TOP Server 5.19

Configuration Guide:

Enron Modbus Device

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Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Channel Setup 3

Device Setup 10

Further Information 27

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Introduction

This document is intended to provide an easy to use reference guide on configuring a connection to a

Enron Modbus device using the TOP Server. It is not intended to be comprehensive, and the help file

should be referenced for any additional information – if needed. This document will describe the channel

and device setup, give a summary of the settings that will be encountered – and when it is appropriate to

change them from the default values.

Channel Setup

1. The first step in configuring a connection to an Enron Modbus device from TOP Server is to create

a Channel. A channel represents a communication medium from the PC running TOP server to the

device. In the case of the Enron Modbus driver, the Channel can represent the serial port – when

using serial devices – or the socket connection over which communications will occur.

2. The Channel name is user configurable, and will be how the Channel appears in the TOP Server

tree view – i.e. how clients will reference devices configured under this channel:

3. Click next and choose the Enron Modbus Driver from the Driver dropdown list. This selection

determines which protocol will be used to communicate over the channel. The “Enable Diagnostics”

checkbox has no impact on communications so can be left unchecked, but statistic tags will be

inactive until diagnostics are enabled.

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4. Click next and choose whether or not this channel should be included in a Virtual Network, and if

‘yes’ which Virtual network the channel should be assigned to.

a. The Transactions per cycle specifies the number of single read/write transactions that can

occur on the channel. When a channel is given the opportunity to communicate, this

number of transactions is attempted.

b. The Network Mode is used to control how channel communication is delegated:

i. Load Balanced mode – Each channel is given the opportunity to communicate in

turn, one at a time.

ii. Priority mode – Channels are given the opportunity to communicate according to

transaction priority:

1. Channels with pending writes have the highest priority

2. Channels with pending explicit reads (through internal plug-ins or external

client interfaces) are prioritized based on the read’s priority.

3. Scanned reads and other periodic events (driver specific).

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5. Select the appropriate connection type for this device. If using a serial connection the Serial port

settings must be set to match those of the device. If Ethernet Encapsulating the traffic, specify

which network adapter the TOP Server should use for communications.

6. Click next to configure the connection behavior.

a. Report communication errors will log any errors specific to the port we are attempting to

communicate with to the TOP Server event log. On serial lines where interference is

expected, unchecking this option can prevent the TOP Server event log from flooding with

connection related events – this should be done with care, as this will also prevent

legitimate connection errors from being logged.

b. Close connection when idle will terminate the connection when it is not in use for the

specified number of seconds.

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7. Click next to review the Write optimization settings for this Channel. These will generally be left at

the default value, but can be altered as needed.

a. Write all values for all tags will queue all write requests and issue them in the order they

were received.

b. Write only latest value for non-Boolean tags will not queue all writes, but only write the

last value that was received from the client application for any non-Boolean tags.

c. Write only latest value for all tags will not queue any writes, and simply write the last

value that was received from the client application for any points.

d. The Duty Cycle determines how many writes will be processed per 1 read request. Since

writes are treated with higher priority this can be used to improve communication rates in

write-heavy channels

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8. Click next to review how the driver will handle non-normalized floating point values. This can

generally be left at the default value, unless non-normalized values are expected (e.g. Not-A-

Number or infinity)

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.

9. An inter-device delay can be configured if desired. This setting determines whether the channel will

pause after receiving data from a device before switching to the next device on the channel, and

will specify how many milliseconds this pause should be. This setting can be particularly useful in

telemetry scenarios if the radio requires time between requests.

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10. The last dialog will summarize the selected Channel settings. If all settings are correct, selecting

Finish will finalize the configuration and create the Channel.

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Device Setup

1. Click to add a device to the newly configured Channel

2. The Device name is user configurable, and will determine how the device appears in the TOP

Server Tree view, and how client applications access the device.

3. Specify the Device ID. If Ethernet Encapsulation is being used this ID should be the IP address of

the device.

