Is it possible to communicate the PLC (AB, Siemens, etc), to the software developed under Linux O/S? Is there any product available in the market?

 

For Siemens:
http://libnodave.sourceforge.net

For AB:
Google for ABEL or CELL, both from Ron Gage. I do not have the URLs at hand.

 

Yes.

There are various projects for communicating with various PLCs (for instance, ABEL for communicating with AB PLCs over Ethernet). This depends on the PLC brand and model - some are easier to communicate with than others, some are
not possible at all.

Some (but not all) are collected under the MatPLC, which has the advantage of presenting a unified interface to all the supported PLCs (and local I/O) as well as various other building blocks such as PID loops, programming in two of the IEC 1131 languages (IL and ST), simple HMI toolkit, and so on.

Various other projects concentrate on various particular areas (eg robot control, CNC).

However: you would be an "early adopter" - some amount of debugging and tuning would probably be needed before the software is useful to you. Depending on your situation, that may or may not be acceptable to you.

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools

 

Yes, and I'm sure you'll hear from most of them.

Regards

cww

 

Are you using Ethernet based comms or Serial Comms? The following only relates to Ethernet comms.

It is possible with both PLC's types, the Siemens being more difficult that the AB if you are using Ethernet.

Take a look at the ABEL project at http://www.lns-saginaw.net/abel.php for communicating to the AB using DF1 other Ethernet.

For the Siemens I have only ever used ModbusTCP or my own protocols. ModbusTCP is a doddle to implement in any OS as it is a simple Querry/Response system. If you need something more complicated then you could develop your own protocol using the AG_SEND/AG_RECIEVE function blocks.

Best of luck,

Karl Hunsley
Mission Critical Software Ltd.

 

Yes there is such software available, and at a no-charge trial for one year (on registration).

http://www.automationX.ca

Regards,

Paul Jager