The following steps will give you a virtual Modbus PLC that you can use for testing purposes. It does not generate simulated data on its own – what it does do is allow you to use real I/O addresses in your tags.  For every input, you will need to provide a tag that writes an output value to the same address – thus providing a very basic simulator.

 

1.   From the Tag Browser, add a new Modicon driver.

2.   Set the name to “FakeModbus”, the area to System and the description to “Fake Modicon Driver”.

 

 

3.   On the Options tab, select Open Modbus TCP for the Comm Channel.

4.   On the Serial tab, add a new TCP/IP port.  No connection information need be provided.

5.   On the Virtual IO tab, set the address for the Holding Coils to 9999 and the address for the Holding Registers to 9999.

6.   Click on OK

 

You can now test your virtual driver as by adding an Analog Input and an Analog Output, as follows:

 

1.   From the tag browser, add a new analog input, named AnInput_1.

2.   On its IO tab, select the FakeModicon tag as the driver.

3.   Set the input address to be 40001.

4.   Set the un-scaled process data max value to be 100.

5.   Click OK, and then draw the tag as a gauge.

6.   From the tag browser, add a new analog output, named AnOutput_1.

7.   On its IO tab, select the FakeModicon tag as the driver.

8.   Set the output address to be 40001.

9.   Set the un-scaled process data max value to be 100.

10. Click OK, and then draw the tag as a vertical slider.

 

11. Put the application into run mode by closing the tag browser.

12. Adjust the slider. The gauge should follow the slider’s value.