Industrial communication with CC-Link IE Field Basic

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• See also
Reference:
McomAlloc McomRead McomWrite
Availability
Not available in MIL-Lite


Available in MIL
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MIL supports communication with the CC-Link IE Field Basic industrial communication protocol. CC-Link IE Field Basic is an industrial communication standard for connecting devices together, and it defines a communication protocol that allows interaction between devices used in industrial automation processes. This information is received or transmitted through the computer's (or smart camera's) 100 Mbit/1 Gbit Ethernet port. When using this protocol with MIL, your local computer is considered to be a slave in the network, and the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller (typically a PLC) is considered to be the master.

Setting up the environment

To use the CC-Link IE Field Basic industrial communication protocol with your MIL application, you need to set up the environment on the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller's side and on the local computer's side.

You must configure your CC-Link IE Field Basic controller to recognize the local computer as a slave device. To do so, use appropriate configuration software such as Mitsubishi GX Works and specify the local computer's IP address. The local computer's IP address should be static. In addition, you can use the provided CSPP profile, and specify the number of stations that your computer will occupy (this determines the size of the data tables you can read from and write to). The CSPP profile can be found as a ZIP file in Program Files\Matrox Imaging\MIL\Config\CCLink.

The provided CSPP profiles are specific to your platform type, and the MIL version installed on your computer; if you later update your computer to use a new version of MIL, you must load the new CSPP profile for that version. The table below lists the ZIP file that stores the CSPP profile required for each platform:

System type/Host platform	ZIP file
Matrox Iris GTR	0x0E0B_Iris_GTR_1.0.0_en.CSPP.zip
Matrox 4Sight EV6	0x0E0B_4Sight_EV6_1.0.0_en.CSPP.zip
Matrox 4Sight GPm (Ivy Bridge)	0x0E0B_4Sight_GPM_1.0.0_en.CSPP.zip
Matrox 4Sight GPm (Bay Trail)	0x0E0B_4Sight_GPM_BT_1.0.0_en.CSPP.zip
Other PC	0x0E0B_Generic_PC_1.0.0_en.CSPP.zip

Typically, you should not unzip the CSPP profile.

Once the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller has been configured to recognize the local computer as a slave, you must enable and configure an instance of the CC-Link IE Field Basic protocol service using the MILConfig utility's Communication item. If the local computer has multiple network adapters, use the Interface item to specify which should be used. Use the Number of stations item to specify how many stations on the controller your application will use (if you are using the provided CSPP profile for your platform, you must set this to 4).

Receiving and sending data to the controller

To communicate with the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller, allocate an Industrial Communication context using McomAlloc() with M_COM_PROTOCOL_CCLINK. To send data to the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller, use the McomWrite() function and specify the M_COM_PROTOCOL_CCLINK Industrial Communication context that you have just allocated. The McomWrite() function actually writes the data to the local computer's data tables; the data stored in these tables is read by the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller on its next read cycle. To read data received from the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller, use the McomRead() function and specify the M_COM_PROTOCOL_CCLINK Industrial Communication context. The McomRead() function actually reads the data from the local computer's data tables; the data stored in these data tables is written by the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller during its write cycle. When you call McomWrite() / McomRead(), you must specify the data table in which to write, or from which to read.

The CC-Link IE Field Basic data tables are created in local memory when an instance of the CC-Link IE Field Basic service is enabled using the MILConfig utility. The supported CC-Link IE Field Basic data tables are:

The flag data tables support 1-bit data, while the register data tables support 16-bit data.

CC-Link IE Field Basic is a polling protocol and as such, it should be noted that whatever is written to an input data table might not be read by the CC-Link controller if another McomWrite() operation occurs before the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller's read cycle is completed.

Data tables and their data fields

The MIL Industrial Communication module is very flexible, knowing that different applications need to send/receive different information to/from the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller. As such, it allows you to establish how to divide these data tables into different data fields. For example, you could organize your data as follows:

Note that this is only an example of how you can organize your data in the data tables. In addition, the software running on the CC-Link IE Field Basic controller (for example, a ladder logic software) must be aware of how the data is organized in the data tables.