Chapter 4 NI-DNET Programming Techniques
NI-DNET User Manual 4-14 ni.com
Specification defines the overall format of these services, in most cases
their meaning and service data are object-specific or vendor-specific.
Unless your device requires such services and documents them in detail,
you probably do not need them for your application.
You need the following information to use the ncWriteDnetExplMsg and
ncReadDnetExplMsg functions for a given explicit messaging service:
• The class and instance identifiers for the object to which the service
will be directed.
• The service code used to identify the service.
• The length and format of service request and response data. Some of
data formats are defined by the service’s overall specification (such as
in Appendix G, DeviceNet Explicit Services, in the DeviceNet
Specification manual), but many data formats are object-specific or
vendor-specific. For example, for the Reset service, AppendixG
defines the service’s code for use with any object, but its actual data
format is defined in the specification for the Identity Object.
• The error codes that can be returned in the service response. Error
codes that are common to all services can be found in Appendix H,
DeviceNet Error Codes, in the DeviceNet Specification manual, but
many error codes are specific to the service, object, or vendor.
As with the ncGetDnetAttribute and ncSetDnetAttribute
functions, the service data formats for the request and response are
specified in terms of DeviceNet data types. These DeviceNet data types are
converted to/from the data types of your programming environment (Cor
LabVIEW) as discussed in previous sections.
Handling Multiple Devices
This section describes techniques you can use to efficiently implement an
application that communicates with a large number of DeviceNet devices.
In such an application, there might be only one call to ncOpenDnetIntf
(only one network), but there are usually multiple calls to ncOpenDnetIO
(and possibly ncOpenDnetExplMsg).

Configuration

If the configuration parameters used with ncOpenDnetIO tend to change
over time, you might want to organize them in data structures instead of
using constants.