Description

The Modbus Master driver allows the simulator to communicate with one or many types of equipment configured with a Modbus slave interface. The simulator connects with the slave and sends commands to read/write data points. The Modbus Master interface can operate over TCP/IP using an Ethernet physical link or over a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) using a serial link. It is the user's responsibility to select the communication protocol that matches the slave equipment configuration.

Standard coils and register operations are supported. It is also possible to connect multiple slaves using the same physical port.

See additional details in the Configuration and Connections sections.

Supported Features

The following is a list of the features supported by the driver:

• Standard operations:

  • Read coils (0x01)

  • Read discrete inputs (0x02)

  • Read holding registers (0x03)

  • Read input registers (0x04)

  • Write a single coil (0x05)

  • Write a single register (0x06)

  • Write multiple coils (0x0F)

  • Write multiple registers (0x10)

• TCP and RTU modes.

• Allows connection with multiple slaves.

• Configurable TCP port when operating over TCP mode.

• Configurable serial port parameters when operating over RTU mode.

• Supports reconnection with slave device(s) if a connection is lost.

Configuration

The driver is entirely configurable via the RT-LAB interface. Users can add, delete and duplicate Modbus slave devices and the operations that the simulator (operating as Modbus Master) performs on each of them.

General Configuration

The first parameters to be configured are found below:

• Use an RT core for asynchronous computation: If enabled, the driver reserves a real-time CPU core for its communication system and is able to handle a bigger amount of data. Otherwise, the communication system defaults to core 0.

• Verbose: If enabled, additional information is displayed during the loading of the model.

• Enable virtual mode: In virtual mode, the model can be executed even if this I/O interface is not compatible with the hardware configuration of the system. The connections between the model and the I/O interface will be done during the initialization, but the I/O interface will not do anything.
  The virtual mode can be used to troubleshoot problems on a system without having the required hardware, or to prepare a model with different I/O interfaces even if the final hardware platform is not available.

Slave(s) Configuration

By default, the driver is configured with one master that can connect to the Modbus TCP slave of the example project.

Adding a connection to another Modbus slave is done through the RT-LAB interface.

Each master device has multiple parameters:

• Mode: Select "TCP" or "RTU" depending on how the Modbus slave device is configured to communicate.

• Modbus slave ID: ID of the Modbus slave device. Many slaves can be connected to the same physical link. Each Modbus slave must be configured with a unique identification number.

• TCP specific parameters:

• RTU specific parameters:

• Cycle rate (ms): Defines the rate, in milliseconds, at which the Modbus master performs all the configured read and write operations.

• Byte ordering: Defines how 32 bits data is encoded. For FLOAT32, the ABCD byte order refers to the IEEE 754 standard. Any of the byte ordering cases are possible (ABCD, BADC, CDAB, DCBA).

Operations

For each configured Modbus slave instance, read and write operations must be configured. All the configured operations will be executed in a loop.

Each operation requires the following parameters to be configured:

Connections

Once the driver has been configured as desired, the user needs to connect points in the model to points in the driver by using the Dashboards interface. The Dashboards interface will show all the connectable points (from both, the driver and the model), once the model has been compiled. It is also possible to make connections to Dashboards panels.

The example model provided with RT-LAB is already packaged with connections between the driver and the model. It can be used as an example to understand how the connections between the model and the driver should be done.

The connection points are classified in the following categories:

• Coils

• Discrete Inputs

• Registers

• Holding Registers

• Input Registers

Under each category, the configured operations will show-up with the names that have been given by the user, in the driver configuration GUI. If the icon is blue, it is a read operation. The signal will be read from the slave and returned to the simulation. It means this signal needs to be connected to an OpInput block of the Simulink model.

If the icon is red, it is a write operation. The signal will be written to the slave. It means this signal needs to be connected to an Output block of the Simulink model.

An additional 'Connected' connection point is available and can be used in the model to indicate if the Modbus slave is connected or not.

If an operation is configured to read/write more than one item, a vectorized connection will be available.

If 'Triggered Operation' is enabled for a given operation, a connection will be available to allow the user to control the time and frequency where the read/write operation will be executed. The user will be required to connect an OpOutput block and manage the trigger. A transition from 0 to 1 on the triggered port will execute the configured operation. However, it will not be executed if there is no other transition from 0 to 1 on the connected triggered port.

Limitations

The following is a list of the limitations of the driver:

• Modbus ASCII is not supported.

• An OP3310 RS-232/422/485 PCIe serial card is needed in case it is required to communicate with multiple slaves on the same physical bus in RTU mode.