
guitargeekrich (Customer) asked a question.
I'm reading data from a couple of sensors using modbus via the RS485 port on a P2000 CPU. I have several identical machines doing the same thing. Recently, one of the machines has started giving me errors timeouts on the reads and the RX light on the port is now solid red. No programming has changed. No wiring has changed. Same machine with identical code as other machines that have been working for almost a year now.
I can take the sensors and put them on the other machines and they read just fine. I can take the sensors from other machines (working fine) and put them on the machine having the read issue and the reads do not work.
I can't find any information on what the RX light being solid red means. Anyone know?
Edited to add: the reads are timing out, not errors
This is usually indicative of polarity being reversed (ie. positive is connected to negative instead of positive to positive). I would check out the wiring on the circuit.
Just a thought.
Regards,
Garry
https://accautomation.ca/series/productivity-1000-plc/
Thanks Garry. It worked before and no rewiring has been done, just quit working today.
We swapped out the CPU with a spare and everything works as normal. Looks like the comm port died.
Glad you got it going again.
Thanks for the update.
Garry
How long is the wiring on the port?
What is the actual wire? (specced for RS-485 like Belden 9841)
Has there been any lightning/thunder activity?
Does the wiring pass by/thru any HI-energy, HI-magnetics area?
You might consider some TVS protection module between this line and the P2K.
If it happened once, it is likely to happen again.
Phoenix makes one but it is $300+
Maybe someone else has a suggested module.
I have one system with a long RS485 cable talking to a VFD 750' away and it smoked the RS485 port with same symptoms as yours. I added a CommFront signal isolator which, a couple of years later got zapped too but was quite a bit less trouble to replace than the CPU. I believe in my cases both incidents were accompanied by thunderstorms.
https://www.commfront.com/products/industrial-rs485-rs422-isolator-repeater-converter?variant=9208600963
https://www.serialcomm.com/serial_rs232_converters/opto_isolated_and_surge_suppressors/rs485_surge_suppressor/rs485_surge_suppressor.product_general_info.aspx
The above link is just the RS485 surge suppressor.
Regards,
Garry