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KNX serial card +030220326- rel. 1.0 - 16.05.2017
ENG
5. USING THE CAREL DCA
The Carel DCA (Device Configuration Apps) tool can be downloaded
from www.knx.org. This is used to configure the Modbus-KNX gateway
based on the user’s specific requirements.
The DCA tool, downloaded from www.knx.org, can be installed from
the ETS opening page, clicking Apps N active (where N represents the
number of active apps) and then clicking the '+' button.
Correct installation of the DCA tool can be verified by checking that
DcaCarel is displayed and selected, as shown in Fig. 5.a.
Fig. 5.a
Once the DCA tool has been correctly installed, the file in knxprod format
must be used to add the new device to the project:
Fig. 5.b
Then, selecting the Devices panel and importing the device, a DCA
tab is provided, used to continue the steps for defining the project by
completing the fields in the “General Settings”, “Datapoints Settings” and,
optionally, “String Tables” tabs.
Fig. 5.c
5.1 “General Settings” menu
The “General Settings” menu is used to set the Modbus communication
parameters between the card and the corresponding controller, i.e. the
communication address (in the range 1-247, default 1) and baud rate
(default 9600bps). The maximum number of consecutive coils read with
an individual Read Coils (0x01) or Read Discrete Inputs (0x02) command,
and the maximum number of consecutive registers read with an
individual Read Holding Registers (0x03) or Read Input Registers (0x04)
command can also be set. When these parameters are set to 1, multiple
readings are disabled. For the e-drofan, the limit to these parameters is
implicit in the controller’s firmware and should be set manually: max
multiple regs must be 1, max multiple coils can be ignored, given that
e-drofan does not manage coils. The same menu can be used to set some
KNX communication parameters:
• the time interval expected by the KNX card from the moment it detects
a connection to the KNX bus until the moment it starts sending packets
to the bus (default 2s)
• the maximum number of packets that the card can send per second
(the default is 0, indicating no limits).
Once the communication parameters have been set, the 2cf file
corresponding to the controller (or the application on the controller)
needs to be imported. For the pCO family controllers, the 2cf file is
self-compiled, for the c.pCO family controllers it can be exported from
c.design, while for e-drofan it can be downloaded from ksa.carel.com.
When importing a 2cf file for a pCO family controller, the DCA requires
the name of the parameter database that the application has been
developed for:
Fig. 5.d
The selected database is shown in the “General Settings” menu. For the
other controllers this option does not need to be selected. The 2cf file and
the selected reference database cannot be modified when configuring
the project; indeed if importing a new 2cf, a pop-up message will prompt
for confirmation before proceeding, warning that all configurations
previously made to the project will be deleted.
The 2cf file is imported together with the 2ct file (if present in the same
directory as the 2cf ). This file contains descriptions of the variables
translated into different languages. If there are multiple languages in the
2ct file, the same language as the DCA is selected; if this is not available,
the English version is selected, and if this too is not available, the first
available version is selected.
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