RSEmulate 5000 - Physical I/O Testing

Dear PLC users

My Situation...

I have a remote I/O panel in my office and i need to check for its I/O and relay working, i.e. the I/O's work as per the schedule initially written down

i do not have the 1756 L73 controller which was suppose to be in the panel.

I was wondering if the panel (Just the I/O's and respective relays) could be monitored using RsLogix Emulate 5000

I was looking to make a test program that essentially just switches outputs on and off, just to check whether its working or not

please guide me in this case as to whether this is possible with RsLogix Emulate 5000 in any way?

I am not in favor of using the actualy controller because its working on site and obviously i cant strip it off and bring to the office as it would cause a menace at the site.

Please advise

Looking forward to a quick response

Thanks

Have you tried asking your RA rep for a "loan" processor ?

Could probably use Softlogix to do what you want, not Emulate. I have never done this but seems reasonable. Softlogix may or may not be supported based on the firmware want to use.

Sounds like SoftLogix5800 is what you are after.

Paully's5.0 said:

Could probably use Softlogix to do what you want, not Emulate. I have never done this but seems reasonable. Softlogix may or may not be supported based on the firmware want to use.

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Archie said:

Sounds like SoftLogix5800 is what you are after.

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Assuming he has a spare ethernet comms module lying around to get comms to the chassis from the PC.

Simplest answer is to bang a real processor into any spare slot - and if all he wants to do is verify I/O it most likely wouldn't need to be an L73.

I once tried to use Emulate (which incidentally is a chopped up, cut down, and squeezed version of SoftLogix), only to discover some subtle, but huge differences in the way some instructions are executed, making our standard code non-interchangeable between Emulate/SoftLogix and a real hardware controller.

I wasted about 3 days trying to get Emulate to work with our standards, and probably about half of that time was on the phone to tech support. If anyone wants the details - just ask..

Emulate - No, you cannot communicate with real I/O
SoftLogix - Yes via Ethernet. The chassis would require an EtherNEt/IP module
Real CPU - Yes.

As mentioned, SoftLogix currently only goes up to rev 23.

OG

daba said:

A
I wasted about 3 days trying to get Emulate to work with our standards, and probably about half of that time was on the phone to tech support. If anyone wants the details - just ask..

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I've used Softlogix for software development & teating successfully on pretty large systems. Talking 12-15 months of software development with 4 controllers for a full processing plant and 4-6 team members at any given time. Purchasing physical controllers you would use for the project wipes the warranty period and investing in multiple controllers for "office" development use carries some high costs. We also had remote team members so a central development setup was required so we invested into an office ESXi server loaded with multiple server/desktop VMs to host the Softlogix controllers and all the other servers needed for the project (SQL, System Platform, SCADA clients and PLC development clients). Had 20 VMs on there total. Complete overkill but some people were very needy.

Overall I was really happy with it, had some issues optimizing the 4 controllers in the SoftLogix chassis and every 4-6 weeks or we would get faults which was probably attributed to load placed on them during simultaneous team member development/testing. I would recommend it. But if there is something very specific and taxing, well YMMV.

Just to be clear, the I/O modules i am trying to interface are Flex I/O modules, they are not your standard CLX 1756. So no chassis and no option to plug in a processor, i have just got these modules on a din rail

Judging by the generously helpful replies i will give it a try with softlogix

can anyone give me a brief sequence to put the panel to test using softlogix

Trox said:

Just to be clear, the I/O modules i am trying to interface are Flex I/O modules, they are not your standard CLX 1756. So no chassis and no option to plug in a processor, i have just got these modules on a din rail

Judging by the generously helpful replies i will give it a try with softlogix

can anyone give me a brief sequence to put the panel to test using softlogix

Click to expand...

I don't think you'll have any issues, you put the project together just as you would a hardware project, and build the I/O configuration tree in just the same way.

Not sure if it's changed, but it used to automatically put, or require, your Enet comms "module" in slot 0 of your softlogix "Virtual Backplane". It won't hurt to go along with that, as you are only going to be using it to test your flex I/O. I discovered it "could" be moved to another slot, but I seem to recall it wasn't so easy to do.

When trying to "download" to your SoftLogix "controller", you'll need to add the AB-VBP-x Virtual BackPlane driver to RSLinx.

Remember also, unless you already have it, you will need to buy a softlogix controller....

Trox - Check your Private Messages