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Cherokee Cluster reprogram!


Sir Sam
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5 hours ago, Sir Sam said:

We use CAN mostly for distributed IO communications. Modbus we see at higher level integration between different sub systems and master control. EG plant DCS/BOP and a VFD controller, pump controller, or primer mover governor. 

 

Industrial CAN open its a little harder to setup between different manufacturers devices, so you mostly see modbus or OPC as the interface protocols. 

 

What you described is exactly how we're using Modbus in our products.  My company designs & manufactures equipment that is just a small portion of a much larger production line.  As such, we use Modbus to talk to all of the other pieces of equipment on the line to let them know how we're doing and what we're doing.  Inside of our product we're using mainly all Allen-Bradley equipment, which, as I'm sure you know, has it's own proprietary protocol to talk to everything.

 

I learned a lot about CAN and Modbus from our former controls engineer and he was excellent at dumbing it down and explaining it to people like me that have a mechanical background.  He was a couple decades older than myself and had previously worked in a couple of facilities that had a hodge-podge of different equipment that all needed to talk to each other.  The common language for that to happen was typically Modbus.  He moved on to another company and his replacement is much younger and worked for a large organization that was highly standardized and all of the equipment was done with ControlLogix.  He's very timid about diving into Modbus and learning the ins and outs, which has driven me to try and figure it all out on my own.

 

I've always been fascinated with control systems, PLCs, HMIs, distributed I/O and the networks they run on.  It was always comical to me that if I made a mistake on a part that I designed it would typically require me to perform some kind of time consuming process (milling, drilling, cutting, trimming, etc) to make it right.  When our control system engineer made a mistake in his program, he would just rewrite a virtual rung in his ladder logic and the problem was solved.

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