LabVIEW drivers - Eurotherm Mini8 controller with Modbus

Eurotherm controllers

It's easy to setup the connection between LabVIEW and your Eurotherm Mini8 control unit. With the provided demonstration program it should be easy to create some working program. morechemistry.com shows an example of a setup with 6 temperature controllers inside the control unit.

Principle

Communication with a Eurotherm control unit works like this:

• open the serial port to which the Mini8 controller has been connected
• for all read channels read the process value
• for all write channels write the setpoint if it has changed
• at fixed time intervals repeat the previous 2 steps until some condition is met e.g. the STOP button has been pressed
• close the serial port

Downloads

eurotherm-modbus.zip
This file includes:

• eurotherm modbus - read.vi
  This vi (functional global) executes read actions.
• eurotherm modbus - write.vi
  This vi (functional global) executes write actions.
• eurotherm modbus - sample program.vi
  

  This vi shows how to use the driver vis with a Mini8 control unit with a number of setpoint/readout pairs.

This file also includes all supporting vis as well as additional samples.
All these vis have been made with LabVIEW 8.5.1.
The control unit in the example has 6 active control loops and is connected to COM1 at a baudrate of 19200.

Remarks

The LabVIEW driver for the Mini8 controller using Modbus has been derived from the driver for the Eurotherm 3500 controller.
The sole purpose of the presented driver is to write the setpoint(s) and to read the process value(s).