ION 9000 used as gateway

[mickkennedy]

Hi,

I'm trying to use an ION9000 as a gateway to 5 x sepam protection relay on serial line.

Communication is possible but performance is really poor.

ION is setup correctly to align with Slave devices re:baud/parity etc.

meter is setup correctly to act as a gateway in the advance section of IONsetup->modbus master module options etc.

my question is - is the comms performance of the ION 9000, acting as a gateway, known to be limited or poor? Is it poor in this case because of the fact that it is trying to allow 5 x SEPAM to communicate through it, would it perform better if the slave devices were a more basic  equipment?

[RobGraham]

I haven't seen any issues with using the ION9000 as a gateway, myself.  How are you defining "poor performance"?  Are you receiving exception codes?  Gateway timeouts?  Other?

Also, what software are you using to communicate to the daisy chain?  Serial communications are extremely fickle.

[Romain_Polette · Accepted solution]

Hi @RobGraham , 

Original thread here:

https://community.se.com/t5/Gateways-and-Energy-Servers/ION9000-used-as-a-gateway/td-p/503186

Last answer from Mick:

"5 x SEPAM have ACE949-2 interface each.

I'm reviewing the 'Time util%' and ''Avg request ratios' in Diagnostic viewer to measure Comms performance.

not sure exactly what you mean by your next question - "What kind of Master is connected upstream you ION9000" . the ION9000 is connected as an ethernet device and configured as a gateway to the SEPAMs"

@mickkennedy 

My question was about the type of system connected to your ION9000. Now I have my answer: you are connected to PME. 

PME is not very stressful with Sepam, because not so much requests are sent by PME to the Sepam.

I do not expect "high comm performances" for this kind of connection because ACE949 translates Sepam protocol to RS485. ION9000 translates Modbus RS485 to Modbus TCP. And you have a daisy chain of 5 ACE949-2.

Regards, 

[RobGraham]

Thank you!  I agree that 5x Sepam relays should not be a problem, so my next question is, are there any other clients connected to the daisy chain (EPO, PLCs, BMS, etc.)? 

You may also be able to increase the baud rate to improve performance.

[mickkennedy]

Thanks @RobGraham 

When i say 'poor performance' i mean high %value in 'time util%' section of diagnostic viewer and 'avg request ratios' higher than ideal  at 4 or 5.##

Also and most significantly the graphic on webview is slow to update and does loose comms frequently.

performance is ok with one SEPAM, but gets worse as i add/enable more devices

As experiment i put the serial line through a spare link 150 i had with immediately better results and have had no comms issues now for 2 or 3 days. all the figures i referred to above from diagnostic viewer look way healthier.

i dont have any software on the server like modscan or modbus poll to see if i am getting any exceptions.

thanks for help with this, open to any more education on how to analyse the issue

[Charles_Murison]

Hello @mickkennedy ,

If you want to do a really deep dive, would recommend getting some kind of serial analyzer tools such as IFTtools RS-485 analyzer (https://www.iftools.com/analyzer/index.en.php). This way you could see what is using up so much of the bandwidth. 

Regards,

Charles