The free VFD Suite configuration software makes commissioning your IronHorse ACN drive
so much easier because you can see everything at once. You no longer have to scroll through
tons of parameters on the drive's LED display. And you can control the drive, save and load
drive configurations, monitor parameters in real-time, view data on a trend and even implement
simple control applications using the built-in function block feature.
Let’s walk through the software to help you get up and running quickly.
You can connect to the drive via Modbus-RTU using the optional USB to RS232 cable plugged
into the RJ45 jack. Or you can use Modbus-TCP or Ethernet IP with a standard Ethernet patch
cable and the optional Ethernet communications module. Ethernet communications will be covered
in other videos. Those are the primary methods of connecting
and the cost is about the same for either option, so the choice depends on how you prefer to
communicate with your devices and if you need to extend the drive's built-in I/O. The Ethernet
module and the extended I/O module use the same option slot – you can only use one
or the other. Of course, if you have a USB to 485 converter
like this one, just connect the red wire to S+ and the green wire to S- and that will
work too. If this is the last drive in the RS485 chain, then don’t forget to enable
the termination resistor. It’s this little guy right here and there’s a handy chart
showing you how to set it. For this video, we’ll use Modbus-RTU via
this guy because you just plug it in and it works, and it keeps the option module slot
available in case we need more I/O. There aren’t any surprises when installing
the software so I’m going to assume you know how to do that. I should point out that
the first time you install the software it
will have to install all the Microsoft Redistributable
Libraries so it can take a few minutes if you don’t already have them on your PC.
Launch the software. The version I have defaults to this dark theme. That’s hard to see on
a video, so I'll click on tools, options and change it to a more standard white color.
Much better. Back on the home tab, we want to start a new project,
give it a name, a folder to store it in. And I’ll give the drive a name.
Before we can connect to the drive we need to go to settings and tell the software how
we want to connect. We want Modbus-RTU and click on this guy to configure that. Select the
serial port your USB serial cable is plugged into. If you don’t know which port it’s
using then bring up your windows device manager and click on ports. You are looking for this
prolific driver – looks like mine is on com 5, so I put that here.
These com settings are what the PC's serial port is currently set to. We need to change
these to match what the drive expects. 19200 Baud. No parity. Eight data bits and 1 stop
bit with no flow control. Click OK and OK. Click on Connect and in just a second or two,
we see this bar turned green to remind us we are connected, via Modbus RTU, and we are
online. You can right-click to rename the project or the drive. Let’s change the drive’s name to the part number ACN-21P0.
This is a great first stop. It tells you all the basics at a glance. I see my drive model,
software versions and communication method. There’s the name of the drive we just typed
in and it’s a 1 horsepower drive so that right. We can also see the drive is expecting
220-volt 3-phase power. I’m actually running this demo single phase. Which is ok, because
all ACN drives can handle single phase. The drive is currently stopped, and these
are the ramps. We’ll save applications for another video.
This is the best part. You can monitor up to 4 things and see the results graphically
in real-time. I’ll reach over and start the drive and yep we see this needle move.
If I change the drive's frequency, we see it change in real-time right here on the screen.
If I hit stop, yep there it goes. If you don’t like the scale range, just
double click and change it to something more natural so now when we start the drive we
get a better feel for where we are in the range.
And look at all the things you can monitor. How about DC bus voltage. I’ll modify
his range to 500 volts. Or output power. This is a 1 horsepower drive, so it can do
750 watts. Or how about current. Full load amps on this motor is a little over 3,
so I’ll set that scale to 4 amps. I love how quick and easy it is to get real-time
drive status with this dialog. All of your parameter groups are over here.
If you click on the top-level, you see all the groups as one giant list of parameters.
Or you can narrow it down to just the one group you want to deal with.
This SPS guy is the top-level group with all the basic stuff like acceleration, deceleration,
command source, etc. Here’s a tip: Whenever you start the configuration
software, go ahead and read the current drive parameters into the workspace. I’m going
to fast forward the video because it takes minute or two over serial coms. Now if you
hit write all, you’re just re-writing what’s already in the drive and you don’t risk
over-writing the drive with whatever is in the software. Reading the drive parameters
into the workspace first is a really good habit to get into.
You can click on values in this write parameter column to change the values you want written
to the drive. They turn blue to remind you they haven’t been written yet. You would
then click on this guy to write everything in bulk. I only changed parameters in this
group, so I’ll select him. Being able to limit groups to write out saves you time and
it also helps prevent possibly writing other stuff you weren’t expecting. Notice that
you can also reset individual groups or even the entire drive by checking this guy.
I’ll hit ok and only the SPS parameters got written – writing by groups is one of the
cool features of this IronHorse ACN drive family.
