EtherNet/IP: Part 1 - How to setup EtherNet/IP on the GS4 VFD from AutomationDirect

Before configuring a GS4 drive for EtherNet/IP, you will need to install the optional EtherNet/IP com card. This video shows you how to do that. There’s only three things we need to tell the drive to configure it for EtherNet/IP: Use the comm card for remote run stop control, Use the com card for remote frequency control, and assign an IP Address to the drive. Here we go … Use parameter 3.0 to tell the drive to use the comm card for remote run stop control. Second use parameter 4.0 to tell the drive we want to control the frequency remotely. Finally, we just setup the IP address of the Comm Card to be compatible with the network the drive will be on. I’m using this USB to Ethernet adapter to create an extra Ethernet port on my PC because the PC’s built in Ethernet port is being used for something else. You will usually use your PC’s built in Ethernet port. This Ethernet Port I am using has these settings, so to make my GS4 Drive compatible with that, I’ll enter these values into these parameters for the IP Address configuration. Remember – this IP address is compatible with MY network. Your IP Address will probably be different - something that is compatible with your network. Make sure the mask is correct. And I’ll set the gateway to zero since I am directly connecting from the PC to the drive. If you are uncomfortable with all of this IP Addressing stuff, just go find your local IT guy, he will know what to do. Could we have set the drive for DHCP and let the system automatically assign the IP Addresses? Sure – but that allows the system to dynamically change the IP Address whenever it wants to, which can make things really difficult for you, so we strongly encourage you to use static IP Addresses on your GS4 Drives so you always know the IP Address of your drive. This is important. We just entered these parameters into the drive. The Com card has its own set of registers that need these values. To push these values to the com cards, simply set P9.64 to a 2. When it turns back to a zero, the values were all correctly written to the EtherNet/IP card. One side note, you could have done all of this via GSoft2. And, the good news is GSoft2 automatically pushes the parameters to the com card for you, so you don’t need to fool with P9.64 when you’re using the GSoft2 application. And look at this, instead of entering the IP address stuff here, use this convenient IP Config dialog. You instantly see the drive firmware version, the com card type, firmware version and IP address. Switch to this tab to change the com card’s IP configuration. This dialog makes it so easy to see exactly what you have and to change the IP Configuration. The drive is now ready to talk to your system via EtherNet/IP. And all we did was install an EtherNet/IP com card, tell the drive to take run stop commands from the comm card, take the frequency commands from the comm card, and setup the IP Address. Watch this video to see how to test your EtherNet/IP communications using a third party EtherNet/IP explorer application. That’s a great way to verify the drive’s EtherNet/IP communications independent of your system and it’s also a great way peek under the hood and see how EtherNet/IP works. Click here to learn more about the GS4 Drive. Click here to learn more about AutomationDirect’s free support options and click here to be notified when we publish new videos.