What are the general communication requirements for the West 4400 series controller?

Submitted by glx25v on Fri, 08/17/2018 - 17:29

General Communications requirements:

1) The controller must have the RS485 communications option installed to communicate.

2) You must have a RS232 to RS485 1/2 Duplex converter or must have a computer with RS485 1/2 duplex communications port. Port or converter must be of a type that requires no handshaking. It must be able to control the transmissions and timing based on data traffic. It must release the transmission lines within 6ms. It must wait at least 6ms after the last character is received before initiating a transmission.

3) The West 4400 can communicate using West ASCII or Modbus protocol. You must determine which protocol the driver is using and configure the 4400 for the appropriate protocol.

4) You must set up the baud rate, parity and address to match the settings in your software. If parity is odd or even then data bits is 8, if parity is none then data bits is 7. You must set your software to match the data bits used.

5) Unless the driver was written specifically for the 4400 some parameters may not be available or may be invalid.

6) Protocol, address, and parity are set in the configuration menu starting on Page 4-1 in the site manual.