Foundation Fieldbus <-> PC connection

[andenna]

Hello everybody,

I have an industrial device (a differential pressure transmitter) with a Foundation Fieldbus interface and I would like to interact with it using a PC.
In particular, I need to configure it changing some parameters of a specific function block.
I know that National Instruments provides solutions for this, but they are very expensive: around 3000 US$, including the HW (connection to PCMCIA, ISA or PCI) and the configuration SW.
This is too expensive for me, especially because I would need this "PC <-> Foundation Fieldbus" communication only for some tests on this specific device.
I don't have any special requirement about communication speed and industrial-environment robustness.

Does someone know if there are cheap solutions (at least cheaper than the NI one), even if they have a restricted functionality?
In particular, are there converters from the H1 interface to the serial or Ethernet port of a PC? And, in this case, is there software for using them?

Thank you.

Best regards
Andrea Andenna

[jberge]

That price may be hard to beat. You can SYSTEM302 demo software for free and run it in a limited 8 blocks and 2 hour mode. Then all you need is the Fieldbus (H1) to Ethernet (HSE) linking device which in its simplest form can be prety cheap. See here:
http://www.smar.com/products/dfi302.asp

Contact me directly off-list at jberge@smar.com.sg if you need a quote.

Best regards,
Jonas Berge


Hello everybody,

I have an industrial device (a differential pressure transmitter) with a Foundation Fieldbus interface and I would like to interact with it using a PC.
In particular, I need to configure it changing some parameters of a specific function block.
I know that National Instruments provides solutions for this, but they are very expensive: around 3000 US$, including the HW (connection to PCMCIA, ISA or PCI) and the configuration SW.
This is too expensive for me, especially because I would need this "PC <-> Foundation Fieldbus" communication only for some tests on this specific device.
I don't have any special requirement about communication speed and industrial-environment robustness.

Does someone know if there are cheap solutions (at least cheaper than the NI one), even if they have a restricted functionality?
In particular, are there converters from the H1 interface to the serial or Ethernet port of a PC? And, in this case, is there software for using them?

Thank you.

Best regards
Andrea Andenna

[emacswu]

Hi, Andrea

The cheapest solution is to buy a National Instruments interface card (~$1500) then you can download NI-FBUS Communications Manager from www.ni.com for free.

Within NI-FBUS Communications Manager software, you can set the device parameters by four ways:
1. dialog (a simple tool shipped with NI-FBUS CM);
2. an OPC client, such as server explorer (shipped with NI-FBUS CM), for an OPC server is shipped with NI-FBUS CM;
3. LabVIEW (a LabVIEW toolkit is shipped with NI-FBUS CM);
4. You can also develop the applications with SDK shipped in CM.

And the LabVIEW toolkit in NI-FBUS CM is more suitable for the manual/automatical device test than the configuration software (NI-FBUS Configurator).

I know that National Instruments provides solutions for this, but they are very expensive: around 3000 US$, including the HW (connection to PCMCIA, ISA or PCI) and the configuration SW.