Access AB PLC as Generic Ethernet

Hi,


My company has developed a standard product and I would like to be able to set up a way to provide some data out of that machine for customers to be able to integrate with other equipment. Our machine uses an Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLC as well as a .NET PC Application.



Is there a way to connect to an AB PLC as a generic ethernet device? So for example if the customers system happened to be another AB PLC, you would be able to add our system to its configuration tree as a Generic Ethernet Device?



Or is there a way to make the PC be the Generic Ethernet device that gets added to another machines config?



I don't want to use Produced/Consumed because I want it to be able to work with other brands of devices.


I'd appreciate any thoughts/experiences people may have with this topic or pointers on where to look for information on how to set something like this up!

Well....
Almost everyone speaks some type of modus tcp/ip these days.
You could install the Modbus AOI, configure as a Server. Then, configure Modbus data tables, with the data you want to share. Publish the register information to your clients.

Scrape a built-in webserver on the PLC?

Not sure how you would "integrate" a web server.

Ken Moore said:

Not sure how you would "integrate" a web server.

Click to expand...

I am not sure what OP means by "generic ethernet device."

That sounds a lot like "generic ethernet module" in a CIP context, which I assume would be added to the tags and/or I/O available to the CompactLogix PLC.

However, I think OP is asking how to make the PLC - or the associated PC - be a device that could be queried by some third "other" node, IoT like (the S stands for security). In that case, I think the PLC/PC would be the server responding to requests, and the other node would be the client making requests.

I am pretty sure I have seen some client-server AOIs on the R-A site, but a Web API might be simpler if the data are available (does CompactLogix provide a built-in webserver?), and that was where I was going with it. I.e. telling a customer, who buys this PLC/PC combo standard product, "In order to integrate this with your supervisory/monitoring/datalogging/etc. systems, use this Webapi, which implements an interface as follows ..." It's really no different than the Modbus suggestion; the only reason to choose one over the other is the market for the product: I have done a lot with Webapis before I got interested in PLCs; I don't think I even ever heard of Modbus before that.

If OP is indeed asking about making the PLC be a formal "Generic Ethernet Module" in a CIP context, I suspect that is a horse of a different color entirely.

OP said: "I would like to be able to set up a way to provide some data out of that machine for customers to be able to integrate with other equipment"

That's were I got the integrate from. I'm thinking AB to AB, OR AB to ACME, both work with modbus.

I think the SLC-505 had a customizable (is that a word?) web page, not sure about Compact Logix. Never seen one.

drbitboy said:

If OP is indeed asking about making the PLC be a formal "Generic Ethernet Module" in a CIP context, I suspect that is a horse of a different color entirely.

Click to expand...

This is how I took it.

I believe the OP is asking for a way to add a generic ethernet module and have a piece of software be the device the generic module is connecting to.

I think CodeSys has this ability.

OpENer maybe?
https://github.com/EIPStackGroup/OpENer

I read it the other way around: he wants the CompactLogix to have an Adapter Mode where you can connect to an Assembly Object by Assembly number and size. Like the "Generic Ethernet Module" in the I/O tree in Studio 5000, but in reverse.

That would let any controller that can run an EtherNet/IP generic I/O module to connect to the CompactLogix with fast cyclic data exchange, without supporting the Rockwell-specific Produced/Consumed Tag feature.

I think that would include Omron, Modicon, AD Productivity, and CoDeSys off the top of my head.

Unfortunately... ControlLogix just doesn't have an EtherNet/IP Adapter mode object.

It sounds like what the OP needs to do is set up the PLC2,5 SLC mapping for his CompactLogix.

Then, if the remote PLC is an AB, it can do standard MSG Reads of that data. Other flavors of PLC may be able to access that data, or use a protocol converter (such as a Red Lion DSP) to map the "N7" tags to their 4000x tags (or %M registers, or whatever their using).

The PLC5/SLC mapping is about as "generic" as the CLX/CPX system can get when trying to talk to something else.

Ken Roach said:

I read it the other way around: he wants the CompactLogix to have an Adapter Mode where you can connect to an Assembly Object by Assembly number and size. Like the "Generic Ethernet Module" in the I/O tree in Studio 5000, but in reverse.

That would let any controller that can run an EtherNet/IP generic I/O module to connect to the CompactLogix with fast cyclic data exchange, without supporting the Rockwell-specific Produced/Consumed Tag feature.

I think that would include Omron, Modicon, AD Productivity, and CoDeSys off the top of my head.

Unfortunately... ControlLogix just doesn't have an EtherNet/IP Adapter mode object.

Click to expand...

Thanks Ken, you got it exactly right. The ability to treat the AB PLC like the AB PLC would treat some other device that its connecting to via the generic ethernet module. Sad that AB doesn't support this.

dmroeder said:

This is how I took it.

I believe the OP is asking for a way to add a generic ethernet module and have a piece of software be the device the generic module is connecting to.

I think CodeSys has this ability.

OpENer maybe?
https://github.com/EIPStackGroup/OpENer

Click to expand...

Yup, that is the second option I was thinking about. I'll take a look at OpENer. Thanks!

Ken Moore said:

Well....
Almost everyone speaks some type of modus tcp/ip these days.
You could install the Modbus AOI, configure as a Server. Then, configure Modbus data tables, with the data you want to share. Publish the register information to your clients.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll take a look at the Modbus AOI.