Extended Platform Devices

MiCOM Px30 Extended Platform Devices (firmware starting with -650) support two types of protocols for the extraction of data, namely:

Standard - This uses the IEC 60870-5-103 protocol
Extended - This uses File Transfer Mode only on the COM port of the device. The device is switched into this mode manually at the front panel. It supports all the basic IEC-103 transmission features, but it does exclude some functions.

Standard (IEC-103) protocol

Standard Platform functions are generally concerned with the download of single messages.

This is a good method to use to extract small numbers of settings.

Extended (FTP) protocol

Px3x/Px4x Extended Platform functions are generally concerned with the download of one of more data files. This makes this a good method to use to extract templates, macros, character set files and schemes.

MiCOM S1 Studio supports the following:

Conversion of Bay Type templates exported as hex-files from BTC, as well as hex-macro files and hex-character set files. These files will be converted into a proprietary binary format which is accepted by the Px3x/Px4x extended platform
The files are transmitted using ZMODEM Protocol via the serial port.

These extended platform devices do not support:

dump transmission of settings
transmission of user defined bay template in the way that was used prior to MiCOM S1 Studio software version 3.5.2.

No cold restart is necessary with the extended protocol, which means that no loss of settings occurs after the download of a data model containing text replacements.

Files in the Device

Each device includes a series of internal files and folders, but each standard user has write-access to only one pre-defined folder in the device. When MiCOM S1 Studio software sends data to a device it writes only to that pre-defined folder. The device has the ability to check the integrity of the files it has just received; and then to write them to one or more target folders if those data files are correct. These target folders may include:

default data folder (containing factory settings)
customized data folder (containing modified bay types, data models and other customized settings).

File Types

The file types which can be downloaded include:

File Type	Extension	Action
User defined bay type files	.bbt	Sending, extracting, deleting
User defined macro files	.bmf	Sending, extracting, deleting
User defined character set files	.bcs	Sending, extracting, deleting
User defined data model file (with modified description texts)	.6xx	Sending, extracting, deleting
Default data bay type files	.bbt	Extracting
Default data macro files	.bmf	Extracting
Default data character set files	.bcs	Extracting
Default data data model file
With fix reference/regional language description texts	.6xx	Extracting

Handling Customized Data Models

When opening a settings file from a device, MiCOM S1 Studio checks whether there is a data model file in the Settings folder of the device. If MiCOM S1 Studio finds it, it uses it; otherwise it uses the default data model from the internal DMOD folder.

Handling Customized Bay Types

Customized Bay Types, macros and character sets are stored as hex files. These can not be uploaded, but they can be downloaded to a device using the flash loader program. These hex files are not useful for the file transmission purposes and a binary file is needed instead. The conversion of a hex file to a binary file is done using the right-click context menu of the relevant BTC folder. The relevant conversion options are:

Convert to binary file... - this is active only if the selected file is a hex file
Convert to hex file... - this is active only if the selected file is a binary file

For more information, please see these topics: