Crimson 3.0 Emulator communication setup

Hi,

I am trying to setup communication between two Crimson 3.0 emulator on the network through Ethernet. I read it somewhere that the emulator works just as the real G3 Redlion device, so I thought it is great if I can communicate between the emulator and make a simple HMI where I can change a tag value in the other emulator window.


I have been able to set the emulator with a specific IP address in the network, but the problem I am facing now is how to link the tag in other emulator to the tag within my emulator?

I am new with PLC and HMI programming and don't really have the idea of setting the system. Reading the Crimson 3.0 tutorial doesn't really help.

Any help would be appreciated.


Regards,
L

Short of buying this:

EDIT: Link was okay:

http://www.redlion.net/Support/Downloads/SoftwareLibrary/OPCWorx.html

, you'd have to have a server and buy OPC Worx I think OPC Clients can't talk to each without a server on the network.

http://www.redlion.net/G3features/G3 Feature - OPClink.html

I think what you want to do will only be achievable if there are PLC tags they can exchange...the PLC tags may be in an emulated PLC they can both access and it should work, although I confess I have not tried this.

Thanks for your reply, OkiePC. I'll try that. I have just tried to connect the Emulator to a PLC and it worked, just need to figure out how to manage the HMI now.

As an alternative to OPC, you could use Modbus messaging between them as well. Setup one as a client, and one as a server. Assuming all the drivers work in the emulator... which wasn't the case in Crimson 2 but any driver I have tried with Crimson 3 works, so it's a good shot. Actually any pair of client/server or master/slave drivers should work. The Allen Bradley DF1 Master/Slave pair should work too, if you are more familiar with that type of protocol.

I seem to recall years ago I had G3-G3 comms with OPC without an OPC server on a PC, but forget specifically. There is a network driver called OPC Master, but when I went to redlion.net, that driver was not listed for a description. Also in Crimson there is an OPC setting under Services... Maybe enable the OPC Master driver that allows you to select a .cd3 config file and then in the slave or server enable the OPC setting under services? This could give you tagname based access, so no mapping to Modbus addresses.

Here are the Modbus drivers you could try. One would be the TCP/IP Master, the other TCP/IP Slave:

I have just tried the modbus protocol, but I only manage to create one slave and one master with different IP addresses, but I still can't find a way to link an internal tag in the master with the tag in the slave.

Do you know how to do that?

Thanks

Here are two samples: the Master file can read/write the register from the Slave file. I ran on two separate laptops, and it tested working, on a local lan (i.e. connected by a switch). Have a look around - if anything is unclear, feel free to ask.

The first one is Master/Slave for Modbus, the second zip is again Master/Slave but with transfer of variables via OPC (and Modbus as well, at the same time). The OPC mechanism is nice, but be sure you navigate properly to the correct slave file. No lookup table for Modbus addresses required! No off-by-one madness! The joy of direct tagname addressing...