Easily control and read data from EtherNet/IP devices using both implicit and explicit messaging formats with IOTech’s industrial-grade EtherNet/IP device connector
What is EtherNet/IP?
- EtherNet/IP (EIP) defines an application layer protocol that efficiently and reliably instructs how devices should operate in industrial automation environments. EIP is one of the world’s leading industrial protocols and is widely used in a range of industries including manufacturing and process control
- EIP implements the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) over Ethernet using UDP/IP and TCP/IP as the transport layer
- EIP provides implicit and explicit messaging over an Ethernet-based network:
- Useful in time-critical applications and real-time control, implicit messaging is where the EIP devices are pre-configured to understand the messages sent between the EIP scanner and EIP adapter devices.
- Explicit messaging is where EIP client devices initiate direct communication with EIP servers. Each message is required to include full details about the source and destination of the information. This is not as optimal as implicit messaging but can provide more flexibility since a pre-agreement on the data format is not required
IOTech's high performance EtherNet/IP device connector supports both implicit and explicit communication mechanisms for connecting to a range of EIP-based PLCs
The EtherNet/IP device connector implements the following key features:
- Implicit communication with fully-configurable Originator to Target (O2T) and Target to Originator (T2O) initialization settings
- Reading and writing of O2T data
- Reading of T2O data
- Configuration of T2O device resources to allow monitoring for changes in the data
- Explicit communication with both unconnected and connected messaging
- Supports the Get Attribute Single and Set Attribute Single service codes for all standard data types
- Supports the Get Attribute All service code
- Supports the Reset service for resetting the EIP adapter devices
- Generically supports all services allowing for reading and writing using byte arrays
- Support for BOOL, BIT, SINT, USINT, INT, UINT, DINT, UDINT, LINT, ULINT, REAL, LREAL and STRING data types