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FV_132594965-Regular Member
5-Regular Member
May 17, 2026
Question

ABB Drive Communication with Kepware V6

  • May 17, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 15 views

Hi there, 

I’m trying to establish direct communication between an ABB ACS880 drive (using FENA-11/FENA-21 EtherNet/IP adapter) and KEPServerEX.

The drive is already communicating successfully with a ControlLogix PLC via Generic Ethernet Module configuration. Current assembly configuration in the PLC is:

Input Assembly: 152

Output Assembly: 102

Data Format: INT

Size: 13 INTs

Network communication is confirmed:

-Drive responds to ping

-PLC communication is stable and operational

My goal is to read the drive data directly from Kepware without going through the PLC.

However, my Kepware installation currently includes:

Allen-Bradley ControlLogix Ethernet

Allen-Bradley Ethernet

but I do not see a dedicated “EtherNet/IP” driver available.

When attempting to use the ControlLogix Ethernet driver directly against the drive IP, Kepware reports: “Node path is invalid”

I understand this may be because the ABB drive exposes EtherNet/IP assemblies/CIP objects rather than symbolic Logix tags.

Could you please advise:

Whether direct communication from Kepware to ABB ACS880 via EtherNet/IP is supported in this setup

Whether a different Kepware driver/license is required

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

1 reply

pshashipreetham
18-Opal
pshashipreetham18-Opal
18-Opal
May 19, 2026

What you are seeing is expected behavior.

 

The ABB ACS880 with FENA-11/FENA-21 exposes data mainly as CIP Assembly Objects, not as Logix symbolic tags.

The Kepware ControlLogix Ethernet driver expects a Rockwell Logix controller with symbolic tag browsing, which is why the direct connection to the drive returns:

“Node path is invalid”

 

So in this setup, Kepware cannot communicate to the ABB drive the same way it communicates to a PLC.

The important point is:

  • The PLC works because it is configured as a Generic Ethernet Module using Assembly instances
  • Kepware’s Allen-Bradley drivers are not generic EtherNet/IP scanner drivers for arbitrary CIP assemblies
  • Kepware does not currently provide a dedicated generic EtherNet/IP adapter/scanner driver for devices like ABB ACS880 drives

So practically, there are 2 supported approaches:

  1. Keep the PLC as the intermediary
    Read the ABB drive data into the ControlLogix PLC first, then expose those PLC tags to Kepware.
    This is the most stable and common architecture.
  2. Use another OPC server/gateway that supports generic CIP Assembly access
    Some third-party OPC products support direct EtherNet/IP implicit/explicit messaging to assemblies.

With Kepware alone, direct browsing of ABB assembly data through the ControlLogix Ethernet driver is generally not supported.

Also, the assembly details you listed:

  • Input Assembly: 152
  • Output Assembly: 102
  • INT array size: 13

are valid for PLC Generic Module configuration, but Kepware cannot consume those assemblies directly through the AB driver stack.

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