Physical Slave Connection

jswilson · February 2007

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 · February 2007

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 · February 2007

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 · February 2007

Thanks for the help, guys.

Physical Slave Connection

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