The device menu is used to manage the attached device. The following is a description of each menu item.
Connect to the attached device using either serial or ethernet.
If serial is selected then a COM port on the PC must be chosen from the drop-down list. That COM port must be connected to COM1 on the device.
When the OK button is clicked the GUI either connects to the device immediately if the firmware is running or waits for a manual reset of the device.
In the latter case you must cycle the device power or use the reset pin. The GUI makes the connection. You must ensure that you click the OK button before doing the reset. Then cwait until the status bar message indicates that the GUI is connected. If you want you can also click the Cancel button to break out of the connection request.
If ethernet is selected then the IP address and password must be entered. These must have been previously set on the device. These would originally have been set using a serial connection and after that can be reset using ethernet. The password can be set to a zero length string.
Once the connection is made a message is displayed in the status bar. The other Device menu items are enabled and the Connect menu item is disabled. The Connection Status is set to 'connected'. The Connection Port Identifier is set to the PC serial port number or their IP address depending on the type of connection requested.
If the 'read config' checkbox is selected the device configuration is read automatically when a successful connection is made.
If the 'serial via ip' checkbox is selected the gui will connect to a server socket that has a serial port as a destination and that serial port is connected to a remote ip100 gui serial port. This permits, for example, one ip100 that has a virtual serial configuration to be used to access a gui serial port on a remote ip100. In this mode the password is not used. See Serial via IP for a diagram and further explanation.
Close the connection to the attached device. If the Monitor window is open it is closed. The Connect menu item is enabled and all other Device menu items are disabled. The Connection status is set to 'not connected'.
Request the device to do a soft reset. This is equivalent to cycling the power on the device or asserting the reset pin. The device is disconnected with the same action as the Disconnect menu item.
Read, write, and initialize the configuration stored in the device's flash memory. A device reset is then requested with the same action as the Reset menu item.
Read the firmware software version number, the MAC address, supply voltage, reset counter, active IP address, and date/time from the device.
Click the 'Get' button to sample the supply voltage. Click the 'Calibrate' button to calibrate the supply voltage. Click the 'Clear' button to set the reset counter to zero.
Click the 'Set to PC' button to set the date/time on the device to the date/time of the PC. Click the 'Get' button to read the device's date/time. Click the 'Set' button to set the device date/time to the value in the 'Device Date/Time' text box. This text box can be edited to any valid date/time.
Click the 'Close' button to close the Info window.
Reads and writes the DI, DO, SW Power, and Relay digital input/outputs. The Value field displays the value of each of these by sampling every one second.
The Mode, Base, and Duration field are read-only fields whose values are obtained from the device's configuration that is stored in flash memory. These are set using the Digial I/O form that can be selected in the Navigation Pane.
The On and Off buttons are used to set the state of the digital outputs when the mode is On/Off. The Pulse button is used to generate a pulse to the digital outputs when the mode is Pulse. The Close button is used to close the Digital I/O window.
The digital values are set in the Internal Registers.
Reads the I/O bus configuration.
Discovers all modules on the I/O bus, their type, module number, and physical location.
Receives diagnostic output from a selected serial port and displays it in a scrolling window.
This window has a menu bar with a File and View menu.
The File menu is used to save messages displayed in the monitor window to a file. You can also read the file and append to it.
These files normally have the '.txt' extension and contain a sequence of messages in text format. The first character in each line is a '>'. The next field is a serial port identifier (e.g. COM2), followed by the device date/time the message was output, and then a hex dump of the message. Any text editor can be used to read this file.
The following is a description of each menu item.
New | Clear the monitor window. |
Open | Navigate to and read an existing message file. |
Append | Append all monitor window message to the last message file that was opened. If there is no such file then the action is the same as selecting the 'Save As' menu item. The messages are appended to the file navigated to. |
Save | Write all monitor window messages to a file if the file has been previously opened either in this session or a previous session. If there is no such file then the action is the same as selecting the 'Save As' menu item. |
Save As | Navigate to a file and write all messages in the monitor window to the file. The file can be either a new file or an existing file. |
Close | Stop diagnostic output and close the monitor window. |
The view menu is used to control monitoring of the device's serial ports.
The following is a description of each menu item.
Port | Select the serial port identifier of the port to monitor or select 'none'. These are device port numbers and not PC port numbers. |
On | Turn diagnostic output on. If a serial port is selected and if messages are being sent or received by the device from the port. |
Off | Turn diagnostic output off. |
Brief | The same output as with the 'full' option except that only the first eight bytes and last eight bytes of the message are output. If the message has sixteen or less bytes then the full message is output. |
Full | All bytes of the message are output with a heading that has the port number, date/time, message length, and receive/transmit type. Normally only used for a few messages since this slows system throughput. |
Wrap | Word wrap each line to fit within the monitor window. If word wrap is off then you can resize the window both horizontally and vertically to see more of each line. The window can be resized with word wrap on as well. |
The first character in each line of the log is a '>'. The next field is a serial port identifier (e.g. COM2), the device date/time the message was output, a cid/cn pair, the letter 'L' and the byte length of the message, TX or RX then a hex dump of the message. The TX and RX are relative to the IP100. That means if RX is displayed then the message is being received by the IP100 (e.g. a modbus request) and TX is the modbus response being sent by the IP100.
cid is a connection identifier (0..8) and indicates the type of connection mode according to the table below. cn is a connection number (0..*) and is an index to one of the IP100 tasks running for that mode. The cn is incremented when a task for a mode is created. Since the tasks in the IP100 cannot have the same priority the tasks with the lowest cn have higher priorities. That means tasks with smaller cn numbers are more likely to appear in the monitor log.
cid | connection mode |
---|---|
0 | ip mux |
1 | serial mux |
2 | vs server |
3 | vs client |
4 | serial master |
5 | serial or ip broadcast |
6 | connect |
7 | not used since ip slave has no serial |
8 | serial slave |
Load firmware into the attached device. A default firmware file is displayed. Either use that or navigate to the firmware that you want. Then click 'ok' to start the download. If you want to stop the loading then click the 'cancel' button at any time. You must not power down the device while the loading is in progress. This type of load can only be used if firmware for version 3.x or higher is already running in the attached device. If there is no firmware in the device or if 2.x or lower is installed then use the Tools > Bootstrap Load menu instead.