Profibus

Profibus is a fieldbus with nodes of type master and slave. The usual configuration is a mono-master system (one master) and up to 125 slaves. Each slave can handle one or several modules.

In Proview, the I/O handling the master represents the agent level, the slaves the rack level, and the module the card level.

Proview has support for the mastercard Softing PROFIboard PCI that is installed in the PCIbus of the process station. The card is configured by an object of class Profibus:Pb_Profiboard that is placed below the $Node object.

Each slave connected to the profibus circuit is configured with an object of class Pb_DP_Slave, or a subclass to this class. The slave objects are placed as children to the master object. For the slave objects, a profibus configurator can be opened, which configures the slave object, and creates a module object for each module that is handled by the slave. The profibus configurator uses the gsd-file for the slave. The gsd-file is a textfile supplied by the vendor, that describes the various configurations available for the actual slave. Before opening the profibus configurator you need to specify the name of the gsd-file. Copy the file to $pwrp_exe and insert the filename into the attribute GSDfile in the slave object.

If there is a subclass present for the slave you are about to configure, e.g. Siemens_ET200S_IM151, the gsd-file is already stated in the slave object, and the gsd-file is included in the Proview distribution.

When this operation is preformed, the profibus configurator is opened by right clicking on the object and activating 'Configure Slave' from the popup menu.

Here is the step by step installation instructions for the CIF_50-PB card and ET200S Profibus IO