General Topics

• My device is defective. What to do?
   

  To get a product repaired, you have to fill in the RMA form. After processing the data in the RMA form, you will receive an E-Mail with an RMA number and the return address.
• What should I check before I request an RMA number?
   

  • Please check if there is a newer firmware available for the device and load the new firmware in the device. Maybe this fixes the problem.
  • Check the DIP switch settings. The DIP switch must not be in the reserved ON, ON, ON, OFF, ON, ON, ON position.
  • Connect a serial cable to the serial port of the device. Open the interface in a terminal program like Hyper Termianl (settings: 38400 baud rate, 8 bit data, no parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control). Reboot the device and check if any error messages are printed on the serial port.
  • If an L-Vis device fails to load it's configuration and reboots constantly, try the following steps: hold the status button pressed and reboot the device. Release the status button when a "Release button" message on the screen appears.

  
  
• My LOYTEC device contains software components released under various Open Source Licenses. Where can I find the sources?
   

  The source code for these components can be downloaded from http://www.loytec.com/os/index.html .
  The username and password for this Web site is "opensource".
  

L-Switch releated Questions

• I have problems with integrating (multi-port) L-Switches in LNS
   

  Please follow AN006E. It describes in detail, how to integrate multiport routers in LNS network.
  
• I want to replace an L-IP/L-Switch 2-Port with a multiport device. How can I do this?
   

  To replace the router, you have to follow the following steps:

  1. Install the new router physically.
  2. Create and comission the new router in the LNS™ project, using 4 new FT-10 channels but use the same IP backbone channel
  3. Put the LNS™ tool in offnet mode
  4. Select the nodes on the channels and select "change channel". For the destination channel, select one of the new channels, where the device will physically be attached. Do this until all nodes are moved to the new channels and the old FT-10 channels are empty. Of course you also have to change the wiring so that the devices reside on the channels of the new L-IP device like shown in the LNS™ project.
  5. When all devices are moved, you can delete the old router and the old FT-10 channels from your LNS™ project.
  6. Go onnet with the LNS™ tool to apply the changes on the network.
• The LED on the TP-1250 port is blinking red
   

  If the LED of the 1250 port is blinking red, this indicates that there are communication problems on the 1250 channel. The L-Switch detects checksum errors or channel over load situation and blinks red to show that there is a problem on the channel. This does not indicate that there is a problem in the device itself. Usually such communication errors can be caused by too high network traffic, faulty or missing network termination, bad cabling or interference which e.g. can be caused by frequency converters. Please also check if the high speed backbone mode is disabled on all devices (DIP-switch 4 in the UP position), because enabling the backbone mode on some L-Switch devices will also cause communication errors on the other devices if they have not enabled the backbone mode.
• Which serial cable is required by the LSU tool to update the firmware of a device
   

  For the L-Switch/LIP-xxC series a 1:1 female-male serial cable is required to connect the device to the RS-232 port of a PC.
  
  For the L-Switch/LIP-xxCB series devices a standard null-modem-cable with full handshaking must be used.
• 'Cannot communicate with device / device is on wrong channel' when commisioning with LNS tool
   

  There is a problem with the channel assignment. The wrong channel has been selected in the dialog where the two channels for the router are requested. Please make sure to follow AN006E.

L-IP related Questions

• 'Cannot communicate with device / device is on wrong channel' when commisioning with LNS tool
   

  There is a problem with the channel assignment. The wrong channel has been selected in the dialog where the two channels for the router are requested. Please make sure to follow AN003E.
• I want to replace an L-IP/L-Switch 2-Port with a multiport device. How can I do this?
   

