National Instruments AT-FBUS/2 Foundation Fieldbus Interface

The National Instruments AT-FBUS/2 is a plug and play Foundation Fieldbus Interface Device for ISA. The AT-FBUS/2 device is manufactured by National Instruments with part number 777281-02. Since it is an interface device, the National Instruments AT-FBUS/2 provides communication to computers with PC AT compatibility and other network devices which comply with H1 specifications. The AT-FBUS/2 device comprises an H1 interface with a transfer rate of 31.25 kB/s. This device also features interrupt facility and shared memory features.

In order to communicate over the bus, National Instruments interface boards contain NI-FBUS Communication Manager Software, which provides advanced API and can be used to communicate with Foundation Fieldbus hardware and communication stack. NI-FBUS configurator provides a graphical view of the communication manager software and allows the configuration of the Fieldbus network. Additionally, it provides the configuration facility for hardware parameters. In Windows 2000/NT, interfaces can be deleted and configuration parameters for the hardware can be modeled according to requirement. Using this utility, ports on the Fieldbus board can be named and accessed. Fieldbus communication parameters for interface and device description information such as directory for description file and the location of the standard text dictionary can be configured. In Windows, the number of boards, base address and IRQ line assigned to a board can be viewed using the NI-FBUS interface configuration utility.

Configuration software with the AT-FBUS/2 device allows the setting and clearance of device addresses. For programming, reading, and writing with the AT-FBUS/2 device, NI-FBUS communication manager allows the call to API without requiring the NI-FBUS configurator.