Inovance Modbus TCP

Inovance Modbus TCP is a version of the Modbus protocol based on Ethernet, utilizing TCP/IP for communication.

The Neuron Inovance Modbus TCP plugin is tailored for Inovance PLC tags.

Add Device

Go to Configuration -> South Devices, then click Add Device to add the driver. Configure the following settings in the popup dialog box.

Device Configuration

After clicking Create, you will be redirected to the Device Configuration page, where we will set up the parameters required for Neuron to establish a connection with the device. You can also click the device configuration icon on the southbound device card to enter the Device Configuration interface.

Configure Data Groups and Tags

After the plugin is added and configured, the next step is to establish communication between your device and Neuron by adding groups and tags to the Southbound driver.

Once device configuration is completed, navigate to the South Devices page. Click on the device card or device row to access the Group List page. Here, you can create a new group by clicking on Create, then specifying the group name and data collection interval.

Upon successfully creating a group, click on its name to proceed to the Tag List page. This page allows you to add device tags for data collection. You’ll need to provide information such as the tag address, attributes, and data type.

For information on general configuration items, see Connect to Southbound Devices. The subsequent section will concentrate on configurations specific to the driver.

Data types

• BIT
• INT8
• UINT8
• INT16
• UINT16
• INT32
• UINT32
• INT64
• UINT64
• FLOAT
• DOUBLE
• STRING
• BYTES

Address format

ADDRESS[.BIT][#ENDIAN][.LEN[H][L][D][E]][.BYTES]

TIP

Since communication is done via TCP/IP, the device is searched through the IP address and port number, making it unnecessary to specify the station number in the message. Neuron defaults the station number to 1.

ADDRESS

Required, refers to the register address. HuiChuan PLC supports coil and register access for MODBUS protocol. Different from the standard Modbus protocol, each area’s address range is as follows:

The address areas are divided into two types according to the PLC model.

Small PLCs: EASY series, H5U, etc.

TIP

The X and Y areas’ addresses are represented in octal.

Medium PLCs: AM series, AC series, etc.

TIP

The M,I,Q area supports multiple addressing methods, including (M|I|Q)X, (M|I|Q)B, (M|I|Q)W, (M|I|Q)D, which correspond to addressing by bit, Byte, Word, and Dword, respectively.

When using MX and MB addressing methods, the tags only support read attributes.

.BIT

Optional, specify a specific bit in a register

#ENDIAN

Optional, byte order, applicable to data types int16/uint16/int32/uint32/float, see the table below for details.

TIP

The byte order of a tag has a higher priority than the byte order configuration of a node. That is to say, once the byte order is configured for a tag, it follows the configuration of that tag and ignores the node configuration.

.LEN[H][L]

When the data type is STRING, .LEN is a required field, indicating the number of bytes the string occupies. Each register contains two storage methods: H, L, as shown in the table below.

TIP

Please note, the default byte order for Inovance plugin strings is L.

.BYTES

Optional, read and write the length of bytes type data, applicable to bytes data type.

TIP

A register of the Modbus driver contains 2 bytes. When reading and writing Modbus register data in the bytes data type, please ensure that the bytes parameter is set to an even number.

Example Addresses

Use Case

Using Inovance’ PLC programming software AutoShop, you can quickly connect to the PLC and Neuron for debugging. For specific operations, see Connect to Easy521.

Data Monitoring

After completing the point configuration, you can click Monitoring -> Data Monitoring to view device information and control devices. For details, refer to Data Monitoring.