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4. Specify the devices Scan Mode settings for Subscription based clients. In systems where

bandwidth utilization is not a concern, this setting should be left at the default. Other options

include:

a. Respect client specified scan rate – Will respect the requested scan rate from client

applications to determine how often to scan the device

b. Request data no faster than… - Will set a ceiling; data will be requested no faster than

the specified time value.

c. Request all data at… - All data will be requested at the specified timing interval

d. Do not scan, demand poll only – there will be no automatic scanning done of the device,

unless a plug-in or client application manually triggers the poll (via the _DemandPoll

system tag)

e. Respect tag specified scan rate – respects the scan rate specified at the tag level

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5. The timing settings should be set appropriately based on the type of connection, and the level of

congestion on the network. These can generally be left at the default, and increased/decreased as

needed.

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6. The Auto-Demotion settings will determine whether unresponsive devices will be taken out of the

polling cycle for a specified period of time. In situations where multiple devices are configured under

a single channel it is recommended to enable auto-demotion, and discard write requests on devices

that are written to frequently. Write requests will overwrite the auto-demotion period, and attempt a

connection immediately. Since devices under a channel are treated sequentially, this will prevent a

downed device from repeatedly slowing down communications for other devices on the channel.

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7. Click next to specify the Database Creation Settings. Namely if and when the tag database will be

created, how previously generated tags will be handled, and if tags should be included in a specified

tag group. This parameter keeps automatically generated tags from mixing with tags that have been

entered manually. When enabled tags will be created in the server for registers that are mapped to

EFM Configuration Attributes for each enabled meter in the device.

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8. Specify the time zone that the device resides in, and whether the device time should be

synchronized with the system time of the machine that TOP Server is running on. The possible time

synchronization settings are:

a. Disabled – The timestamp of the device will never be synchronized with the TOP Server

system clock

b. Absolute – The timestamp of the device will be synchronized with the TOP Server system

clock once per day, at the specified time.

c. Interval – The timestamp of the device will be synchronized with the TOP Server system

clock at the given time interval.

The time synchronization settings are intended to prevent the device clock from drifting too far from

the TOP Server system clock, and will primarily affect EFM record polls – not real time data

collection.

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9. Specify the Data Encoding settings as appropriate for the device.

a. Use default Modbus byte order – When unchecked the TOP Server driver will expect

data to be sent using the Intel Byte order (Low order byte last), rather than the default

Modbus Byte order (High order byte last).

b. First word low in 32 bit data types – Specifies whether the device will send the low order

word first or second when dealing with 32 bit data types, as these will be stored in two

Modbus Registers.

c. Use zero based bit addressing within registers – This setting will specify whether bits

within registers should be addressed 0-15 (Checked) or 1-16 (unchecked). This setting will

not affect what is sent to the device, only which bit the TOP Server will reference for the

specified register.

d. Use Modicon bit order (bit 0 is the MSB) – Will change the expected bit order to match

the Modsoft programming software. When checked the writing to bit 0 in TOP Server will

alter bit 15 in the device.

Time Sync Setup: Launches a dialog that can be used to assig register addresses to the

server’s time synchronization attributes.

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10. Specify the block sizes that should be used to read contiguous registers from the device. These

indicate the maximum number of numeric (registers) and boolean values that will be read from the

device in a single request. In Telemetry situations these should be increased to reduce the number

of requests.

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11. Specify whether Modbus TCP Framing should be used. This option will only be available if using Ethernet encapsulation, and will append the MBAP header to the beginning of any request. Specify whether there are any leading or trailing bytes that are going to be included in the response.

12. Specify how TOP Server should handle situations where the device indicates we are referencing an

illegal address. (Error code 2 or 3). When this setting is checked, TOP Server will deactivate the

erroneous tags and not waste time trying to poll them. When the “Reject repeated messages”

option is checked the driver will reject repeat messages.When unchecked, this option will treat

repeated messages as an invalid response, and will retry the request.

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13. Specify the address ranges that are available for each data type. These ranges can be modified or

removed, and new ones can be added.

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14. Use the Add/Remove/Modify buttons to configure the EFM mappings for the device.

15. Give the EFM mapping a user friendly name.

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16. Map the device’s configuration attributes to those of the server. Any attributes that are left blank or

static will not be read from the device.

