NetnNode_Doc_E.pdf

WEINZIERL ENGINEERING GmbH

Dr.-Ing. Th. Weinzierl

Bahnhofstr. 6

D-84558 Tyrlaching

Phone +49 (0)8623 / 987 98 - 03

Fax +49 (0)8623 / 987 98 - 09

E-Mail: info@weinzierl.de

Web: www.weinzierl.de

A Powerful Tool for EIB/KNX Development

Key words:

Busmonitor, EIB/KNX-Development, EIB/KNX-Stack;

1 General

The quality of any work is greatly dependent on the availability of efficient tools. When

developing components for a bus system, it is important to have a detailed view of what’s

going on in the devices and throughout the entire system. Digital oscilloscopes and logic ana-

lysers are very helpful when working with hardware and in-circuit emulators, and source-

level debuggers will help you find bugs in the software or firmware. Bus monitors are used to

analyse the behaviour of a bus device and the interworking of the system.

The NetÔn Node software is a comprehensive tool set for EIB/KNX development. It runs on the

current versions of MS Windows. Not only is it a bus monitor program, it also features a set

of very efficient tools for analysing bus devices and system behaviour, and is able to handle

the standard EIB/KNX device models defined today.

The following paragraphs describe the NetÔn Node features, giving an overview of the tools

included and highlighting the benefits of using NetÔn Node during EIB/KNX development.

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2 History

Several development tools are available for the EIB/KNX bus. Perhaps the most frequently

used tool is the EIB bus monitor from Siemens, which was written during the development of

the EIB system about 15 years ago. To this day, the tool runs in DOS mode and cannot be

used with any current versions of MS Windows. Newer features of the EIB/KNX system have

not been implemented in the program. Figure 1 shows the telegram view of the EIB monitor.

Another well-known tool is the EIB-IDE, also from Siemens. It was specifically designed for

writing applications for bus access units (BCUs and BIMs) available as OEM components

from Siemens. It was not designed as a bus monitor. The current version runs in a 16-bit envi-

ronment and the communication does not work on Windows 2000 or XP.

Figure 1: The DOS monitor for EIB

A special monitor is available from EIBA. The EITT (EIB Interworking Test Tool) is used for

certification. With the EITT you can define and run linear telegram sequences. Device-

specific tools are not included. Also, the ETS (EIB Tool Software) comes with some bus ana-

lyser features. However, the capabilities offered by this software are generally insufficient for

development.

Initially, NetÔn Node was developed for internal use in our company because none of the avail-

able development tools fulfilled our needs. NetÔn Node proved to be an essential tool for testing

during the implementation of our EIB/KNX stack, based on TP-UART (Twisted Pair Univer-

sal Asynchronous Receive and Transmit IC) and a microcontroller. The first versions of NetÔn

Node were only released as part of our EIB/KNX development kit together with our stack im-

plementation. Now NetÔn Node is also available as a stand-alone product.

3 Program Framework

The basis for the efficiency of NetÔn Node is the very powerful program framework. It is speci-

fically designed for packet-oriented communication software. It runs in a 32-bit environment

of MS Windows and has a multi-threaded event-driven architecture. Thus, the user interface

is not blocked while a service, such as a download, is running.

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Net’n Node – An powerful tool for EIB/KNX development

Figure 2: The main window of NetÔn Node

The framework is able to handle multiple ports simultaneously. It is possible, for example, to

use one port to program a bus device and a second port in bus monitor mode to log the tele-

grams on the bus. In addition to the connection to the EIB, an RS-485 interface and a serial

terminal are also available. As a special feature, the program has the ability to work as a “PEI

spy”. Using a special hardware adapter, you can listen to the communication between other

computers or microcontrollers with a BCU. This is often a great help when debugging devices

and applications that use a serial PEI protocol. Figure 2 shows the main window of NetÔn Node

with two ports active.

The telegrams transmitted and received via different ports can be shown in separate telegram

windows, or they can be combined in a single window to analyse the timing relations of dif-

ferent ports.

4 Bus Access

In the current release of NetÔn Node , a 32-bit serial driver is included for Windows 98 and ME

to handle PEI16 (EMI1). Our serial driver for Windows 2000 and XP is no longer included

because it would conflict with the Falcon driver (used by ETS NG) on the same computer.

Interface devices that use PEI10 (FT1.2 / EMI2) can be used with all supported versions of

Windows.

To avoid problems with the serial port, we recommend use of a USB data interface. NetÔn Node

supports the KNX standard for USB interfaces. Most implementations of KNX-USB data

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Net’n Node – An powerful tool for EIB/KNX development

interfaces currently entering the market were developed by Weinzierl Engineering GmbH. A

development sample is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: A KNX-USB data interface (development sample from Weinzierl Eng. GmbH)

5 Sending and Receiving Telegrams

The simplest but nevertheless very important task of a bus monitor is to receive telegrams

from the bus and to send frames. To send a single telegram, NetÔn Node supports two different

kinds of dialogs. The first can be used to send group object value very comfortably. Figure 4

and Figure 5 show some examples.

Figure 4: Send a two byte float

Figure 5: Send a time value

Figure 6 shows a more flexible dialog. With this dialog, any kind of frame can be assembled

manually and sent to the local bus access unit to be transmitted on the bus. For most services

defined in the EIB/KNX stack, individual masks have already been prepared in the program.

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Figure 6: Send a TL connect request using external TL

When receiving telegrams from the bus, it is very useful to get a detailed description of the

information it contains. Figure 7 shows a receive window in which the description of tele-

grams has been switched on. The information displayed in the window corresponds to the

layers of the OSI/ISO reference model defined for EIB/KNX.

Figure 7: The telegram window

The contents of the telegram window and all information can be stored on a disk or copied

into the PC clipboard and reused, for example, in a text editor.

6 System-Oriented Tools

System-oriented tools do not address a single device but rather offer analyser features for sys-

tem aspects. For example, Figure 8 shows a dialog for scanning a bus line to find all devices

connected in the system. The Test ACK tool shown in Figure 9 checks which addresses (group

or physical) will be positively acknowledged in the bus.

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