SureServo2 Communications Card Configuration from AutomationDirect

This video assumes you have the optional Modbus TCP card installed. Check out this video if you need help with that. Just to be sure, let’s go to parameter 3.045. The 4 tells us we do have a Modbus TCP card installed. Perfect. Parameter 3.046 shows us the firmware version of the module. Always make sure you have the most recent firmware version which you can download for free at Automationdirect.com. Watch this video to learn how to update the card's firmware. With the com card installed and verified, we just need to set up the module's networking. It’s important to understand that you can’t actually view the module's network configuration. Instead, when you apply power to the drive, it copies the module's configuration into these drive parameters, so you can see them. If I go to parameter 3.050, we see the first octet of the module's IP address is currently this. Let’s reset the Modbus TCP module to factory default so we know where we are starting from by going to parameter 3.064 and setting it to a 1. That changed the module's network configuration to this default. Now if we look at the first octet in parameter 3.050 sure enough, it’s at the default 192. Perfect. You’ll need to change the addressing to work with your network settings, of course. I’m not connected to a network right now, so we can change the IP address to anything. So, let’s go to parameter 3.050 and change that first octet to 123. Again, we just changed this guy, to get that into the module we need to go to parameter 3.065 and set it to a 1. That transfers all of these drive parameters permanently to the module. I’ll power cycle the drive and sure enough, if we go back to parameter 3.050, we see it did get changed to 123. If things don’t get updated after you power cycle the drive, it’s probably because you forgot to set parameter 3.065 to a 1 to make that transfer. The SureServo2 drive can automatically get its own IP address from an external server using DHCP via parameter 3.49. But then you have no control over what that IP address will be or how to figure out what it is. So we strongly recommend leaving it set to a static or fixed IP address unless you know you need DHCP and you know how to use it. You can also specify a coms timeout time and if you want the coms timeout to do something to the drive. It can warn and continue, warn and ramp to stop, warn and coast to stop or do nothing. Error codes are in parameter 3.048. For example, I don’t have an ethernet cord plugged in right now, so I get the error code for Ethernet connection error. If I plug in a live network cord and refresh the parameter and the error goes away. This error code parameter is a big help when trying to debug networking issues, so don’t forget it is there. That’s all there is to configuring a com module. Just remember to power cycle the drive to see the current module's configuration in these drive parameters and to write a “1” to parameter 3.065 to copy any changed drive parameters permanently to the module. Forgetting to do either of those will give you a headache as you try to figure out why things aren’t working. Now that the module is configured, it’s time to talk to it from a controller. Look for videos like this one where we show you how to control a SureServo 2 drive from a Do-more BRX PLC via Modbus TCP. Click here to learn more about the SureServo 2 system and to find more of these tutorial videos. Click here to be notified when we publish videos like this and click here to learn about AutomationDirect’s free award-winning support options.