Configuration of FinsGateway V3.

20 via an
Ethernet connection for FINS protocol

Whitepaper

The information in this article refers to:

- Complimentary Software CD – FinsGateway 3.20.
- CitectSCADA V5.x and higher.

Summary:

This article describes the configuration of an Ethernet connection using FinsGateway and
Citect’s FINS driver. Communication is acheived using an Ethernet card in the PC and an
Ethernet module in the PLC. The FINS protocol is used to communicate through the
FinsGateway API to the Omron PLC.

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1. General information
Citect performs communication via the FINS-Functions (FINS API) of
FinsGateway. Therefore FinsGateway must be installed and configured before
successful communications is possible.

Fig. 1: Communication principle

The FinsGateway software supports many protocols (Serial, Ethernet, SYSMAC

Link, Controller Link) for communication with the OMRON PLC. Therefore it is
possible to use one Citect driver for different kinds of communication since the
FinsGateway makes it transparent.

Fig. 2: FinsGateway Layer Model

The following FINS Citect drivers are supported:

FINS C/CV-Series PLCs

FINS3 CS1/CJ1-Series PLCs

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 Information:
The latest Citect drivers can be downloaded from www.citect.com.

2. Configuration example
Required Software / Hardware

Software
- Complimentary Software CD – FinsGateway 3.20
- CitectSCADA V5.x or higher (CitectSCADA V6.0 recommended)
- FINS CitectSCADA driver driver version 1.03.01.054 or higher
- CX-Programmer V3.20

Hardware
- Standard PC with Network Interface Card (NIC)
- Omron PLC (in this case a CJ1M CPU22)
- ETN21 Ethernet Module
- Standard Ethernet cross-over cable

Fig. 3: Example configuration

Information:
The ETN21 Ethernet Module supports both 100BaseTX and 10BaseT.
The CX-Programmer is required to configure an IP Address for the module.

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3. Installation of FinsGateway Software V3.20
1. Once you have logged into the PC with administrator rights, put the
Complimentary Software CD in the CD drive. A html page should
automatically start. You can then choose to install FinsGateway
Software. Alternatively you can run Setup.exe from the “Omron Fins
Gateway\FGW3EE_DISKS\” directory on the CD.

2. It is recommended that you exit all other Windows programs before

continuing with the installation; to continue click Next >.

Fig. 4: Install splash screen.

3. Enter your name and company in the user registration window; to continue
click OK.

Fig. 5: User Registration.

4. Confirm your details; to continue click Yes.

Fig. 6: Confirm registration details.

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5. Choose the directory in which you want to install the software. The
default directory is C:\Program Files\OMRON\FinsServerNT\; to continue
the installation click Next >.

Fig. 7: FinsGateway install destination

6. Select the appropriate components you want to install. For serial

communication you must select FinsGateway+SerialUnit Embedded,
likewise for Ethernet communication you must select
FinsGateway+ETN_UNIT Embedded; to continue the installation click
Next >.

Fig. 8: FinsGateway components to be installed.

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7. Continue to click Next > until the installation process is finished. Once it has
completed, you must restart the computer.

Fig. 9: Restart computer.

8. The next step is to install the FinsGateway update. The update version used
in this instance is V3.20. Once the update is complete you must again restart
your computer.

9. The installation of FinsGateway software is now complete!!

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4. CX-Programmer PLC Configuration
CX-Programmer is required to download an IP address to the Ethernet module, and
to configure an IP address table within the PLC. Follow the steps below in order to
configure the PLC:
1. Load CX-Programmer. If you do not have a program/project file, you can
upload the program and configuration directly from the PLC. You will require a
serial cable connected from the PC’s RS-232 port to the Peripheral port on
the PLC. To automatically detect serial communication settings, go online,
and upload all configuration data, go to the menu PLC, Auto Online, and
select Auto Online:

2. Once the upload of the configuration has completed, Change the PLC to
Program Mode:

3. The Ethernet module (ETN21) must be assigned an IP address. To do this

open the IO Table:

