RsLogix5000 Emulator

A quiet time at the office and I decided to install the Emulator program for Logix5000 from our bundle. The blurb on the website suggest this package as a method of testing a project without any hardware. While I can see how code can be checked to a certain extent, there is no way of emulating the existing hardware that has been placed in the original rack. Or am I missing something?

You're right.

If you wish to test your hardware, you'll have to write some simulation code to simulate your hardware.

Like if you're watching for an aux-contact on a motor starter, you just write some code that turns on your aux-input whenever your coil-output is on.

I've done several systems now with the Emulator and it really works nice. There are some things you have to do to make it think the I/O is working, but it is well worth the required effort.

Thanks for the reply, how do you simulate analogue i/o?

You could also use RSTestStand in conjunction with RSEmulate.

pauly said:

Thanks for the reply, how do you simulate analogue i/o?

Click to expand...

Normally, I would write code that would look at the output conditions of the "real" program and generate a response that is similar to what I would expect the field device to do. For example, if a particular drive is enabled and it's speed reference analog output is set to 100%, I would increment a value which represents it's speed feedback to the PLC using a timer or something to control the ramp rate.

With PLC5s and SLCs, I use input and output mapping rather than real I/O in the main programs. I put the actual I/O in two ladder files where internal bits are mapped to the inputs and outputs. WHen testing, I disable those ladder files and enable a test file that provides the simulation.

It is also possible to create HMI code to do this for you if you have access to a good PC based HMI program. This can be very useful since you can also create matching graphical representations of the machine. If you will be working on a complex machine for many years, it may be very worthwhile to create an HMI simulator of your machine which can be connected via software to test your PLC code.

You can spend a lot of time creating test code to check all your programs. If you have the time to kill, it might be worthwhile. If you don't have lots of time, you may just wait until commissioning to debug any problems.. Obviously there is a drawback to that method too.