven’t change in over at least 10 to 15 years - so I am going to replace the racks and the brains with snap-pac-EB2 and rack but reuse all of the I/O modules - so no change of wiring just remove the old racks and replace with new. I need the EDS for the EB2 and the modules I think - which I cannot find on your website anywhere.

I think EIP is important because it will open my design solution to a wealth of new I/O hardware etc.

I would not suggest EIP, I thought it is probably the most overly complicated means of using ethernet you could possibly dream up. If AB hadn’t spent a huge amount of money trying to shove it down everybody’s throat, it would would never have survived. Don’t forget to include nice expensive IGMP Snooping switches and routers in your network, or it will overcome itself with useless traffic. That being said the Opto22 implementation of it is very good and as simple as anything could be in EIP. I worked on a system where the customer insisted on using Delta V (also one of the worlds most overly complicated system) and they wanted to use Opto22 for the IO and use DeltaV’s implementation of EIP. We had to go to a guru at Delta’s main partner (which happened to be in St. Louis) and he was the only one who understood their setup config (probably in the US). BTW, if the device is not an EIP master then it will not work since Opto’s implementation is a slave. Be sure and change the default polling time of 10ms in you master, or you will probably have problems. BTW, since you are using Pamux, if your system has a real need for speed use the R1 as a brain, or if doing any high speed counting, use the EB1 or the R1. The original Pamux systems were at the time some of the highest speed stuff around and still are, even the old G4 stuff.