My first post to this forum!

I have set up a DNP3 driver and configured a Digital tag. My outstation device is set up to provide a binary tag w/ packed format. However, I am not able to get a response from the index=1 tag on my VTScada Application Dashboard.

Has anyone successfully setup a DNP3 binary tag (w/ "packed" format) in VT Scada?

Any input would be MUCH appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

Hi @gregw123

Can you post back with details on the DNP3 device you're using?

The DNP3 driver in VTScada allows the variation to be specified in the I/O address but this is only used for direct reads and writes. Any response from the Outstation for the index specified will be read regardless of the variation the Outstation has used.

If you're not using a direct read, the I/O address for a binary input would be 1/0/1:NS, this species group 1 (binary input), variation 0 (any variation), index 1 with the :NS suffix to NOT use a direct read. The value will be updated via an integrity poll or when the Outstation generates an event for this index and events are read either by a Check RTU or Integrity poll or the device sends an Unsolicited response.

If you are using a direct read (note that this isn't supported by all devices, variation 0 requires subset level 2 support and variation 1 & 2 require subset level 3 support) then use 1/<var>/1 where <var> should be set to the variation required (0, 1 or 2).

Thanks for the response. We are using a SMART Block(R) device from Fischer Block, Inc. The device is setup to respond to integrity polls only. In this application, we have two binary tags which we provide responses in a "packed" format, which we understand, per A.2.1 of the dnp3 standard, that this is to be group 1, variation 1 (and we're using indexes 0,1), so we initially configured VTS for 1/1/0:NS and 1/1/1:NS, however, we are getting no value (for at least the 1/1/1:NS tag). The 1/1/0:NS, we do not have an easy way to change this value on the outstations side and VTS is reading this as OFF. There appears to be no read for the 1/1/1:NS tag, although we are confirming a 0 and 1 value in the response, per wireshark capture. Any help would be MUCH appreciated!

You may have come across a bug in the DNP3 driver when parsing a response that has packed binary inputs as the last object that was independently reported this week.

The bug has been around a long time and probably not noticed as most devices report objects in the integrity poll in increasing group number order and they also have other object types configured thus the response has objects such as analog inputs after the binary inputs.

I'm coding the change now and hopefully this will be in the next release.

Pending that release, you could try configuring your device to have an analog input that will hopefully be reported after the binary inputs in the response, or configure the device to report the binary inputs in something other than the packed variation.