PLC connect


This project hopes to be able to provide interchangeable PLC interface drivers to projects such as;


For general information, the following PLC types have drivers, but not on this site.


This project is still very much in the planing stages, with a final target of two interchangeable interfaces.

The first type of interface will be a "Thin client", which will connect to a serial port on the same machine as the user program, run in it's own thread and have minimal overheads.

The second interface will be a "NET client", which will use a "PLC server" to connect to other PLC's and / or user programs on any machine that have network access to each other.

All the PLC's in this diagram could be on the same "effective PLC network", along with PLC emulators and data loggers or SCADA software.
The Client is a common object that can be added into any user code to provide network connectivity. It would contain two or more sub objects containing the same functionality. Using a connection-less message pipe and a stream-socket message pipe. All that would be necessary to change pipe types is to make a pipe object of the right type. All internal functions would have the same name regardless of the driver type.
UML diagram


The Server does not need to be on the same computer. It would accept connections from the clients and echo any messages to all (default) other clients. A samba style interface which presents a web page would allow the server to be configured from anywhere. The configuration would consist of telling the server which clients to echo to which other clients. It may also, ( needs discussion ) configure the serial ports of clients. Needs discussion, to implement a different server for a different type, or to have different server types, or an switch in the code to give the option at compile time.
The Serial interface, which is in the same program as a client, does not attempt to change any data, but only acts as a pipe. The speed, parity etc can be configured by an attachment to another client. Ie, A PLC programming or SCADA user program could change the serial port settings. Any user program which used a client such as emulators or PERL modules would be able to use a library to suit the PLC or other device at another node of the server. The client and server could be built in both C++ and Java, and there could be different versions for different operating systems, but able to work together. In the case of ADEFU, a single program could sniff for a server, start a new server if one does not exist, start a new client/serial port program for the interface and then run the user interface. This may seem a bit complex at first, but hopefully people can see the advantages in a modular system. I have no code to offer at this point, and it looks like this will end up an unfinished project. If people could design their code so that it is able to be modified to suit this concept, it would be nice.

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Feel free to e-mail Andrew Laughton if you have any ideas on how to make this project better.
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