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17. Use the History dialog to configure the History mapping by assigning a unique index to each EFM

attribute. History records that are retrieved from the device will be parsed according to this

mapping, which will apply to both Hourly and Daily data. These records can include data from the

Gas Chromatograph archives; when the data is not included from the GC archives they will not be

uploaded.

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18. Configure the EFM mapping between the device alarms and the server alarms. These mapping will

assign alarms received from the device to specific meters, alarm types, and states. Alarms can

apply to one or more meters based on how the alarm address is specified.

19. Click Finish to add the EFM mapping to the list. Configure the meter specific configuration options:

a. Archive Configuration

i. Max Hourly Records: Specifies the maximum number of hourly records the device

will store.

ii. Max Daily Records: Specifies the maximum number of daily records the device

will store.

iii. Max Event Records: Specifies the maximum number of even records the device

will store.

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iv. Record Order: Specifies the order that records will be stored in the device. This

setting is not currently supported and cannot be changed from the default value of

Ascending.

v. Record Buffer Type: Specifies the type of buffer that the device will use to store

records in the device. The setting is not currently supported and cannot be

changed from the default value of Wrap Around.

vi. Pointer Value: Specifies whether the value in the hourly and daily pointer registers

will point to the last stored value, or to the next available register.

vii. Non-meter Events: Specifies how to handle non-meter events. Options are to

ignore them, log them to a specific meter, or log them to all meters.

viii. Bool Offset: Specifies the offset of the Boolean configuration register range for

each successive meter.

ix. Short Offset: Specifies the offset of the Short configuration register range for each

successive meter.

x. Long Offset: Specifies the offset of the Long configuration register range for each

successive meter.

xi. Float Offset: Specifies the offset of the Float configuration register range for each

successive meter.

xii. History Archive Modbus Byte Order: Specifies whether the data in History

archives will be in the standard Modbus byte order

xiii. History Archive First Word Low: Specifies whether the data in the History

archives will be stored with the first word low

xiv. Event Archive Modbus Byte Order: Specifies whether the data in the

Alarm/Event archives will be in the standard Modbus byte order

xv. Event Archive First Word Low: Specifies whether the data in the Alarm/Event

archives will be stored with the first word low

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xvi. Multi-Byte Characters: Specifies whether string configuration data will be stored

in two bytes per character format.

xvii. History record Time Stamp Format: The Enron Modbus data type for History

record timestamps is a float. This setting will specify whether the float is stored in

the HHMMSS or HHMM.SS format.

xviii. Clear Cache: When set to Yes, the TOP server will clear all EFM data and reset

the EFM pointer files, which are used to track the EFM uploads. All EFM data will

be re-polled from the device, after which this tag will be reset to “No”

b. Meters

i. Meter Name: A user configurable, descriptive, name for the meter.

ii. Enabled: Specifies whether the meter is enabled for EFM Polling

iii. Hourly Archive: Specifies the meter/run’s hourly archive address.

iv. Daily Archive: Specifies the meter/run’s daily archive address.

v. Hourly GC Data: Specifies the meter/run’s hourly archive address for gas

chromatography.

vi. Daily GC Data: Specifies the meter/run’s daily archive address for gas

chromatography.

vii. Hourly Pointer: Specifies the register that the device will use to indicate the

position of the current (or last) hourly record in the buffer.

viii. Daily Pointer: Specifies the register that the device will use to indicate the position

of the current (or last) daily record in the buffer.

ix. Event Counter: Specifies the register that the device will use to indicate the

number of alarm/event records in the buffer.

x. Mapping: Specifies the type of mapping that will be used for Configuration,

History, and Alarm data.

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20. After reviewing the device settings in the summary, clicking Finish will create the device.

21. Tags can now be configured statically in the server, or dynamically from the client application. For

help with the proper addressing syntax the appropriate driver help file section should be referenced.

Further Information

This guide is intended to server as a quick, step-by-step, guide on configuring an Enron Modbus device in

TOP Server v5.x. It is not intended to be a comprehensive ‘how-to’ regarding the Enron Modbus driver, and

the TOP Server help file should be referenced for further information.

While EFM meters were set up in this guide, the TOP Server EFM Exporter Plug-In documentation should

be referenced in order to set up EFM polling and exporting.