Stride Pocket Portal: Create Device Profile: Modbus RTU from AutomationDirect

The Stride Pocket Portal allows for creating device profiles that then can quickly be applied to multiple Pocket Portals. With just a few clicks you can apply this device template and quickly start logging from your remote devices. This is a serious time saver for OEMs or system integrators that has multiples of the same system out in the field. To create a device profile, this must be done from the Pocket Portal web site. Once on the site, select here on device profiles, and as you can see, I already have a few profiles setup. This right here, shows that this is my default profile and that I have one unit that is using this profile. You can create a new profile by selecting here. If I select this profile, you see that this profile consists of the common settings, the analog input setup, digital I/O setup, and the Modbus RTU setup. Now, you do not have to set up all these options, just the common settings and the I/O that you are using. In this video, I will show how to set up the Modbus RTU portion. There is a separate video that can be found in the description below on setting up the digital and analog portion. To start creating a profile hit here on the plus sign here. Here select if this is a new profile. Give your profile a name. Enter in this cloud update interval, and this is how often the recorded data is then updated up to the cloud. Shorter Intervals will consume more data and exhaust your data prematurely. When we finish this setup, there will be a graphic giving you an estimated data usage. Enter in a profile description. Select the product category. Fill out your product make, model and once you are done select save Now on to the Modbus. Remember that you can only connect one Modbus RTU node to this device through RS485. Enter in your slave node address. Give it a name and make sure to make the parity stop bits and baud rate match up to that of your Modbus RTU slave. When done, hit next. Now, I will set up these addresses from my CLICK PLC to give an example. See appendix C of the manual for this device to see addressing to common ADC products. Now, I am going to start by setting up X1 on CLICK. Give the point a name. Change the display datatype to boolean and since the function code is defining the Modbus address segment, we need to only place the offset. So, for the offset for X1 will be zero. The Modbus datatype for this is bit and since X1 is a discrete input that we are trying to read, this will need to use function code 2 in Modbus. The change of value determines how much of a delta in the address before the value is logged. Now, this is separate from the periodic update below. This scaling is optional. You are basically taking the raw range and providing a scaled range. The periodic update rate determines how often this address is read from the Modbus device. Once you are done with this point, make sure to select add point. If not, this information will be lost. I will do the same operation for X2. Now let’ do this same thing for Y1 and Y2. Now, the difference here is that we are going to set Y1 and Y2 up as writeable. The function code to read a coil, in Modbus, is 1 and the function code to write a single coil that is function 5. Now, let me explain these two attributes. If you set this value other than zero, this is how often it will write this value to this address. If you just want to write to this address remotely from the widget, leave this disabled and just keep zero here. Now, let’s finish this off by entering in DF2 and DF3, both of which are floating point addresses in CLICK. I am going to make DF2 readable only and DF3 writeable. Your Modbus data type as float_swap. Change the function code to 3. Then select to add the point. Now, let’s setup DF3. This will be the same as DF2, but I am going to select it as writeable. And when we write to DF3, we will be using function code 16. Then select add point. Hit next and now it will you a list of Modbus addressing that we have set up. Hit next and select to save these Modbus settings. Now, select to save the whole profile. Now, you will see this graphic that I mentioned earlier in the video. This estimates how much data you will be using of your plan. Select to commit these changes and when you do this, any device out in the field that is using this profile will have it pushed out to it. Now, if you this is a device that you never applied this profile to, you are going to have to, force this Profile onto the Provisioned device. To do this, select here, from the device menu, select the Pocket Portal you want to send this profile to, go to the settings of that device and then edit this field. Once you select this, it will push the configuration out to the device. Now, it will take a little time for the system to catch up and come back online. If you have any further questions on this device, please feel free to comment below or call into our technical support department. Follow this link to see more videos on the Pocket Portal device. And make sure to select here to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more products and solutions. Now, let me explain these two attributes. If you set this value other than zero, this is how often it will write this value to this address. If you just want to write to this address remotely from the widget, leave this disabled and just keep zero here. Now, let’s finish this off by entering in DF2 and DF3, both of which are floating point addresses in CLICK. I am going to make DF2 readable only and DF3 writeable. Your Modbus data type as float_swap. Change the function code to 3. Then select to add the point. Now, let’s setup DF3. This will be the same as DF2, but I am going to select it as writeable. And when we write to DF3, we will be using function code 16. Then select add point. Hit next and now it will you a list of Modbus addressing that we have set up. Hit next and select to save these Modbus settings. Now, select to save the whole profile. Now, you will see this graphic that I mentioned earlier in the video. This estimates how much data you will be using of your plan. Select to Commit these changes and when you do this, any device out in the field that is using this profile will have it pushed out to it. Now, if you this is a device that you never applied this profile to, you are going to have to, force this Profile onto the Provisioned device. To do this, select here, from the device menu, select the Pocket Portal you want to send this profile to, go to the settings of that device and then edit this field. Once you select this, it will push the configuration out to the device. Now, it will take a little time for the system to catch up and come back online. If you have any further questions on this device, please feel free to comment below or call into our technical support department. Follow this link to see more videos on the Pocket Portal device. And make sure to select here to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more products and solutions.