Horner XL4 Modbus RTU Instructions

We will now communicate Modbus Serial RS485 from the Horner Master controller to the Solo process temperature controller. The Horner APG XL4 all in one controller has several different ports for communications. We have both serial and Ethernet-type ports that can be used for many different protocols. These protocols can be downloaded from the Horner … Read more

The 7 Essential Parts of a PLC System

We will now look at the parts of a PLC system. When I was in school PLCs were just in their infancy. We were taught that the PLC consisted of the central processing unit (CPU), analog and digital inputs, and outputs. Everything was programmed with dedicated handheld devices and/or software devices on specialized hardware. We … Read more

Horner XL4 Establishing Communication

We program the Horner XL4 OCS all-in-one controller by using Cscape. We will now use our Cscape software to establish communication. Last time we customized Cscape with icons to make it easier to find, communicate and control the unit. There are two different ways to communicate to the XL4 OCS controller, Ethernet and Serial. There … Read more

Click PLC AdvancedHMI Communication

We will now look at the click plc advancedhmi Modbus serial communication. Advanced HMI is a powerful, adaptable HMI/SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) development package that takes advantage of Visual Studio. There is no coding required and you can simply drag and drop items onto the page. The best thing is that the software … Read more

Click PLC Send and Receive Instructions

Receive and Send instructions will allow you to send and receive serial data to an external device. The communication method that you setup can be ASCII or Modbus. ASCII (American Standard Communication for Information Interchange) can be used to send to devices such as a printer. Receiving ASCII can be used for connecting barcode scanners … Read more

Click PLC Establish Communication

So far in this series, we have discussed the Click PLC System Hardware (Video) and Installed the Software (Video). Today we will be establishing PC to PLC communications. This will allow us to program, edit or alter the way in which our Click PLC will function. 

What Everybody Ought to Know About IP Addressing

We will be looking at and explaining IP Addressing, MAC Addressing (Physical Address), Subnets, and Subnet Masks. Communication using Ethernet usually revolves around the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model). This model was made for computing systems to communicate without regard for the underlying internal structure and technology. IP Addressing Analogy Think of it like … Read more

Deploying an AdvancedHMI Project – Installation

Deploying an AdvancedHMI project on the industrial floor sounds like an easy task, but there are a few things that you should consider. The HMI (Human Machine Interface) user interface will run on a computer. The industrial environment is one in which temperature, dust, electrical noise, etc. are always present. This can also be combined … Read more

Modbus TCP Data Logging to Database

Using Visual Basic 2015 we will log three holding registers from the PLC along with time and date into a Microsoft Access Database. We will log every minute into the database with the information that we collect from the PLC via Modbus TCP (Ethernet). All code will be done and shown so you can implement this in … Read more

AdvancedHMI to Solo Temperature Controller

Modbus RTU will be the serial (RS485) method in which we will communicate between the AdvancedHMI Screen and the Automation Direct Solo Process Temperature Controller. We can address up to 247 (Solo 1 to 247) devices on this master-slave protocol. A maximum of 32 devices (Nodes) on the network can communicate to the master. A … Read more