RS485 issue on Linux

Hello, I am not so familiar with Linux, but may be, i can give some
hints regarding RS485 / RS422:

First, RS485 is allways half duplex. Full Duplex version is RS422.
When you run RS485, your system has to switch from send to receive mode.
Some adapters do this via a timeout function, if you don´t send
anything, it acts as a receiver, when the tx line goes active, it
switches to transmit mode...

best regards

Stefan

No, it isn't.  If you use two RS485 transceivers on each end (one as
a transmitter, one as a receiver), then you can do 4-wire,
full-duplex (it's actually rather common).



It two-wire, half-duplex mode, that's true.

As i understood, RS485 is allways a two-wire connection with optional
ground-wire. RS422 is similar and for full duplex connections.

Both can be realised as a bus-system with maximum of 32 devices on a
bus, but you can also get tranceivers for maximum of 128 devices (not
really usefull).
Transceivers are e.g. MAX485. For a RS422 system, you need two MAX485
for each device on the bus, for RS485 one tranceiver per device.

You often find commercial adaptors from RS485/422 to RS232 or to
Ethernet. The adaptors can work as RS485 or as RS4222 devices. Normaly,
one pair of wires are uses for RS485 which can be switched from transmit
to receive mode. The other wire pair is for receive (or transmit) only.

Example for RS485 to ethernetconverter is MOXA NPORT 5230


best regards

Stefan

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:07:30 +0100, Stefan rearranged some electrons to
say:



When properly implemented per the EIA spec, both RS-485 and RS-422 are
differential,  i.e. there is a twisted pair of wires for TX data and a
pair for RX data.  

I don´t have the original EIA documents, so i can only talk about
practical use.

Yes, RS-485 and RS-422 are both differential. Therefore, you have 2
wires for a rs-485 connection. One siganl is marked as A the other as B,
or RX/TX+ and the other as RX/TX-. In RS422, you have 4 wires, one pair
for TX+/TX- and one pair for RX+/RX-.

Therefore, this has nothing to do whith the question, if RS485 is a two
wire or four wire connection.

The point is, that in such a 2 wire system, both wires are are the same
time for transmission if the MAX4855 driver is switched to transmit mode
and both wires are used for receive when the MAX485 is switched to
receive mode.

So, the 2 wire system can only work in half-duplex mode.

Simply spoken: A = B*, or RX+ = RX-* and TX+ = TX-* so you get the
original signal at the first wire and the inverted signal on the other
wire. The receiver takes the result from the difference Uab.

The idea is, that if there is an electromagnetic influence on the
signal, it will affect both wires in the same way, so the difference
voltage is not affected. In practice, this advantage is useless because
in most cases, you find faulty electrical installations, so that most
RS485/RS422 Busses with more than 10 devices don´t work properly,
especially when the lenght of the bus is several hundred meters.

I myself prefer the old TTY-current loop, which has worked perfectly
over several 1000 meters since nearly 100 years. No idea, why anybody
decided to invent such a shit like RS232.



Best regards

Stefan DF9BI

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:12:10 +0100, Stefan rearranged some electrons to
say:




Using RS485 in differential full duplex mode is not "useless".  We
implemented an RS485 network utilized in undersea equipment that
communicated over long distances successfully.  It is resistant to common
mode interference.

If you're using two RS-485 transceivers on each device, then I
call that a 4-wire RS-485 connection.  A 4-wire bus where there
is one master (tx on one pair) and multple slaves (tx on the
other pair) has been referred to as 4-wire RS-485 everwhere
I've ever worked.

In my experience, RS-422 is a 4-wire point-point connection
between exactly two peers using RS-422 tranceivers.

Though RS485 and RS422 transceivers are interoperable, the
electrical specs for RS485 and RS422 are not the same.

Some clear information is available in the below link -
http://www.bb-elec.com/bb-elec/literature/tech/485appnote.pdf

Karthik Balaguru

Standard motherboard serial ports don't do RS485.  You'll need
to buy an adapter or a serial board that does do RS485.

If you do have a serial board that does RS485, you'll have to
consult the manual for the serial interface board you're using.
The method used to switch from RS232 to R485 is vendor-specific.

We did some work on an R485/RS422 last year. But our UART hardware is in an
FPGA (it emulates a 16550). With one additional register bit controlling
RS422/RS485 mode. Via IOCTL from userland the UART driver switches the
hardware in RS422 or RS485 mode. In the RS485 mode the UART hardware
activates the output driver itself, if one sends data and switches off the
output driver if the data is sent.

Maybe your UART driver and hardware do it in a similar way?

jbe

Juergen Beisert schrieb:

We did this similar, but the problem was, that switching between send
and receive proved to be sometimes too slow. This resulted in lost
answers (other side responded before the direction control had
completed). Now we are using a direction control from the device driver
which works fine.
Dirk