Control.com - Nerds in Control

Hi,

The project I'm working on is going to need a lot of simulation before it hits site.

The project is to build a new FL SCADA which will communicate with about 30 existing PLCs.

(The simulation needs only to present a couple of datablocks per PLC to the SCADA. There is no need to simulate the 1000s of I/O.)

The problem is that to simulate 30 PLCs would appear to need 30 PCs. I want to do it with a lot less than this!

The PLCs are Siemens S5 on an H1 network.

How can I make a single PC simulate multiple H1 PLC nodes?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions of what driver to run on the SCADA, so that I can use the standard NIC, not a special Siemens CP card?

Thanks in advance.

Buzby

Hi Buzby,

Your 1er question: How can I make a single PC simulate multiple H1 PLC nodes?

My anwser: so far and what I know about it is that there is no way to do it unfortunately! The 1st guy able to create this kind a app will get rich very soon. Some people use VMware software to create several Windows sessions on the same PC and install the PLC simulator in each session to have several PLCs on the same PC but, this exercise takes a lot of time of configurations and tests and hardware resources.

Your 2nd question: does anyone have any suggestions of what driver to run on the SCADA, so that I can use the standard NIC, not a special Siemens CP card?

My answer: the Monitor Pro/FactoryLink drivers for H1 are able to use standard NICs (try to buy/use one which you can modify/clone its MAC address). I have used the "Siemens Sinec H1" driver along with a Siemens CP1430 without problems and with a standard NIC.

I guess "SINEC H1 RAPD" driver can work with this without problem as well.

Best regards.

Saludos.

Gustavo A. Valero P.
BIConsulting C.A.
Valencia - Venezuela
gustavo.valero @ biconsulting. com

Hi Buzby,

I'm looking at a similar application, and wondering if you had any success in your application.

I've noticed a couple of soft PLCs (http://www.alpha-bit.de, http://www.softwaretoolbox.com) and a few bus interfaces, which could bypass PLCs altogether, but still test HMI (Traeger).

How did you manage to bypass the real I/O with whatever you used to emulate the PLC?

Thanks,
FB

Hi FloatinBoatin,

I never did simulate multiple H1 comms with a single computer.

It was not for lack of trying !.

However, I was in contact with a company who were developing an application to do this, but it wasn't ready in time for our needs.

http://www.i3s.co.uk/

Hope it's not too late for you,

Cheers,
Jeff