This is is a short demonstration of a co-simulation between Siemens PLCSIM Advanced and C#. The goal is simple : have the ability to conditionally change inputs.We’ll do a proof of concept with a small exemple for a safety relay monitored by a feedback.

Configuration

We’ll run the simulator and the editor on two computers :

Simulator configuration

First let’s start an instance with the following parameters :

Once started, it should be like that :

PLC Programming

Hardware configuration

Let’s do a simple configuration as follow :

Network configuration :

PLC_1 : 192.168.1.1/24
IO device_1 : 192.168.1.2/24

Note : On the simulator, we have different IP addresses for all the network interfaces : Ethernet adapter, PLCSIM virtual ethernet adapter, PLC and I/Os !

With the following I/Os :

Note that you’ll need to activate this option in the project settings :

Support simulation during block compilation option<

Program

Our program will be very simple ! OB1 will toggle a bit every second :

And FB1 will do a safety check between the relay output and the input feedback :

Compiling and loading

You should be able to compile and load :

Simulation

As soon as you’ll run the program, you should have an error on the feedback monitoring :

Co-simulation

To solve this issue, we’ll running co-simulation with C#. The script will check the output value (%Q9.0) and set the feedback (%I0.0) accordingly. We’ll be using sharpdevelop as IDE.

Import DLL

Importing the DLL is easy :

Then we write a short program :

/*
 * Created by SharpDevelop.
 */
using System;
using System.Threading;
using Siemens.Simatic.Simulation.Runtime;

namespace CPU1515F
{
	class Program
	{
		public static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			Console.WriteLine("Starting simulation");
			//Use it for local instance
			//IInstance myInstance = SimulationRuntimeManager.CreateInterface("Golf8");

			//Use it for remote instance
			IRemoteRuntimeManager myRemoteInstance = SimulationRuntimeManager.RemoteConnect("192.168.1.101:50000");
			IInstance myInstance = myRemoteInstance.CreateInterface("1515F");
		
			//Update tag list from API
			Console.WriteLine("Tags synchronization");
			myInstance.UpdateTagList();
		
			//Start a thread to synchronize feedbacks inputs 
			Thread tFeedbacks = new Thread(()=&gt;synchroFeedbacks(myInstance));
			tFeedbacks.Start();
			
			//Allow the user to quit simulation
			Console.WriteLine("Simulation running");
			Console.WriteLine("Press any key to quit . . . ");
			Console.ReadKey(true);
		}
		
		static void synchroFeedbacks(IInstance myInstance)
        {
			while(true){
				//Keep %I and %Q opposite
				myInstance.WriteBool("FB_KA1", !myInstance.ReadBool("KA1"));	
			}
		}
	}
}

And run it :

Once acknowledged, we should not have any issue.

Using the trace tool, we can confirm that it’s running perfectly fine, updating the input in around 100ms.