Designing Power Meter Network

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Thread Starter

IZak35

Hi,

I am working with Modbus power meters. Would you have any programming and troubleshooting experiences with a network of 20 power meters.

I am using a cat5 cable to connect them between. What should I be careful when finding no connection to some of the power meters.

Do you know a tutorial explaining how to configure them correctly?

Thanks
 
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Curt Wuollet

If there is any distance involved, cat 5 cabling could give you many things to be careful about. Noise, crosstalk, and attenuation come to mind, capacitive loading, etc. etc. One of the best papers on RS485 (which Modbus runs on) I've seen can be had by googling "10 ways to bulletproof your RS485 networks" Now, if you are using ModbusTCP, then cat5 would be appropriate, but you wouldn't be wiring between them, that would be a star network topology.

Regards
cww
 
C

Curt Wuollet

I should be more clear. Get some cable intended for RS485. It's not horribly expensive at say, Automation Direct. Then you probably won't have nodes that disappear. I have miles of the stuff running and it just works. Installed and terminated properly, you can forget about it for years. A badly done network will keep you busy.

Regards
cww who is still alive and well
 
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