TC3 Beckoff RFID

Hi everyone,

I am a begginer with PLCs and everything that comes with them. Well my task is to somehow connect an RFID reader with PLC Beckoff running TwinCAD3 (possibly with Visual Studio). Algorithm should be able to do tasks based on a signal, thats sent by RFID reader.

On Beckoff site i can see, that only a few RFID readers (very expensive) are compatible with TC3. The desire is to connect a cheap RFID reader directly with Beckoff PLC. Has anyone done this or is there any bypass with a cheaper RFID reader.

If this is not an option, the second option would be connecting RFID reader to microcontroler and then a microcontroller will be somehow connected with PLC. Do i need another module for this or can microcontroller be connected via Ethernet or USB?

Thank you all for solutions and knowledge provided.

Denis 9194

Noone has any suggestion?

You really do not have to use the TwinCAT RFID library with one of the recommended RFID readers. You can probably find an inexpensive reader that communicates via serial link and use the standard serial comm library in TwinCAT to read and write the data. It will probably be a bit more work as you would have to figure out the reader communications protocol.

Same applies to readers that communicate via Ethernet link using some kind of custom protocol. I personally would look for a reader that supports one of the popular fieldbuses (EtherCAT, Profinet, Ethernet/IP, Modbus/TCP) but I guess those would be more expensive models you want to avoid.