YES, THE COCO OBJECT IS COMING TO LIFE

What’s the COCO object you might ask? Well, for the past 8 years the only way to configure an EtherNet/IP Scanner was to use some proprietary way of entering the list of devices to scan. In ControlLogix you used RsLogix. You added devices to the EtherNet/IP device table one by one. Unless, of course, the devices were RA devices or special partner devices and the data was already all known to RsLogix.

Well now, there is an Object that is defined that allows configuration of the EtherNet/IP Scan Table over the network. Now, standard EtherNet/IP tools can be used that can read and write the COCO (Connection Configuration Object, Object Number F3 Hex) using EtherNet/IP Explicit messaging. It may not seem like a big deal but this really matters and it going to be great for all the non RA Scanner guys.

The next enhancement which some smart guys are already working on is an EDS connection. A tool should be able to read an EDS, let the user connect to the device, configure it and then load the appropriate information on the device into the COCO object of the scanner that will be using that device. That kind of tool is going to save users lots of work.

The COCO document from the ODVA defines all the instances, attributes and behaviors of this new object. I’ll send it to you if you’re interested.

John

PS: If you’re interested in EtherNet/IP. It is the absolute, hands down best way to get a server device EtherNet/IP enabled.