Physical Slave Connection

jswilson

I am trying to slave an Axcent3 to an NI-3000 via Axlink, and before I go and try it, I wanted to verify the connection between the two.

I read a post that said you can power them individually, just be sure to not connect the power wire. That is how I intend to do it. Do I still leave the ground connection connected? I know it's often used over serial communication, so I presume I do, but I wanted to double check. Also, do I cross the receive and transmit lines?

Thanks for your help, I just wanted to be sure on this before I tried it and caused some damage.

annuello

Yes, leave the Gnd connected between the two on AXlink.

Yes, power the two masters individually.

No, do not cross over the AXP & AXM signals. It is a RS485 bus which should be hooked up in parallel, just like when you put normal AXlink devices onto the bus.

It probably doesn't matter much, but when I did this I put the Axcent3 into slave mode before connecting it to the NetLinx master.

When writing your code, remember that the AXlink connection is a bit of a bandwidth bottle-neck in such configurations. Try to shift any chatty devices onto the NetLinx ports, so their data doesn't load down the AXlink connection.

Happy coding,
Roger McLean
Swinburne University

DHawthorne

Absolutely put the Axcent3 in slave mode first or your whole system will go down. More than one master on an Axlink buss does Bad Things.

jswilson

Thanks for the help, guys.