Features;

• This driver is designed for a PC to join to FL-net that is an FA-specialized open network system that connects contorollers and equipments from multi-vendor.
• The FL-net driver is designed for the intermediate network level between the levels of information management and field network.
• This FL-net driver makes PC, PLC, numerical controllers and robot controllers from different vendors communicate each other.
• The network is based on ethernet architecture, the de-facto-standard over the world. That means you can reduce the cost of network devices.

Overview;

• [Common Memory]

• The system components communicate each other by cyclic transfer mechanism using common memory reserved at each node. Each common memory has two types of memory area. The first one is byte type and the second is word type. The total size of the common memory area is not necessarily the same for each node. Each node sends its local data to the network and receives the data from other nodes, refreshing its common area for both area-1 and area-2 periodically. The application on the node has only to access the common area to get the other's local data .

• [Cyclic]

• Each node specifies its common memory by offset and size. value.
• The maximum size is 0.5 k-word for area-1and 8 k-word for area-2.
• Each node sends its local data on area-1 and area-2 when it holds the token.
• The data more than 1024 bytes is transferred being divided into several blocks up to 1024 bytes.
• No common memory area is shared by more than two nodes, that is, the offset value of each node must be the different each other.

• [Message]

• Only one frame of message before the cyclic frame is transferable. The receiving node responds ACK signal to notify that it has received the message within three times until it receives the sending node's ACK. The message shall not be divided. That means the maximum message length must be 1024 bytes.

• [Message Transmission]

• Message transmission function is to realize asynchronous data exchange between nodes. There are two modes for message transmission. One is "Unicast mode" that transfers message to a specified node, the other is "Broadcast mode" that transfers to all of the nodes.

Table-1 API Libraries

Specifications

• FA-link protocol definition is based on Ethernet.
• UDP/IP is used for communication protocol.
• Master-less token passing method is applied in order to guarantee the deterministic transmission avoiding contention.
• Common memory method is applied for each node to share information.
• Automatic node entry/ leave is available.

Operating Environment/ Development Environment