June-12 Communications over ETHERNET medium

Table of contents

All rights reserved

The reproduction of all or part of this document, in any form, is
1 DESCRIPTION 2 strictly prohibited without prior written consent by LACROIX Sofrel.
The information contained in this manual has been carefully
checked and is deemed to be correct. However, LACROIX Sofrel
2 ETHERNET LINK CONFIGURATION 3
cannot be held responsible for any errors or inaccuracies that may
2.1 Link parameters 3 exist in this manual, nor for any resulting direct or indirect damage,
even if it has been informed of the possibility of such damage.
2.2 General aspects and fault management 4
Due to ongoing product development, LACROIX Sofrel withholds
2.3 IP properties 4 the right to make any modifications to this manual and to related
2.4 Principle of Ethernet communications 5 products at any time, with no prior notification of concerned
individuals.
2.5 Automatic call triggering 7

3 SENDING EMAILS 8

4 LOGGING ON WITH SOFTOOLS 9 Legend

5 DIAGNOSTICS
5.1 PC-based diagnostics
11
11
LC : click once with the left mouse button
5.2 S500 Diagnostics 11
RC : click once with the right mouse button
LDC : double click with the left mouse button

Data exchanges between the various applications and devices require a telecommunication network
for which the Customer assumes the entire responsibility, both in terms of data security and of
operating costs.
The use of private telecommunication networks offers a high degree of exchange security. As public
networks are not intrinsically secure, however, all necessary precautions should be taken when
using them.
LACROIX Sofrel cannot be held accountable for any malfunctions caused by weaknesses, holes, or
even the intrinsic characteristics of the telecommunication system.

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 Communications over ETHERNET medium
1 Description
S500 manages a 10-BT board for communicating over the LAN with:
 correspondents periodically polled by sending data blocks (SCADA central station,
other S500 Unit in inter-RTU mode, PLC),
 recipients polled only when events are detected
(appearance or disappearance of faults or alarms at the monitored facility),
 SOFTOOLS operating PCs or email servers.

Each device on the network must possess a fixed IP address, entered in dot-decimal or literal format.

S500 can simultaneously act as master relative to several slave devices, and respond to the
requests of up to 4 master devices.

S500 can thus:

 report alarms to the SCADA central station or to email recipients,

 periodically poll a group of devices,

 issue individual instructions to other devices,

 respond to master devices.

 By default, S500 uses port 25 for sending and ports 80, 21 and 502 for receiving
calls.

 Mimic diagram:

Master S500
SOFTOOLS

TCP/IP link

Slave S500 Programmable Logic Controller

Master SCADA ADSL Box (PLC)
central station
(LAN or ADSL)

S500, configured as master, can manage up to 30 correspondents of type PLC or Remote

Terminal Unit for periodic polling, instruction emissions and spontaneous emissions.

Moreover, on detection of an alarm, S500 can communicate with the LACBUS-RTU SCADA central
station, that thus retrieves the current data statuses and historical data values.

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2 Ethernet link configuration
2.1 Link parameters

 From the "General view", LDC on the board to configure the link parameters:

In basic configuration (None), S500 can

communicate with SOFTOOLS, the Browser,
or the email server.

The link can be configured as:

"PLC/RTU Modbus slave", or
"PLC/RTU Modbus master" to allow S500 to
communicate with MODBUS-TCP
The user can enter the fixed IP address of the correspondents (SCADA central station,
RTU, along with the LAN’s subnet mask
PLC, Remote Terminal Unit).
or
To configure a PLC, the S500 link must be
S500 includes a DHCP client allowing it to set to "Modbus master".
automatically have its IP address assigned by
the network.

 The S500 IP address can be viewed directly from the Remote Terminal Unit's graphical display
(cf. § "Installation - 10BT board diagnostics").

 Next,  LDC on the (Ethernet) button

to configure the Modbus TCP communication parameters:
Configuration example:
S500 IP correspondent (Inter-RTU)

LDC to define the Ethernet S500 Remote Terminal Unit

("PLC/RTU Modbus master" link) PLC IP correspondent (Slave)
link parameters.

SCADA central station IP recipient

Email
server (SMTP)

IP properties S500 IP recipients

Email IP recipient

Case of Master S500 Case of Slave S500

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 Communications over ETHERNET medium
2.2 General aspects and fault management

 Fault management in the absence of SCS/RTU polling

The S500 Remote Terminal Unit can manage a communication fault if it has not been polled on
expiry of a 1 to 9999-minute timer.
S500 can manage up to 10 recipient call reception faults:
 either a fault detecting the general absence of polling over the Ethernet link,
 or faults allowing automatic detection of lack of call from another device (Remote Terminal Unit); in
this case, the device's number must be specified.

