Chapter 1
FP-1000/1001 Network Module Overview
FieldPoint FP-1000/1001 User Manual
1-2
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National Instruments Corporation
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.