Switch weather station comms to ethernet

NCAR / WVD-MCSupdate

Addition of NCAR MCS, rewrite to software infrastructure, and expansion of features for WVD operations.

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Switch weather station comms to ethernet #261

Closed stillwer closed 5 years ago

stillwer commented 5 years ago

The current hardware for MPD to talk to the weather station is an RS485 to USB converter. This has been flaky...it locks up and stops working for no reason. Convert to an ethernet based system using TCP raw sockets might solve this reliability problem. At minimum it might solve the lock up problems using labview VISA. This is also a good step for moving the system to linux based acquisition by avoiding USB.

stillwer commented 5 years ago

So this has been in progress for some time. So far:

Purchased SeaLevel device and failed to set it up
RMAed the device and received a new one
Failed setup again...called SeaLevel tech support
Problem setting up RS485 full 4 wire system but I only need 2 wire comms so I ignored the problem
Was told that Sealevel and Moxa do not use the same RS485 pinout on their connectors
Wired the Sealevel device
Tested device as both a comm port and as a raw socket. Both successful
Only device is currently running on MPD4 as a comm port...not a socket. YET!

stillwer commented 5 years ago

Sealevel device settings are:

Summary Comm Port: 15 IP Address: 192.168.0.110 Firmware Version: 3.3.0 DHCP: Yes Gateway: 192.168.0.1 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Active Protocol: Unformatted streamed data TCP Port: 4760

Port Settings Baud Rate: 19186 Data Bits: 8 Stop Bits: 1 Parity: Node Flow Control: None RS Mode: RS 485 (echo) Protocol: Ignored

Admin Nagle's Algorithm: Enabled Connection Protocol: Raw Data

Router IP Address Reserved Port Forwarding to 4760 on

stillwer commented 5 years ago

For posterity...I picked SeaLevel devices because I had good luck with them on SuPR. Mike Dixon suggested Lantronix or the following: (which apparently runs on SPOL)

http://www.icpdas.com/root/product/solutions/industrial_communication/pds/tds-700.html

stillwer commented 5 years ago

Also for posterity...when testing the SeaLevel device...used a loopback connector (it is gray) and WinSSD. Easy to tell using the BERT tab if the device is working.

stillwer commented 5 years ago

As of yesterday, the weather station child is communicating with the weather station using raw sockets instead of comm ports. Will handle errors as they pop up but this seems to be done for now.

stillwer commented 5 years ago

Screen Shot 2019-11-19 at 9 54 07 AM

stillwer commented 5 years ago

Note that the dip switches have to be set to RS-485 for this to work. The last box I opened was set to RS-422.

stillwer commented 5 years ago

So one more note for posterity...the steps needed to set up the device are as follows:

1) Open device and set dip switches for RS 485. It ships as 422. 2) Plug into test router. Determine IP address. Log in to that address and set settings as above. No need to set the comm port number. 2) Plug in device and test with WinSSD using the BERT tab. 3) Set up MPD router to specify the IP address on the MPD system. 4) Set up port forwarding for port 4760 (not sure this is needed but done on all devices). 5) Plug in device and verify that it grabbed the right IP address. 6) Wire to weather station. 7) Use low level communicator to test the connection to the weather station.