The ASCII driver implements communication with any device using the ASCII protocol on TCP/IP or serial networks. The communications blocks are dynamically created according to the pooling cycle defined on the AccessType for each Device Point.  

Summary Information

Communication Driver Name: ASCII

Implementation DLL: T.ProtocolDriver.ASCII.dll

Protocol: Generic ASCII  

Interface: TCP/IP and Serial 

PLC types supported: Any PLC compatible with the ASCII protocol  


Channel Configuration

Protocol Options

BlockSize: Defines the maximum amount of characters. The default value is 250

StartChar: Defines the start character of incoming messages

EndChar: Defines the end character of incoming messages

Settings

Serial and Multi-Serial channels:

Default configuration: 

    • BaudRate: 9600
    • DataBits: 8
    • StopBits: 1  
    • Parity: None 

TCP/IP channels:

NodeConnections: Defines the maximum number of parallel requests that will be sent to each node (asynchronous communication) 


Node Configuration

Station Configuration

Serial channels: Nothing

TCP/IP channels: 

  • Station syntax: <IP address>;<Port number>
  • Where:

<IP address> = The IP address of the slave device in the ASCII network 

<Port number> = The TCP port where the slave device is listening (default is 502) 

Ex:  192.168.1.101 ; 502  


Point Configuration

The syntax for the ASCII communication points is: <SequenceId>:<SizeOf>

Where:

  • <SequenceID> indicates the order of the data where the TX message will be created
  • <SizeOf> indicates the amount of characters from the configured tag 


Access Point

Read and Write commands will generate the same TX message

Incoming messages from the device will be treated as an Unsolicited Message


Example

Point 1

TagName: TagA (value equal ABCD)  

Address: 0:3 


Point 2

TagName: TagB (value equal 1234)  

Address: 2:3 


Point 3

TagName: TagC (value equal abcd)  

Address: 1:4 


The TX message created is: ABCabcd123 


Troubleshoot

The status of the driver's execution can be observed through the diagnostic tools, which are:

• Trace window
• Property Watch
• Module Information

The above tools indicate if the operations have succeeded or have failed. A status of 0 (zero) means communication is successful. Negative values indicate internal driver errors, and positive values indicate protocol error codes.


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