  To replace the router, you have to follow the following steps:

  1. Install the new router physically.
  2. Create and comission the new router in the LNS™ project, using 4 new FT-10 channels but use the same IP backbone channel
  3. Put the LNS™ tool in offnet mode
  4. Select the nodes on the channels and select "change channel". For the destination channel, select one of the new channels, where the device will physically be attached. Do this until all nodes are moved to the new channels and the old FT-10 channels are empty. Of course you also have to change the wiring so that the devices reside on the channels of the new L-IP device like shown in the LNS™ project.
  5. When all devices are moved, you can delete the old router and the old FT-10 channels from your LNS™ project.
  6. Go onnet with the LNS™ tool to apply the changes on the network.
• Which serial cable is required by the LSU tool to update the firmware of a device
   

  For the L-Switch/LIP xxC series a 1:1 female-male serial cable is required to connect the device to the RS-232 port of a PC, while on the L-Switch/LIP xxCB series devices a standard null-modem-cable with full handshaking must be used.

L-VIS related Questions

• I registred the L-VIS plugin but I can not start it form the context menu of the L-VIS device
   

  Usually this is caused if the L-VIS device was comissioned with the option "upload from device" prior to the registration of the L-VIS plugin software. To cure the problem, remove the L-VIS device form the project, delete the device template and register the L-VIS plugin again. This creates the L-VIS device templates in the LNS® database. After that, the L-VIS device can be created and comissioned by selecting the proper device template. The problem can also be that the actual project was loaded in to the L-VIS device over an IP connection and the static interface of the project was changed. This results in a changed programm ID of the L-VIS device. To assign the L-Vis configuration plugin also to this new program ID, the plugin has to be re-registered in the management tool.
• I want to display a user defined text string on LVIS-3E100
   

  This can be done using a SNVT_str_asc typed network variable. The text of the input network variable is directly displayed using the "%s" format string. Please mind that the length of the string length of the SNVT_str_asc is limited to 30 characters + 1 termination character (0). Multiple text lines can be implemented by mapping one SNVT_str_asc for each display line.
• L-VIS does not work after reboot. It always keeps printing 'Initializing EIA709.1'
   

  Please perform the following steps:

  1. Unplug the power from L-VIS.
  2. Press the Status Button on the L-VIS device.
  3. Keep the button pressed while you connect power to the L-VIS device.
  4. Keep the button pressed until the status text on the display tells you to release the button.
  5. Recommission the device. Now everything should work fine again.
• Which L-VIS devices are supporting RNI?
   

  Please note tha only LVIS-3E100 devices starting with serial number 007909-xxxxxxxxxxxx or higher are supporting RNI.  e.g. 007908-xxxxxxxxxxxx  does not support RNI, but 007910-xxxxxxxxxxxx  does support RNI.

NIC related Questions

• After installing the NIC 2.8 software my NERO tool is not working
   

  In case you have problems with your Nero-Software after installing the NIC-Software (Nero crashes or cannot find a CD/DVD-Writer): This bug was fixed by Ahead in their Nero Software 8.2.8.0 (or later). If you cannot upgrade to the latest Nero Software for some reason, the following section describes a work-around:

  Enter a new DWORD-Value in the registry at 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LOYTEC\LegacyMIP'. The Value must be named 'MaxStubCount' and must be set to 256 (decimal). Reboot your PC. If Nero still does not work, start the NIC Driver Installer from your Windows start menu and reboot again. Observe that in this configuration, you cannot use MIP for NIC-IPs above NIC_IP_008. However, all other NICs will still work with MIP. To switch back to the original configuration, just delete the registry value and reboot your PC.

• NIC-IP cannot be found in LConfig discovery dialog
   

  When the NIC-IP cannot be found in the LConfig discover dialog, the following should be checked:

  • crossover cable or correct connection via Ethernet switch
  • personal firewall disabled
  • try to press status button on NIC-IP and check if message appears in discovery dialog
  • then try again to discover device
• When I start my PC I get the message 'Could not open monitor side of driver'
   

  This message appears if the MIP/LDV driver part of the is not correctly installed or started. This can happen if the loged in user priviledges are not sufficient to read the relevant registry keys or if the software was installed on a different user account. When the message appears, the ORION part and LNS part of the driver software still works as expected, whereas MIP/LDV based applications are not able to open the driver. To solve the problem, either the NIC driver software can be reinstalled. Alternativly, it can be sufficient to change the driver start type from "Application" to "Service" in the Advanced Settings of the L-Config tool.