When it receives a new poll, the fault is

disabled.

2.3 IP properties
By default, the IP properties should not be modified without your network administrator's
approval. The routing table and DNS servers are used to configure the unit's IP properties according
to the network and to S500 use.
The IP properties are available from the "General view - 10BT board":

LDC to configure the IP properties.

2.3.1 Routing table

The IP networks are interconnected by routers. Their routing table contains the destination network
addresses, subnet mask and gateway addresses required to reach them.

2.3.2 DNS configuration

Thanks to the DNS servers, users can enter literal addresses for all S500 Remote Terminal Unit
recipients and for the email server. Their configuration is common to all recipients (email and devices
communicating over Ethernet). This configuration must be performed in agreement with your
network's administrator.

 In DHCP mode, S500 can automatically obtain the addresses of the DNS servers.

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2.4 Principle of Ethernet communications
S500 can respond to requests from master devices (other Remote Terminal Unit or PLC), or trigger
automatic calls to recipients for alarm reporting (SCADA central station for example).
S500 Remote S500
Terminal Unit
A TCP/IP link B
Protocol
MODBUS/TCP

Programmable Logic Controller

The Remote Terminal Unit A link configured to "PLC/RTU Modbus Master", allows S500 to manage
up to 30 MODBUS devices (Remote Terminal Units and PLCs), it can thus:
 periodically poll devices B and C ,
 send individual instructions to each one,
 respond to master devices.
 S500 communications over the MODBUS-TCP network can be secured by setting an
authentication password for the various recipients; in this case, all devices communicating
with S500 must know this unique password.
(cf. § Dialog box access)

2.4.1 Faults on absence of polling

The S500 Remote Terminal Unit can manage faults for detecting the absence of calls from "SCADA
Central Station" or "Remote Terminal Unit" type recipients on expiry of a 1 to 9999-minute timer.
When S500 receives a new poll, the fault is disabled.

2.4.2 Exchange principle

2.4.2.1 Periodic transmissions
Periodic pollings, always initiated by a master remote terminal unit, are used to read data
blocks from a device or write S500 data blocks to this device. Each data block is made up
of contiguous data of the same type.
During periodic polling, S500 queries all MODBUS devices configured on the connection. It
leaves a silence between each slave device (from 0 to 999 s), and another silence at the end
of polling all slaves (from 0 to 99999 s). Up to 300 read or write data blocks can be defined,
distributed over all slaves.

2.4.2.2 Transmitting setpoints

On status change of a logical or numerical output, the master remote terminal unit triggers
the unit transmission of the setpoint status to a MODBUS device.
These setpoints are outputs of the "Communications" type whose slave number and write
address are defined. Setpoint transmission is immediate. The transmission statement and
correspondent's acknowledgment of receipt are entered into the remote terminal unit's
communications log.

 S500 suspends a periodic polling cycle to transmit a setpoint. After processing, the
periodic polling cycle continues from the point at which it was suspended (next
block or device).

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2.4.3 Data read/write blocks

For each recipient Remote Terminal Unit, the list of data blocks to transmit can be configured:

LC on the
recipient to
RC to create or
display the list of
blocks modify a read or write
block.

 Read block:

Select the number of

consecutive data that S500
reads from the recipient
Remote Terminal Unit. S500 uses this datum to read
in the correspondent Remote
Specify from which S500 Terminal Unit.
datum any read data should
be stored.

 Example: This block corresponds to data 1

and 2 read from the recipient and
stored in S500 data 5 and 6.

The Master S500 data into which are stored the read data must be of the "communication" type
or setpoints (outputs).

 Write block:

Select the number of

consecutive data that S500
writes to the recipient
Remote Terminal Unit. Specify the correspondent
Remote Terminal Unit datum
number from which S500 is
Specify the first datum from to write this block of
which S500 builds its write consecutive data.
block.

 Example: This block corresponds to data 39

to 47 from the Master S500 written
to data 1 to 9 of the slave
correspondent.

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 Communications over ETHERNET medium
2.5 Automatic call triggering
A call may be triggered on appearance or disappearance of a logical datum; S500 can thus call the
recipients of a previously configured automatic call sequence or schedule.

