Control.com - Nerds in Control

The MBLogic Free/Open Source software project has a new release. The package which has been known as MBServer now has soft logic incorporated into it, and as a result is now known as MBLogic. This has been the goal of the project from the beginning. This is Free Software released under a GPL license. You can use it free of charge, modify it, re-distribute it, etc. The user visible parts of the software have been designed to make it fairly simple to strip out the "MBLogic" branding, so if anyone wants to redistribute this under another brand name, that should be pretty straight forward.

MBLogic has the following features:
A) Soft logic (PLC) programmability.
B) Networking to field I/O through Modbus/TCP client and server.
C) Web based graphical HMI.
D) On line (web based) help (more than 40,000 words). This has been completely revised since the previous (MBServer) release.
E) On line (web based) status monitoring. This has been completely revised since the previous (MBServer) release.

I am looking for people to use it and would appreciate feedback.

The MBLogic_2009-02-22 package is available at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mblogic/

There are two versions of this package. The "tar.gz" package is for Linux, and the "zip" package is for MS Windows. Both are identical, except the MS Windows version has had the files modified to use the non-standard MS-Windows newline (CR-LF) characters in the text files (for easy editing). The "tar.gz" package will probably also work on OS/X, but I don't have a Mac to test it on, so I can't say for sure.

Installation instructions are in a PDF file located in each package.

The project web site has not been updated yet (coming soon), but the packages are on-line, as well as new screen shots.

The web based HMI has been tested with the following web browsers:
Firefox (Linux and MS-Windows). Opera (Linux and MS-Windows). Epiphany (Linux). Google Chrome (MS-Windows). Apple Safari (MS-Windows). The HMI does *not* work with MS Internet Explorer, as that browser is based on outdated technologies and does not have the features needed for a graphical display. The help and status web pages however *do* work in MS IE (tested with version 8). The help and status web pages of course work with all the other browsers as well.

The new soft logic feature is based on the MBLogicEngineCk libraries which were previously released as a stand alone library. The instruction set and addressing are fully documented in the on-line help. At present, programming is IL only (ladder support is in the planning stages).

The system ships with a demo program which will run on start up. The soft logic program now controls the HMI "tank" demo screen which was used in the previous MBServer release. If you modify the sample soft logic program, the changes will be reflected in the HMI behaviour. The soft logic and HMI can be changed while the system is running via the status web management interface (effectively, "on line programming").

I would appreciate it if people would download this and give me feedback.

Can the MBLogic software be adapted to also work with I2C (I²C) and X10? I would use it then to replace the software I use today in my home automation system.

If not, could you please point me to some cheap ModBus I/O systems ? I need about 64 digital outputs and 16 analog inputs.

I haven't implemented any drivers for I2C or X10, as I don't have any suitable hardware to test with. For inexpensive Modbus/TCP hardware, I would suggest looking at Advantech. I'm assuming you want the I/O as distributed blocks, in which case the ADAM 6000 series is probably the most suitable.

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking maybe I can use a ModBus to I2C converter. Googling for such a thing I got the idea to maybe program a micro-controller to do this. There are some with I2C already on board. Don't know if somebody already did.

Try EZAutomation for low cost Modbus I/O.  

Bill Sturm

Thanks for the pointers. EZAutomation does provide good prized and flexible I/O (ModBus RTU; ModBus TCP). I also looked at Advantech and the I/O looks good but is more expensive.

I did come across CUBLOC though. It is basically a PLC on a chip with some major amount of I/O on board but it also supports ModBus (both as master and as slave) and ... I²C. And one can put lots of intelligence in the modules. There are full blown PLC's that support ladder logic and BASIC. For under 200$ I can keep my existing I²C I/O, program X10 I/O and use MBLogic to do higher level stuff and provide the HMI. Right?

Don't forget with the EZAutomation I/O that you also have to include a base. The base contains all the communications and other hardware and costs quite a bit more than the front end I/O block.

Automation Direct also has some low cost industrial I/O modules which are comparable to what EZAutomation has, except in a more traditional hardware layout.

As for the CUBLOC, you also need a base, or at least some signal conditioning. That adds to the cost as well. If you are interested in the CUBLOC, you might also look at what Parallax has.

If you're really into hardware hacking, have a look at the Arduino. There are lots of hobbyists doing strange things with these, and its users are probably the best source of hardware hacking information.

http://www.arduino.cc/

I've seen lots of information on one-off projects that people have built to interface their computer to an X10 system, but none of them appeared to be a general purpose solution.

I haven't seen any off the shelf Modbus to I2C or X10 gateways, but perhaps I just haven't looked in the right places for them.