Purpose and Background Information
Many ION Setup users are aware that ION Setup can be used to synchronize the time of ION meters to the time of the PC or server that the ION Setup software is based on. Not many ION Setup users are aware, however, that a simple script can be written to automate this ION Setup functionality. This document gives guidance on how to achieve such automation of time synchronization of ION meters.
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Contextual Information and Scope
The following points define the circumstances under which the procedure detailed in this document can be used.
· Even though it supports meters and other devices of many different types, ION Setup only allows time synchronization of ION meters.
· The meters synchronized in this manner must be set up in ION Setups saved network of sites and meters. Furthermore, these meters must be confirmed to be correctly configured to support Ethernet time synchronization (e.g. the clock module must be configured for Ethernet as a time sync source). The best means of checking this is to confirm that the meter accepts manual time synchronizations via the user interface as shown in the following screen shot.
Step by Step Set up for Automatic Time Synchronization
(1) Add the meters that you wish to synchronize to ION Setup in network mode (i.e. not in Single ION Device Configuration Mode).
(2) Note the GroupName.MeterName of each of the meters that you wish to synchronize. For example, in the screen shot immediately below, the GroupName.MeterName = Group1.TowerAION7650.
(3) In ION Setup, click Tools > Options to get the Options dialog box shown below. From this box, copy the path of the Program Directory and Config Directory to the clipboard and paste them to a Notepad file for temporary storage until needed in the steps below.
Example:
Path to Program Directory:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Schneider Electric\ION Setup\
Path to Config Directory:
C:\Users\sesa57310\AppData\Roaming\Schneider Electric\ION Setup\
(4) Using Notepad, create a text file and save it under the name Script.cfg in the Config Directory path saved from the step immediately above. The starting text to be contained in this text file is the following:
[Logininfo]
Username=supervisor
password=0
[DeviceInfo]
Devices=2
Device1=Group1.TowerAION7650
Device2=Group1.TowerBION8800
[Device1]
Requests=1
Request1=9
[Device2]
Requests=1
Request1=9
(5) In the above text, modify the data as appropriate for your system. Most of this information should be self explanatory but here are some notes to help:
a. Ensure the Logininfo for ION Setup corresponds to what you have setup in your ION Setup system default username / password = supervisor / 0 .
b. Under DeviceInfo, ensure that the number of devices matches the number of devices listed. For each device, ensure that its full name is in the format GroupName.MeterName as shown in the above example.
c. In the Device# section for each meter, there is only 1 command (i.e. request) and this request is request function code 9 which denotes timesync. Obviously, you need to create one of these sections for each meter that you wish to time sync.
(6) Save the above text file. When you do so, ensure that you save it with ANSI encoding as circled in the screen shot below.
(7) Now you are ready to execute the above script. You can do so from the command line. To start a command line session, go to Start > Run > cmd. In the black screen screen session, use the program directory path stored in step (3) above to create a complete path to the IONSetup.exe object to enter a string that looks like this:
C:\Users\sesa57310\AppData\Roaming\Schneider Electric\ION Setup\IONSetup.exe Script
Execute the above string at the command line. To do this, you can copy the string and paste it into the command line session by right-clicking inside the black screen and selecting Paste from the context menu that appears. This will result in a command that looks like this:
(8) When the above command is executed at the command line (by simply hitting return), the command will be executed. As long as ION Setup is not already running, there will be a visual indication of the successful execution in the form of a dialog box like this:
NOTE: A number (i.e. 1, 2, 3…) will appear in the white section of the above box for each device as the time syncs are processed.
(9) Once the above step (9) has been confirmed to work, you can automate the execution of the above command line command as follows. Open Control Panel (Start > Run > Control Panel). Select Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler. From this interface, right-click to select Create Basic Task as shown below.
(10) Follow the Create Basic Task Wizard dialog box to create a scheduled task of the type start a program as shown below.
The following dialog box may appear. If so, click yes.
After all of the above steps are completed, the ION Setup script should execute at the appointed time on the schedule.
