Communication between Controllogix and Telemecanique PLC

I'm working on a project where there are three generators that are used to bring power to a facility in case of emergencies. There operation is control by what they call "Parrallelel" who runs on a "Telemecanique PLC".

This facility has a "Factory Talk View Studio Edition" project that is use to monitor the entire operation. One of the pieces of this project involves having to display several status information regarding the generator like,

Lube Oil Pressure
Coolant Level
Run Status
etc.

The communication between the "Telemecanique PLC" use on the Parrallelel and our "Controllogix PLC" is done via ModBus TCP/IP.

The question is, what it will take to get such information pass from the Telemecanique PLC to the Controllogix PLC. The company that manages the generators don't want us to touch there system.

Do you guys think that they are already broadcasting that information out for other systems to receive it or do we need to ask them to make changes to their system to start sending the information.

Jose

JoseM said:

The communication between the "Telemecanique PLC" use on the Parrallelel and our "Controllogix PLC" is done via ModBus TCP/IP.

The question is, what it will take to get such information pass from the Telemecanique PLC to the Controllogix PLC. The company that manages the generators don't want us to touch there system.

Click to expand...

You are already using ModbusTCP to communicate between the two. Therefore, it won't take anything to get them to communicate.

ModbusTCP (or anything that uses TCP) is unicast, so is, by definition, not broadcast.

I'm new to this project, just trying to understand what are they doing. The proper communication modules for ModBus TCP communication between the Telemecanique PLC and a Controllogix remote I/O rack we have nearby are already install. But as far as I can tell, we have not established communication with the "Telemecanique PLC" yet.

Lets say we get them communicating, how can i know where the information I need in my system is located.

The generator control guys are going to have to tell you which Modbus addresses represent what data from their generators.

Most Modbus RTU or Modbus TCP implementations use only a handful of the available data types; by far the most common thing is to implement the Holding Registers feature.

In Modicon PLCs, Holding Registers are prefaced with the digit "4", so the first Holding Register is often named "40001". There's plenty of well-earned confusion about the first register: in a Modicon PLC the first register is "1", but in the Modbus protocol that register has an offset value of "0".

What kind of hardware are you using to communicate between the ControlLogix and the Telemechanique system ? The Prosoft MVI56-MNET is probably the most common and reliable module for this, but there are dozens of other options.

Edit: I see from another one of your threads that there may be a Prosoft MVI56-MCMR module involved. Are these the same applications ?

I am currently in the process of commissioning a system that uses TSX Premium processors that communicate to a Prosoft MVI card mounted into a Compact logix rack that then accesses the Factory talk SE HMI. Round about way to do things but it is working fine here.

Ken,

The module you just mention, the MVI56-MNET is what we are using for communication between the two PLC via ModBus TCP.

I need to find out if those register addresses where already given to us by the "Generator" systems integrator, if not we will ask for them.

To answer your question Ken, it is the same project but not the same application where we are using the MVI56-MCMR. For some reason in some areas the client wants us to us Modbus RTU communication and in others ModBus TCP communication.

For example, they have several "Sub-Stations" that are being monitor via ModBus RTU using the MVI56-MCMR modules. But in this application with the emergency generators they are using the MVI56-MNET to communicate with the Telemecanique PLC.