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4. Then the following window will appear:

5. Expand the Main Rack, and right click on the Ethernet Unit (ET) (1), and
select “Unit Setup”:

6. The Ethernet Unit CPU Bus Unit screen will appear:

Enter the IP address you would like to assign to the module, as well as the
Sub-net Mask for your LAN. Select the “Conversion” option as “Table used”.
Click on insert and enter the Node and IP address for both the PC and PLC
Ethernet modules. For simplicity, the last number for the IP address is used
as the Node number, i.e. 192.168.0.33 would have node number 33.

All other settings are default.

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7. Now the new settings are ready to download to the PLC. From the Options
menu, select “Transfer to PLC”:

8. The last most important configuration to make is to set the Node no. on the
front of the ETN21 module itself. This is done by setting a rotary dial to the
appropriate value. There are two dials each with a Hexadecimal number to
set. The top dial sets the upper significant value, while the lower dial sets the
lowest significant value. In this example, the Node Address 100 (0x64) was
used. This means the Top dial will be set to 6, and the bottom dial to 4.

9. The configuration of the PLC using CX-Programmer is now complete!!

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5. Configuration of the FinsGateway software
10. Run the FinsGateway Service Manager from the FinsGateway folder:

This will load the Service Manager (yellow icon) in your system tray:

11. Right click on this icon, and select “Setting”.

This will load the FinsGateway Service Manager:

12. Expand the Driver section in the Menu Structure. Select the ETN_UNIT and
click properties. This will open the following window for ETN_UNIT Properties:

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13. Click on the “Network” Tab. And enter a Unique Local node number. For
simplicity, the last digit of the Computers IP address (192.168.0.10) is used as
the Local node number:

14. Now click on the “Communications Unit” tab. This will allow us to view the
UDP Port number settings:

The PC’s IP address is automatically detected (192.168.0.10). The FINS-IP

Conversion is selected as IP address table. This will require mapping (or
conversion) between the PLC and PC IP addresses in the Nodes tab.

Information:
The default UDP port number configured on Omron PLC’s is 9600.

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15. Next, select the “Nodes” tab to configure the ETN_UNIT Node addresses:

Click on Add to insert an entry for the Omron PLC’s Ethernet module:

Enter a unique Node number. This is important for the FinsGateway software
to identify the ETN_UNIT Ethernet connection to the PLC, and becomes
important later in CitectSCADA communication settings.

Note: In an aim to keep things simple, the last digit in the IP address is used
as the Node number. Although these do not necessarily need to be the same!!

Again Add an entry for the Local PC’s Ethernet module:

Click OK to continue.

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16. The IP address table has now been configured:

Note: If you were configuring Citect redundancy, you would also need to add
the Standby’s Node and IP address in this table.

17. The configuration can be confirmed by using the Explore feature to browse
the network for devices:

Click on Close to continue.

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18. The next step is to start the ETN_UNIT Service. To do this, expand the
“Services” section and click on “ETN_UNIT”. Now over to the right hand side,
click “Start”:

The status of the ETN_UNIT should change to “Running”. You can also
change the Startup to “Auto” so that when you start the FinsGateway Service
Manager, it will automatically start the ETN_UNIT service.

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19. If you click on Network, then under Units click on Ethernet, then Properties:

You should see the following:

As you can see, it has detected that the ETN_UNIT is running on a Windows
2000/NT/9x machine (local), and the Ethernet module the PLC is running is a
CJ1W-ETN21 (remote).

20. It is now important to confirm that your communications configuration is

correct, and that the FinsGateway is able to communicate with the PLC. To
test this go to the Menu, Network and select “FINS Communication Test”:

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21. This will display the following window:

From here it is possible to test your communications path to the PLC. Enter
the Peer Address (net.node.unit). In this particular case, Ethernet uses Local
Network 0. The Node is the number that was configured earlier, which is 100.
And the Unit number is 0 for the CPU. That will make the Peer Address
0.100.0.

