Connecting to multiple Foundation Fieldbus devices in sequence using FF Open VFD

[Darren_Odom]

Lewis,

Are the red circled numbers the addresses of the devices? How can I tell if they are at Assigned Addresses?

Without Configurator, I cannot reset the devices to their factory defaults.

Thanks,

Darren

[LewisL · Accepted solution]

Darren,

Address 0xfa is obviously wrong.

Address range (decimal)	Address range (hexadecimal)	Allocation
0 through 15	00 through 0F	Reserved
16 through 247	10 through F7	Permanent devices
248 through 251	F8 through FB	New or decommissioned devices
252 through 255	FC through FF	Temporary (“visitor”) devices

0xF8~FB is also called default address. According to FF spec, 

Default Addresses
Default addresses are non-visitor node addresses reserved for DLEs waiting for node address assignment. They are used by field devices
that are in the uninitialized or initialized state and thus have not been assigned an address by the master configuration device. The default
address range is defined and reserved by the Data Link Layer Specification.

You only need to set the address of the device to a unique permanent device address (16~247), I believe, before it can work. You probably don't need to set them to factory defaults.

NI-FBUS VI API can do set address/tag. Configurator can do as well. If you don't have either of these two, I'm afraid you would have to find some other way.

[Darren_Odom]

In the initialization code, I set it to re-address the devices starting at 0x16 and incrementing from there.  Success!  They all work in unison now.  Thank you!