GS20(X) Variable Frequency Drive in GS2 Mode, part 2 - Live Demo from AutomationDirect

In this video, we’ll pull the parameters from a 1 horsepower GS2 drive using the free GSOFT app and transfer them to a 2 horsepower GS20 drive operating in GS2 mode using the free GSOFT2 app. So, go to the AutomationDirect website and search for GSOFT and download it and then search for GSOFT2 and download that. Install both programs. Connect your PC to the GS2 drive using this USB to 485 converter and connect the PC to the GS20 drive using a USB A to B cable. You’ll need to apply power to the GS2 drive so we can connect to it. The GS20’s control electronics run just fine from the USB cable power, so we don’t need to apply line power to the GS20 drive. On the GS2 drive, make sure these switches are set to RS485. You will want to know what the GS2 com port parameters are set to, so I’ll go to parameter 9.00 and note that the address is 1. In parameter 9.01 we see the baud rate is this. And in parameter 9.02 we see the protocol is this. Start GSOFT. You can approach this using any of these options, but I’m going to close that and just connect directly to the drive. Bring up the computers device manager and look for this Silicon Labs UART – that’s the USB to 485 converter we are using. We see it is using com 14 on my PC – it will probably be different on your PC – but whatever it is, put that here. We just have to make these match the drive settings we just gathered. Hit Connect. GSOFT tells us we are connected and good to go. Hit the upload button to retrieve the parameters from the drive. It warns us we are about to overwrite whatever is in GSOFT right now – we don’t care so I’ll hit Yes. This is going to take around 60 seconds, so I’ll speed up the video. As it reads the parameters it notes which ones are not set at the default value. And those are highlighted in RED when we get the parameter list. GSOFT is asking if we want to save our parameter file. Yeah, we do. Give it a name and hit save. Now that we have a saved version of the 1 horsepower parameter file we can change it to be compatible with our new 2 horsepower drive. So we go to utilities, Change Drive Rating. Here you can change the drive rating to whatever you want – we want 2 horsepower GS2 drive. And we need to select the firmware version to match the new GS20 drive. The firmware version of the GS20 drive in GS2 mode is in parameter 9.39 – I know mine is 1.07 so I’ll select that one. That will update all of the associated parameters to make this a parameter file that is compatible with our new 2 horsepower GS20 drive in GS2 mode. Save it … give it a name … and hit OK. Close the upload dialog. So we now have a full set of 2 horsepower GS2 parameters with the correct firmware version. Bring up GSOFT2 so we can talk to the GS20 drive. Remember: GSOFT is used to talk to the GS2 drives, GSOFT2 is used to talk to the GS20 drives – even when they’re in GS2 mode. Let’s put this GS20 drive into GS2 mode by setting parameter 00.02 to a 2 and then to a 20. We now have a GS2 compatible drive with GS2 factory default settings. We want to connect to the GS20 drive. Since the GS20 uses a dedicated USB port for configuration we don’t need to worry about any of this stuff. We just need to make sure the com port is correct – mine is still at the same Com 11 we used in the previous video – and that ASCII is selected. That’s important because we just put the GS20 in GS2 mode, it initialized the drive with GS2 factory default settings. And GS2 factory default uses ASCII – not RTU like we are used to using with the GS20. Again, for all practical purposes, this is a GS2 drive with factory default settings Hit COM Test to make sure we got the right port – yep - connect, give it a second or two and we see we are now connected to the GS20 drive. If we click on the parameters button and read the current parameters from the GS20 drive, we see the GS2 parameter groups 0 through 9. The GS20 normally has parameters groups 0 through 14. That tells us our GS20 drive is definitely in GS2 mode. Let’s open our GS2 parameter file which is a gsc file and hit OK. Remember – this reminds us we are looking at the FILE parameters. If I click here we see we are looking at the drive parameters. I’ll click back on the file parameters and normally we would modify the motor parameters in this section to match our new 2 horsepower motor. I don’t actually have a 2hp motor here to get the numbers from so I’m going to skip that and hit WRITE ALL to send the new 2 horsepower file parameters to the drive. GSOFT2 gives us the opportunity to deselect any parameters we don’t want to write. We’ll leave them all checked – and hit WRITE. Give it a second and we see all of these parameters got written and there are no parameters that failed the write. Perfect. Hit OK and re-read all the drive parameters. That ought to be enough to get you started with transferring your old GS2 parameters into a new GS20 drive that is in GS2 mode. Which is really cool because now you have a higher performance GS2 drive that is smaller and costs less. One caution, the user manual reminds us that while the GS20 drive in GS2 mode uses all the same parameters, there is always a chance that the improved performance may affect some of your operations, so be sure to thoroughly test your new GS2 drive before deploying it. When you are ready to start using all of the GS20 drive’s features, check out this video that shows you how to migrate from a GS2 drive to a full-featured GS20 drive. Click here to learn more about the GS20 family of variable frequency drives. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you are notified when we publish new videos and click here to learn about AutomationDirect’s free award-winning support options.