ITK revision interpretability

[CHRISC1024]

I have a questions that was raised last night in a discussion that was held last night on a project that we are working on. The platform is Allen Bradley with 1756-FFLD, 4 port, ethernet version linking devices with a ITK4 revision. In the plant there are many devices that have been certified under ITK5. From my past experiences I've never seen a problem with a device with a higher ITK revision than the host. I've had issues with firmware revsion issues with devices when talking to a host. In this case ususally the manufactuer will either upgrade or downgrade the firmware of the field device to work properly with the host.

This plant has spent the time and resources to upgrade the firmware in all of thier FFLD's to the latest revision (as of 2009). Hopefully someone on this board will have some insight on this.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

[boblatt]

Chris,

The main difference between ITK revisions is additional functionality. The Fieldbus Foundation is very careful about ensuring that all additional functionality is backward compatible with existing devices and host systems so chances are good you won't have problems using field devices that have been registered with a later ITK.

You may run into problems with the cff files of the newer ITK version devices. Some host systems have trouble with new functionality described in the cff files which can cause device commissioning problems. These issues can almost always be resolved by making the appropriate changes to the cff file. Your host supplier or the field device supplier should be able to resolve these sorts of issues for you.

Bob

[CHRISC1024]

Bob,
Thank you for the response. That was my understanding in the ITK revisions.