Looking for advice on alternate modbus master

Hello,
My company sells a product that includes a Siemens S7 300 PLC with CP341 modbus module and Siemens modbus master driver. I recently discovered runmode.com's xCP Modbus master.

If runmode's modbus master is a good alternative to Siemens, then switching to them could save us a lot of money by permitting the cheaper CP340 module and cutting out the expensive Siemens modbus license cost.

Does anybody have experience with runmode's product? I'm very curious to try it out, but I would love to get some feedback first from folks who have used it.

http://www.runmode.com/xcp_modbus.html

Thanks!

Hi,

I work for HMS so I am bias, but I would really recomend the Anybus Communicator for Profibus gateway. The gateway acts as a Profibus slave and Modbus RTU master. It is simple to configure and has some nice features. For more info:
http://www.anybus.com/support/support.asp?PID=104&ProductType=Anybus Communicator

or send me an email
[email protected]

BR
Patrick L

Red Lion's Data Station Plus can act as a Modbus master and do things like read from slave A then write to slave B.

It isn't clear if you give up Modbus master capability on the S7 whether you retain Modbus slave capability, so the S7 could still provide and get access to remote data as a Modbus slave.

Get in touch with JesperMP - he found me a very inexpensive solution - no drfiver required etc - already built in. do n ot normally use Siemens and cannot remember the part numbers. The Siemens reps here in Ozz had not even thought of the inexpensive solution.
You could aso do a search on this site as it is here somewhere.

The Et200S communication module supports modbus without any additional license. It costs about Euro 300 (List price). Part no.

6ES7138-4DF11-0AB0 SIMATIC DP, ELECTRONIC MODULE FOR ET 200S, 1 SI SERIAL INTERFACE ONE CHANNEL, 15MM WIDE RS232/422, 485 MODBUS/USS

You will need to design your system with Et200s modules though and it is very cost effective...

Thank you

It looks like my question leads me to even more questions, instead of the nice simple answer wrapped up with a pink ribbon like I was hoping for!

Oh well, that's life. I appreciate the replies, and any future ones too, should they appear. Looks like I have more research to do.

xCP details

I decided to develop the xCP drivers because I was ashamed of the price of the Siemens CP341 and related dongle I had to charge to my customers.

ET200S serial module is a valid alternative if your PLC configuration does already include a Profibus master (built-in DP port or separated DP processor) and an ET200S IM151 interface.

One peculiar detail: using xCP blocks your PLC could even switch from Master to Slave (and vice-versa) using a single CP340. I do not know any other device that can do it on-the-fly.

Feel free to contact us at runmode for further info.