You can also double click on any parameter name to see the current workspace value, the
default and max and min values. Click the read button to read just this one value from
the drive and if you click on the write button it only updates this one parameter – not
the entire group. That’s nice because you can surgically update parameters without having
to write the whole group. These arrows scroll through the parameters
in this group, so you don’t have to keep exiting the dialog and double-clicking on
each one separately. This software is really well thought out and designed with the user
in mind. And the best part is if you click on one with
options like the command source - yeah, you see the options in English – you don’t
have to remember or look up the codes. Another example – in the input group suppose you
want to configure digital input P3. I’ll double click on that and yep, we see all the
things you can use digital input P3 for. I love that I don’t have to remember all those
codes. I just pick what I want, and the software takes care of the rest.
You can control the drive. Hmm, nothing is happening. Why not? Well, when using the
RS232 cable that we are using, the command source has to be set for keypad and I currently
have this drive set up to be controlled by digital inputs which is the drive's default.
If I go to the top-level group, command source and change that to keypad, write it out, close
it. Now if I click on run forward, yep the motor starts to spin. Hit reverse. Yep. And
stop. Perfect. If you are using a 485 cable, then instead
of the keypad, you will want to select the internal 485 port. You can also control the
drive over Ethernet. Again, we’ll cover that in the video about the Ethernet option
module. Of course, you can compare projects, generate
reports, customize the display, etc. All the usual stuff you would expect to find.
This guy is important. When you do a normal write, it writes the parameters to the drive’s
non-volatile memory. If you want the values to be permanent and be able to survive a power
cycle, then you need to write them to EEPROM. So, don’t forget to do that when you are
done setting things up. And check this out. Under the tools tab, there’s
a parameter wizard that for each control mode walks you through a complete setup of your
drive. It covers all the motor parameters, torque control, ramps, starting and stopping
options, digital inputs, multistep setup, digital outputs, analog inputs, and analog
outputs. Very comprehensive. At the end it gives you a list of everything you've changed.
And you can re-run the wizard or save everything you’ve done.
Finally, my absolute most favorite part of this VFD software is you can view trends
of everything you would want to see in the drive in real-time while the drive’s running.
I’m going to break that out into a separate video so we can take the time to see all the
cool things it can do.
Meanwhile, click here to learn more about the IronHorse NEMA 4X ACH family of drives.
Click here to learn more about AutomationDirect’s free award-winning support options and click
here to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you will be notified when we publish more videos like
this one.
Part II Just click ADD, tell it you want to create
a new Trend, give it a name, and hit OK. Out new trend appears over here. And when
you double click on it you get a new tab up here for the trend, and a new ribbon bar with
all the controls. I’m going to close these logs to give us more room.
You can track u to 8 different items. So let’s enable channel 1, to monitor this drive’s
output frequency. And I’ll enable channel 2 to monitor this drive’s output current.
Hit Start Monitoring. I’ll reach over and run the drive. And sure enough, we see the
frequency ramp up and the current. We see the current value and can enter an offset
if we want to. We can change the width of the horizontal
axis, the sample rate, and if we choose to record it we can record using a different
sample rate. Under settings, you can change the display
format, and if you turn autoscaling off, you can enter custom min and max values for
each channel and you can change the color of each trace. Let’s change this to RED
and change the line thickness to make it easier to see. I love that the apply button works
immediately. You can even set up triggers on channels to some level on either the rising
or falling edge. You can trigger on a channel reaching some level in either direction. If
you decide to save the trigger screen you can specify a path and you can specify a path
for the recording. Let’s trigger the frequency on channel
1, hitting 30 hertz, on the way down. Let’s save that trigger screen as a JPEG and hit
OK. Arm the trigger here. I'll reach over to the
drive and change the frequency to 25 Hz. Give it a few seconds to capture the data and we
get a dialog telling us a trigger occurred. And if I go to that folder with a screenshot
capturing exactly when that event occurred. Think about that. You could set this up to
trigger on overvoltage on the bus, or to watch for overcurrent conditions. You are
really only limited by your imagination. Perfect. Hit this button to start a recording .. I’ll
wait a few seconds … and hit this button to stop a recording. The data is stored in
an excel file in the folder at the file path you provided. And sure enough, we see it sampled
the data once a second – exactly what we told it to do here.
There’s a lot more to it of course but that should be enough to help get you started with
the VFD Suite Software from AutomationDirect. There’s a whole chapter in the drive’s
user manual that walks through all the features. It’s chapter 7 in my version of the manual
– so be sure to check that out. And if you don’t have that well guess what? The entire
user manual is built into the VFD Suite Software. How about that!
Click here to learn more about the Ironhorse NEMA4X ACH family of drives. Click here to
learn about AutomationDirect’s free award winning support options and click here to
subscribe to our channel so you will be notified when we publish more videos like this one.