2.5.1 Definition of recipients

After having configured the 10-BT communication board, the S500 "General view" allows you to create call
recipients.

LDC on each icon to view all data exchanged with each

recipient

2.5.2 Call recipient configuration

 SCADA central station type recipient

S500 automatically calls the SCADA central station when an alarm's status switches from inactive to
active, or simply to notify a datum's change of status.
In the case of an "Alarm" type cycle, the SCADA central station can acknowledge the alarms (user-
definable function on the PC). If the communication does not end correctly on expiry of the configured
number of calls, S500 declares the recipient to be defective.

Internal "Communication fault"

datum used to monitor
communication with this recipient.

 It is also possible to define a type "S500" recipient; in this case, read and write
block configuration is used for inter-RTU exchanges.

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3 Sending emails
S500 can communicate with an email server and automatically call a recipient sequence or schedule to
report its alarms to an "Email" type recipient.
When the S500 Remote Terminal Unit is equipped with “10BT” and
“PSTN / GSM” boards, only one of the two communication media may be used to
send emails.

3.1.1 Email server configuration

The email server's literal address must be provided by your network administrator.

 LDC on the icon to define the general SMTP server settings:

Choice of email server access

medium.

When S500 sends an email, it

must query a DNS server to
resolve the literal address of the
SMTP server.

Email server address

The user can declare:

Sender authentication
 either a single address provided by the ISP.
common to all S500 remote
terminal units,
Parameters used to limit the
 or one address per remote number of characters contained in
terminal unit. an email's subject.

 Warning: when sending emails, the outgoing mail server checks the
sender’s address; this address must therefore be valid.

3.1.2 Message content

The subject contains: the "[Site name] + Triggering datum label + suffix"; the message body completes
the identification, with the issue time stamp.
Furthermore, the message body can contain a data group, along with attachments in ".csv", Excel-
compatible format, in order to include:
 the last 100 alarms log events,
 the archived values of 10 data,
 the transmission period for historical values is user-definable: daily, weekly or monthly.
 Example: a contract operator can thus automatically receive his operating reports (meter
reports, measurement monitoring, etc.) in an office-compatible format,
without having to log onto the site.

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4 Logging on with SOFTOOLS
SOFTOOLS communicates over an Ethernet link to:
 Log onto the S500 operator dialog (view and process data),
 Install the S500 software and add options,
 Modify the Remote Terminal Unit's configuration.

Select the Remote Terminal Unit name from the SOFTOOLS list and click on Properties:

Select "Direct"
and enter the IP address of
the Remote Terminal Unit.

 Before the "Direct" connection of the operator to Ethernet, it is necessary to ensure that SOFTOOLS
and the Remote Terminal Unit have been configured to communicate over the same network.

Select the Remote Terminal Unit name from the SOFTOOLS list and click on Logon:

Enter your password

Select the connection type:
“Direct over local network”

Select the type of operation

performed with SOFTOOLS, for
example: "Operation” to view the
Remote Terminal Unit’s operator
dialog.

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 Communications over ETHERNET medium

From a PC communicating over a TCP/IP link, it is possible to log onto the S500 operator dialog in
TCP/IP link mode, directly using a Web browser.

 LC on to launch the Web browser,

 Enter the Remote Terminal Unit's IP address:

 Enter "S500" as user name and the Remote Terminal Unit password:

 The use of the Web Browser without SOFTOOLS requires installation of the Adobe SVG
VIEWER software in order to benefit from graphical functions (curve tracing, weekly periods,
etc.).

You can download it from http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html

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5 Diagnostics

5.1 PC-based diagnostics

You can check whether the Remote Terminal Unit can be contacted over this same TCP/IP network:

 In a DOS window, enter the "Ping" command, followed by S500's IP address

 In a DOS window, enter the "route print" command to check the routing table used by the
PC.

5.2 S500 Diagnostics

From the Browser, the user can send the following diagnostic commands to check the remote terminal
unit's connection to the Ethernet network:
 enter a "ping" instruction,
 check the IP address of each TCP-IP communication interface,
 display the routing table used by the remote terminal unit.
Select "TCP/IP" to run a
diagnostic on the list of
interfaces and active
routes

Enter the IP address of

the device to reach and
click on the button

to check whether the

remote terminal unit can
communicate with this
device.

 The MAC (no.) and IP addresses of the 10BT board are available:
- via a Web Browser, by clicking on "Board diagnostics" and selecting the name
of the board,
- or directly from the remote terminal unit's graphical screen.

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