Looking for a Profibus Simulator

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Thread Starter

P Allen

I'm currently working on a machine vision project where the camera will be accepting and returning values to a PLC using Profibus.

I'm still new to Profibus, so I'm looking for a way to simulate the signals. I would prefer a demo or "free" version if available.
 
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Alfredo Quintero

I do not think you will find this kind of tools free of charge. Specialized hardware as well as software is needed to do Profibus input simulation.

http://www.mysst.com/pub/drivers/pfb/715-0057_SST-PBMS-PCI User Manual 01_0.pdf

The product above is a PCI multi-slave Profibus card. On top of the hardware it has Windows driver, configuration tool, API and sample applications, so you can quicky write Profibus inputs to your Profibus master. The same Woodhead Software Electronics has a software called PCIS Pro (Programmable Industrial Control Simulation) and a driver for this card, which makes the simulation even easier, with graphic interface and ladder-like dynamic simulation. It does not come cheap, but the engineering time it can save can be significant. I once configured the IO for a Mitsubishi Profibus master, with thousands of discrete inputs in a matter of hours, and the customer had his simulation up and running in a matter of days.

mailto:[email protected]
 
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There is ONE other Profibus simulator I have com across, but have been unable to find out much about it. It is the SIMBApro-PCI by SIEMENS. It looks like a very good card, and has been around for a long time (it was the only PCI simulator you could find until SST finally came out of the stone ages a year or so ago)

None of this is for the faint of heart. SST trys to make it sound like simulation of an entire Profibus network is really easy with their card. It should be but it isn't. To make it worse, their documentation only covers a simple setup, then leaves you hanging if it doesn't work right the first time. Then trying to get help from them is next to impossible. I've had almost none of my emails answered and they have never returned a phone call. It is so bad that I am currently looking into the SIEMENS card as a replacement. Unfortunately most if the SIEMENS support and documentation is not in english, so we are in a little bit of a quandry at the moment.
 
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