
Chapter 1
FP-1000/1001 Network Module Overview
1-2
ni.com
The FP-1000/1001 supports standard commands (subset of Optomux
command set) and a set of extended commands to completely support the
FieldPoint I/O modules. Both network modules can co-exist with other
Optomux devices on the same network.
The FP-1000/1001 uses the Optomux protocol. Therefore, after you have
configured the FieldPoint bank (network module and I/O modules), you
can use any application software that supports Optomux to communicate
with FieldPoint modules in the bank.
In a distributed application, many FieldPoint banks are networked together.
You can network up to 25 FieldPoint banks to each RS-232/RS-485 port of
your host computer. Each bank can contain up to nine I/O modules, thus
connecting up to 225 I/O modules per RS-232 (or RS-485) port in your host
computer. You can further increase your field I/O count by using more
RS-232/RS-485 ports in your host computer.
FP-1000 Connects to RS-232
The FP-1000 connects directly to the RS-232 port that is available on most
host computers. Because RS-232 is a point-to-point network that allows
connection to only one device, the FP-1000 provides an RS-485 repeater so
that you can build a network with multiple FieldPoint banks by connecting
one or more FP-1001s to a single FP-1000.
FP-1001 Connects to RS-485
The FP-1001 FieldPoint network module connects directly to any RS-485
adapter card installed in your host computer, or to the RS-485 repeater port
of an FP-1000. Because RS-485 is inherently a multidrop network, the
FP-1001 does not provide a separate RS-485 repeater. You can network
multiple FP-1001 modules in multidrop fashion.
The FP-1001 communicates over RS-485, utilizing full-duplex mode. It is
optically isolated, which prevents fault coupling between the RS-485
network and the FP-1001.