22. Click on Send to test the communication path:

If the communication test was completed successfully, it will display at the

bottom “Send complete noramally”, otherwise an error message would
appear.

Click close to exit the FINS Network Tester.

23. The FinsGateway Service Manager can now be closed. The FinsGateway
Ethernet configuration is now complete!!!

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7. CitectSCADA FINS Driver Configuration
Step 1: CitectSCADA Communication Configuration
1. In Citect Explorer create a NEW (empty) test project.

2. Then go to Citect Project Editor under the Communication menu

and follow the steps as follows:
1. Create a new I/O Servers e.g. “IOServer”:

2. Create a new Board “BOARD1”, with Board Type “FINS”, and

Address “0”:

3. Create a new Port “PORT1_BOARD1”, with Port Number “1”, and

Board Name “BOARD1”:

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 4. Create a new I/O Device e.g. “OMRON_PLC” with the following
details:

Notice that the I/O Device address is 0/100/0. (net/node/unit)

Where net is the FINS Network Address (0 for Local Network)
Node is the PLC Node addess (100 in this case)
Unit is the FINS CPU unit address (CPU is usually unit 0)

The protcol used is FINS3. The FINS protocol should be used with
C/CV-Series PLCs and the FINS3 protocol should be used with the
CS1/CJ1-Series PLCs. If in doubt, compare the data types
available for your PLC, and the data types supported with each
protocol.

5. The CitectSCADA communications configuration is now complete!!

Step 2: CitectSCADA FINS Variable declaration

1. Open the Variable Tags Form. You will find this in the Citect Project
Editor under Tags | Variable Tags.

2. Create a Variable Tag with the following settings:

Information:
For more detail about the different data types and the Citect variable
addressing format, look for the Help Topic “OMRON PLC Ethernet -
Data Types” or “Variable Tag Dialog Properties”.

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Step 3: Pack and Compile Project

1. From the Citect Project Editor, pack and compile your project.

2. Now run the computer setup wizard to configure the role of the PC. In this case it
will need to run as an I/O Server.

3. Use TagDebug from the Kernel to verify your communications with the PLC.

4. The configuration of CitectSCADA is now complete!!

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7. Troubleshooting
1. Question:
I start up my project but I am getting a Hardware Error “I/O Device Off-line,
cannot talk”. On further investigation in the Kernel under I/O devices, I can
see Generic Error 12, Driver Error 23 (0x17). What is wrong?

Solution:
The most common reason why this error occurs is a configuration error.
Another reason may be that the PLC is powered down, or there is a
communication failure, or broken link.

Check the following:

• Confirm that the PLC is powered up.

• Check the physical cable link.

• Check that you can you Ping the target IP address.

• Check the FinsGateway Ethernet configuration.

• Use the “FINS Communication Test” utility to test communications

between FinsGateway and the PLC.

• Check that the Address specified in the I/O Device form matches the
configuration of FinsGateway (net.node.unit).

2. Question:
I have successful communications, but when I try to write to a specific
address, I get Generic Error 25, Driver Error 32 (0x20). What am I doing
wrong?

Solution:
The description given in the help states “Wait_mutex_failed” which means
the driver failed in standby process of exclusive control of shared memory.

The driver is trying to write to an address that the PLC has exclusive
access over. The solution is to write to a different address space, and map
the value using PLC code. This error will usually occur when the PLC is in
RUN mode. It will not happen if the PLC is in MONITOR mode.

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8. Information
Omron Electronics PTY LTD
71 Epping Rd
North Ryde NSW 2113
Australia
Tel +61 2 9878 6377
Fax +61 2 9878 6981
Web: http://www.omron.com.au

Citect PTY LTD

3 Fitzsimons Lane
Gordon NSW 2072
Australia
Tel +61 2 9496 7300
Fax +61 2 9496 7399
E-Mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.citect.com

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