Motion Control and IO with PLCs - EP4 - Beckhoff TwinCAT IO

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Code used in this series: github.com/eva...
On this episode, we go through some basic EtherCAT IO, and show how it is configured in the twincat system.

[@drianhoward]

Your tutorials are really helpful and easier to follow than the Beckhoff documentation!

[@adamhisham4957]

Once again thanks a lot man for doing this. I am amazed at people who do these videos for nothing in return. Hoping you'll get something out of this. If you are already, then you deserve it .

[@SquishyBrained]

Hah, thanks. I didn't initially get anything in return other than a bit of ad revenue. (Not much, all my ad revenue combined covers about half my monthly internet bill). However, I was always a believer of "do good things and good things will happen to you", and they have. I've been able to spin a business off of my youtube exposure combined with my industry experience into a viable consulting business that is doing well. So, sometimes just doing something because it feels like the right thing to do is worthwhile. Good luck out there.

[@michaelcostello6991]

Great explanation of physical devices. Thanks As electrician thats what i am mostly interested at the moment

[@dimitrisdimitriou6969]

Thank you for this tutorial series. Learned a lot

[@PatrickFAGET]

Really great! Thank you so much!

[@farrenyoung]

Thanks a lot. You explain a lot that definitely isn't obvious and from what I can tell, not covered anywhere else.

[@SquishyBrained]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.

[@iitanand757]

Thanks a lot, very Creative and useful!

[@I_vantheory]

where´s been this channel my whole life?

[@rasoulsadeghi8635]

thanks for your valuable video

[@maxpenfold8699]

Thanks great tutorials!

[@titeet]

hi, can you help me with setup the office and use the sensors???

[@Amalokch]

You are an excellent teacher! I’ve been long time searching for a good Beckhoff course. You earned a new subscribed. I want to apply for a new job position that requires Beckhoff knowledge, and I am wondering why this brand is so asked by employers when they talk about “motion”, can other brands also do the same like Rockwell? What does Beckhoff motion does than others don’t?

[@SquishyBrained]

Good question, beckhoff does nothing that the others don't really. Find a good understanding in any of the plc systems and you'll be good to go on the other brands. I do prefer beckhoff personally, but if you learn one you're good to go on the others.

[@MuhammadShoaib-yz3ot]

hopefully all of you are doing well.I am facing problem on EL9410, I have replaced my faulty cards with 2 new one from store but 3rd led indication of running is not appearing.Does it needs any configuration? please do you have any good ideas.I am using E bus. Thanks in advance.

[@Fine_i_set_the_handle]

What if the attach variable output menu is empty even after I followed all these steps?

[@ΣωκράτηςΜτ]

Hello, i wanted to ask you if its possible to take the parameters from an old servo drive with twincat3.1 and upload them into a new one.

[@SquishyBrained]

Maybe via coe or soe reads.

[@lodeddiper12]

Thank you for the tutorial. May I know, if i’m using cx2020 is it crucial for the types of e/k bus and master/slave card that i used in order for the execution of the plc?

[@SquishyBrained]

It will have a built in e bus. K bus is old but you can use it with a coupler

[@mcclmark]

I have done this step, but the output card is always stuck in SAFEOP and will not output, even after linking my %Q* variable to the output card. Did I miss a step? great video series, thanks

[@tiagosoares1023]

Hey, i have a CX9020 and i'm having trouble linking I/O signals (the leds show up when contact is closed) to my PLC program variables, therefore i can't even activate a coil by the push of a simple button. The problem is not in the programming side since im quite experienced with ST. My I/O are EL2904 and EL1904, coupled with the EL6900 that came with them (TwinSAFE). Not sure if this is supposed to work? Thanks and your videos have been really helpfull

[@SquishyBrained]

If you are in twinsafe, things work quite differently. I suggest finding a tutorial on it, as from my experience it is not very straight forward... that was years ago though. If you bought all that stuff, I'd get with your beckhoff application engineer in your area and have them webex with you to get started. I wish I had videos on twinsafe, but honestly I hated it the two times I used it. That goes for all safety plcs I've used, so nothing against them, it is just quite different and not very user friendly.

[@josephmaclen2410]

Thanks so much for this video. If I wanted to send data via UDP to the PLC would it be possible with just one Ethernet connection for both the UDP connection and programming on it? Also with communicating via UDP how would the processes differ from this set up within TwinCat 3? I do not see why I have to link program variables to the EtherCat object in Twincat 3 if I am just trying to communicate via UDP. (This is what I am stuck on). I am using the CX9020.

