ION 7500 battery life remaining value

[mark_BGIS]

Hello,

I have 2 ION 7500 meters that are connected via a serial to ethernet converter that I need to reset the battery life value. When I connect to the meter using ION Setup, I don't see the "Percent Battery Remaining" value.

I also tried to connect thru telnet, but after getting "connected", I just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor.

I was told that I can change the value through Designer, but was not told where to find the setting.

Does anyone how how to do this using Designer?

Thanks.

[Charles_Murison]

Hello @mark_BGIS ,

"I was told that I can change the value through Designer, but was not told where to find the setting." The person who told you this my have gotten this mixed up with other ION meters. For the ION7500 the battery life reset is done through terminal commands. Typical method to access terminal command is Telnet. However if you have Ethernet to serial gateway you will not be able to Telnet to the meters, Telnet connections would be telnet to the gateway itself. 

You might be able to connect to the meter serial port with a protocol of "Factory". You would need to use a terminal program such as Putty or Tera Term to connect to the serial port on your computer that is connected to the meter's serial port. Would need to have the serial settings match between meter and computer. If meter has only RS-485 serial port, would need to use a converter such as USB to RS-485.

Regards,

Charles

[mark_BGIS]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.  The meter does have an rs-232 port on it and I did try to connect to it that way initially.  I set the serial port protocol to "factory" and using both putty and Tera Term I opened a connection but all I get is a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left corner and I can't type anything.

[Charles_Murison]

Hello Mark,

"Flashing cursor" could be any number of things. RS-232 port needs to have a number of setting on the meter hardware, (RS-485 vs RS-232) RTS/CTS Verses RTS + Delay, baud rate and serial settings parity stop bits etc. Not practical to try and troubleshoot over the forum. 

A good test is to confirm if you use ION protocol on serial port you can connect to the meter via ION Setup.

Note that when connecting to the meter you likely will need to hit "Enter" to get a response from the meter at first. Just connecting to the serial port will not generate any text on the console.

Regards,

Charles

[DanL · Accepted solution]

The ION7500 RS232 port is in DTE configuration and requires a NULL-modem adapter to connect to a standard PC's DCE RS232 port.

Of course the baud rate must also match the Com1 configuration settings. Press ENTER once or twice to see the prompt.

See the ION7500 installation manual for more information about the RS232 port.

I do not believe the 7500 (what firmware version do you have?) has the ability to reset the Battery life counter via ION (Designer) like the ION8650 has.

The ION7500 can have the battery counters reset (in the event you have replaced the battery with a new one) with the factory terminal command: BATCLEAR
and read the current state: BATSTAT