# Help require about communication with Power Flex drives



## Signode (Oct 9, 2016)

Hi;

We have Allen Bradley Power Flex drives at our machines. I have arranged Allen Bradley serial cable (having DB9 connector) and adapter for communication between Laptop and Power Flex drives. I did try to establish communication by using “DriveExplorer” software but failed. I have installed the driver for adapter but sounds like it is not working. Kindly help me out to resolve the issue.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

What model drive? What model "adapter"? How'd you configure it in Linx?


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## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

Usually those drives use RS-485 and a Modbus-like protocol on an RJ-45 connector called "scanport" either in the DPI or DSI flavor. Same port the HIM uses and you can connect there if there's no spare port. You need a "cobrahead" adapter.

https://www.plccable.com/allen-bradley-powerflex-1203-usb-cable-scanport-dpi-dsi-to-usb/

9 pin port might be RS-232 or might be Modbus or maybe something else. All the Powerflex drives of every vintage I've seen though have a DPI/DSI port.

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## ElectroBuff (Apr 8, 2018)

Hard to say without the info about the actual drive and adapter. In many cases, I've seen problems with the USB driver for the adapter as well as the converter itself. Some of the chips used in the DB9 - USB adapters don't work with Allen Bradley equipment. I would suggest giving Rockwell a call, they are usually very good with walking you through problems like this and figuring out if the issue is on your end or the PowerFlex.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

Signode said:


> Hi;
> 
> We have Allen Bradley Power Flex drives at our machines. I have arranged Allen Bradley serial cable (having DB9 connector) and adapter for communication between Laptop and Power Flex drives. I did try to establish communication by using “DriveExplorer” software but failed. I have installed the driver for adapter but sounds like it is not working. Kindly help me out to resolve the issue.


check that you haven't got rslinks running in the background. Also check under windows to see what port the adapter was assigned. 

Like most allen Bradley manuals look for the astrix as they like to put the most important info like shutting down rslinks when using the adapter in the small print at the bottom of the page.


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## sparkiez (Aug 1, 2015)

See which version of the cable you are using. Drive Explorer is outdated, and the firmware on the drives very likely are too new for drive explorer. You need to use Connected Components Workbench.

https://www.rockwellautomation.com/...h_data&docid=7c028f3b448fcef185a20f4e05c5fd06


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## sparkiez (Aug 1, 2015)

ElectroBuff said:


> Hard to say without the info about the actual drive and adapter. In many cases, I've seen problems with the USB driver for the adapter as well as the converter itself. Some of the chips used in the DB9 - USB adapters don't work with Allen Bradley equipment. I would suggest giving Rockwell a call, they are usually very good with walking you through problems like this and figuring out if the issue is on your end or the PowerFlex.


The FTDI chips are the ones that work. Prolific is the other major chip manufacturer. I have used an FTDI adapter on a MIDI-connector from a mid 90's RS-232 weigh-label machine and it worked flawlessly.


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## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

sparkiez said:


> The FTDI chips are the ones that work. Prolific is the other major chip manufacturer. I have used an FTDI adapter on a MIDI-connector from a mid 90's RS-232 weigh-label machine and it worked flawlessly.


Prolific works too. Use it all the time.

The biggest problem with USB-serial adapters is they try to cheat. Not a UART chip problem as such. You need a minimum of +/-2.5 V per the RS-232 standard and the voltage at the output is supposed to be +/-12 V. There is 5 V on the USB cable which can be split through a cheap voltage divider to +/- 2.5 V at the converter but voltage drop makes it under that. Most RS-232 receivers will accept down to about +/-1 V so it usually works but AB and SEL stuff is finicky and follows the standard. The alternative is to use a DC-DC converter chip to produce say 24 V from the 5 V input which adds probably 50 cents to the RS-232 cable. You can pay AB or SEL prices or get your converter from either bb-elec.com or plcables.com. Both sell to the industrial market so sell known good cables. SEL also has a cool trick. They sell a Bluetooth to RS-232 battery powered converter so if your laptop has Bluetooth or you buy an adapter you don't even need cables. Not sure who else sells one.

When you first plug in your adapter go to device manager loom for COM ports and the port number will be there in the properties (right click). On Windows 7 or later hit start and type device... there's an easy clicky way to get it on 7 and no idea where they moved it to on 8/10. On XP or earlier simply click start then right click on comouter/my computer and hit properties. Then click on device manager on one of the tabs. This works on 7 too. On 8 or later as I said they hit it some place else.

The COM port thing is a hold over from the original IBM PC days. You had to manually set COM port addresses in the 80s. With later hardware this was automatic so you had to find it starting in Windows 95 with "plug and play". USB that emulates it via plug and play so this is automatically done but unfortunately also you have no idea or control what COM port Windows will pick so you have to go find it, and even if it usually picks the same port every so often it will randomly pick another one.

Ideally also buy a bad are laptop with a 512 MB SSD (buy separate from laptop...manufacturer prices are 300% markup over retsil) and a core i5 or preferably i7 processor. Run each piece of Rockwell software in a separate virtual machine using say Virtualbox (free, current versions very stable) using Windows 7 32 bit or XP. Both of these are very stable and XP in particular is highest performance in a VM. 64 bit Win 7 tends to be unstable. If you have to go 64 bit go all the way to Windows 10 IOT version (stripped down, no lame Cortana crap for example, everything is modular, turn on only what you need). Rockwell software is annoyingly incompatible with itself and this gives you the best platform for avoiding version problems and annoyances like RS-Linx stealing your ports. Install Microsoft loopback port driver and key licenses to the emulated Ethernet port. Why? Hint, hint what is the MAC address?

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