[@SquishyBrained]

You can program and send UDP data on the same network card. They are happy to coexist just like a normal computer. You wouldn't really follow this procedure, since you don't have EtherCAT IO. Just don't assign any IO and you'll be fine. For UDP, however, you'll likely need the socket communication add-on, which is a licensed (aka not for free) product from beckhoff. It isn't that expensive, but you should find some example code from that and start with that. Rather than linking in the variables, you'd just create a routine that read socket data from UDP and put it into variables you can use elsewhere in the program. Does that make senses? The software you need is TCP/IP Connection Server, TS6310

[@josephmaclen2410]

I am following a tutorial "quickstart" on the beckhoff website. The following directory(on the website - you cant really send urls form the website) points to the Quick start I am talking about . TwinCat 3/TFxxxx | TC3 Functions/TF6xxx - Connectivity/ TF6311 TC3 TCP/UDP Realtime/Quick Starts/Quick Start (PLC / UDP). Do i need that not free software on top of the code from the tutorial? I got that code to compile with a EtherCAT Automation Protocol Device added that has the "DevState" linked to a variable in main(I had to do this to get rid of that error). But when I send data to the port it does not work with the code I got from beckhoff. Again thank you so very much for taking your time to answer my questions.

[@SquishyBrained]

With that example code, it will likely make you enter the trial code again, so if you go to your licenses tab, you might notice a new license in there. It is free to play with, and you can renew the 7 day trail over and over again, so it won't cost anythign now but if you put it in production you'll have to buy that licnese. I think it basically lets you use TCPip.lib or something like that. I could be wrong, as I've only used TCP sockets,... maybe using the RT-Ethernet adapter TCP/UDP RT doesn't require it? I've never tried this method, but be sure you assigned your adapter to an actual network card. It could have come in blank, so it might not be listening to anything. I assume since it says "RT Ethernet adapter", that is is using the Twincat Realtime NIC driver also. That means you have to run on a supported NIC, which there are not that many computers have them... almost NO laptops do. If you are on a real PLC you should be good. If you don't need realtime, which I doubt you do, check out TF6310's example instead of TF6311. There is a UDP sample in there that you can use if you don't need realtime. I doubt whatever the sending unit is is realtime anyway, but maybe...?

[@josephmaclen2410]

I am running it on a actual PLC so the real time shouldn't be a problem. Is there anything else you think it could be? I will go try the other tutorial now.

[@SquishyBrained]

Joseph Maclen I'd say just make sure you linked up the adapter in the IO tree to the real NIC

[@shishirpokhrel3191]

Thank you for the videos. They are very helpful. However, I have one question to ask. I have written a program which runs 4 servo motors, and I must get them running even when I disconnect the ethernet cable from the engineering PC. I use a normal PC with twinCAT to write the PLC program, (The PC is connected to a CX2030 embedded PC via an ethernet cable) , then I just log in to the PLC in the TwinCAT software. Now I would like to install the PLC program i've written permanently onto the embedded PC (PLC) and run it without having to use the engineering PC. How do I do that ? Thank you for your support.

[@evanjensen5023]

Look for the 'auto start boot project' option, and set the system to run mode on boot in the system settings and it should work just fine.

[@jeffersonalexanderleonabri830]

hi do you know how adap other I/O modules Like UR20 Weidmuller and what configurate?

[@SquishyBrained]

I do not. Sorry.

[@crypticparadigm2180]

Episode 2 or 4? You said 2 at the beginning.

[@andersbackman3089]

Thanks for your instruction videos. These have been a good help for me to start with TwinCAT and EtherCAT communication. I have a question how to convert four SINT (bytes) to a REAL Value in for example Structed Text. SINT1(8bits) SINT2(8bits) SINT3(8bits) SINT4(8bits) shall be read as a REAL (32bits).

[@SquishyBrained]

I assume these are coming in over some fragmented communication protocol, like a serial driver, storing portions of the 'real' value as a grouping of SINTs... otherwise, I'd say avoid SINTs all together as they won't save any memory. So, likely you'll want a DINT to store the values in, then use MEMCPY() to copy the SINTs into the byte addresses of each portion of the 4 byte DINT. Then, you'll have your number represented as a DINT, so you can use DINT_TO_REAL(). However, I'd guess that isn't the end of the story, since they are likely encoding the REAL into the "SINT ARRAY" with some other type of encoding, so you'll need to figure out what that is and decode it.

[@ptipupu]

mais pourquoi une fourchette ?

[@SquishyBrained]

Mon modèle de main était en vacances. Mes mains sont laides sur film.

[@ptipupu]

;-) whatether, Thank you for this video