I know of two, DeviceNet Detective and Net Meter but have no idea which is the better. Anybody have or has used one before? Please help.
TIA & Seasons Greetings all
I've used both DN Detective and the NetAlert NetMeter.
The Netmeter is way better. It's cheaper, easier to use, and has many more features. The biggest, is that the detective only measures 76
parameters, whereas the NetAlert NetMeter measures all 677 key parameters. Also, if you're running at 500Kbaud, the detective doesn't work
properly. The NetAlert meter has per-node measurements, and oodles more.
Jst my opinion, but I'd definately get the NetAlert NetMeter.
I've used both Synergetic's DeviceNet Detective and SST's NetMeter products, and I'd have to say I prefer the Netmeter because it's the best complement to my own DNet protocol analyzer software. The Detective does much of what I use
my protocol analyzer for, tracking traffic and product names. Detective also wins for ease-of-use; somebody swiped the Netmeter manual and new users were at an absolute loss to figure out anything but bus voltage.
I would say that Detective is more powerful than NetMeter any day. Where your 76 versus 667 parameters number came from I dunno; unless you count the traffic (represented as packets/sec and as a bandwidth %) for each node (x63) as 126 parameters ! Detective has a big screen for a reason; it has built-in documentation and a lot of details it can give on traffic and individual nodes.
Detective does more analysis on the packet, showing you the message types that are coming and going from each node, and as I recall it even tells you the name of the nodes. I think all Netmeter does is read the CAN header and checksum.
The #1 knock I had against Detective was that I was unable to figure out how to make it Autobaud; I crashed MCC networks several times before choosing to read their rate from an A-B DeviceView before connecting the Detective. In my experience the Netmeter has a flawless Autobaud function.
Detective has a terrific event detector function, which would tell you the time since a network disruption. Very handy for those "it failed in the middle of the night" investigations.
For the price and size and because it complements what I can do with higher-level software, the NetMeter is what goes in my toolbox.
