QLC+ interfacing with commercial automation systems.
Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:41 pm
Hi everyone
Its been a while since Ive been on the form. Hope everyone had a good holiday.
I posted this over on the feature request. But thought I may get a little more feed back from others if I posted this in the genaral forms. Mainly to see if anyone else even has a use case for interfacing or if they have even considered interfacing with automation systems that have PLC’s (programmable logic controller‘s) already installed in the venues to control curtains, house light etc.
Im still working on a cleaner way of interfacing QlC with modbus than the way I have be. (Described below)
Over the holiday I found out about codesys which looks to maybe be a decent workaround to get QLC to interface with different industrial protocols.
I am wondering if it’d be feasible for someone to implement the modbus TCP or modbus RTU protocol into QLC?
I keep running into situations where I need to interface with modbus devices at different venues to control house lights and motorized circuit breakers.
Currently Ive been bringing and HMI and a PLC and having to program the HMI UI’s and ladder code for the PLC to create scenes that trigger the house lighting.
As this works.. Its time consuming to setup. Its difficult to make last minute changes or changes on the fly during event. Granted it is posable for me. Ive found its almost imposable for someone else todo even with weeks to prep venue. Little lone on the fly.
My vision is to have the ability to trigger a scene in QLC via a modbus coils and registers. And QLC would be able to trigger modbus coils and or registers.
With modbus integrated into QLC it would open up all kinds of lighting control options such as controlling 0-10v ballast dimming, DAIL lighting control etc.
Right now if I need to control a limited number of 0-10 fixtures Ive been using a dmx 0-10 module connected to the lights or connected to the inputs of a PLC to sequentially turn on motorized circuit breakers.
Even though most PLC’s allow the implementation custom protocols the limitation serial com port bitrate maxes out around 115.2k. So sending DMX512 directly isn’t feasible on a low cost PLC without an expensive add-on module.
It would also give us all the abilities the QLC on raspberryPi has when it comes to the gpio’s. But with far superable input protection and configurations. and the total cost of a fully functional industrial PLC can costs less than the cost of a Raspberry Pi with the all the minimum necessary peripherals need for a raspberryPi function.
Another benefit of using a PLC over the raspberry Pi is that they are almost all UL or CE devices unlike the raspberry pi.
Below is a few links that may help explain what Im wanting to achieve and explain Modbus for those not familiar with the protocol.
Example of Beckhoff’s version of what Id like to achieve.
http://m.beckhoff.de/english/applicat/stage_text.htm
Beckhoff DMX master/slave module.
http://download.beckhoff.com/download/D ... EL6851.pdf
Beckhoff DMX manual
https://download.beckhoff.com/download/ ... 6851en.pdf
Qt Modbus Document
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5.11/qtmodbus-backends.html
Modbus Protocol Document
http://www.modbus.org/docs/Modbus_Appli ... V1_1b3.pdf
Modbus TCP/IP Document
http://www.modbus.org/docs/Modbus_Messa ... _V1_0b.pdf
Wago
https://www.wago.com/global/dmx
Codesys
https://www.codesys.com
Its been a while since Ive been on the form. Hope everyone had a good holiday.
I posted this over on the feature request. But thought I may get a little more feed back from others if I posted this in the genaral forms. Mainly to see if anyone else even has a use case for interfacing or if they have even considered interfacing with automation systems that have PLC’s (programmable logic controller‘s) already installed in the venues to control curtains, house light etc.
Im still working on a cleaner way of interfacing QlC with modbus than the way I have be. (Described below)
Over the holiday I found out about codesys which looks to maybe be a decent workaround to get QLC to interface with different industrial protocols.
I am wondering if it’d be feasible for someone to implement the modbus TCP or modbus RTU protocol into QLC?
I keep running into situations where I need to interface with modbus devices at different venues to control house lights and motorized circuit breakers.
Currently Ive been bringing and HMI and a PLC and having to program the HMI UI’s and ladder code for the PLC to create scenes that trigger the house lighting.
As this works.. Its time consuming to setup. Its difficult to make last minute changes or changes on the fly during event. Granted it is posable for me. Ive found its almost imposable for someone else todo even with weeks to prep venue. Little lone on the fly.
My vision is to have the ability to trigger a scene in QLC via a modbus coils and registers. And QLC would be able to trigger modbus coils and or registers.
With modbus integrated into QLC it would open up all kinds of lighting control options such as controlling 0-10v ballast dimming, DAIL lighting control etc.
Right now if I need to control a limited number of 0-10 fixtures Ive been using a dmx 0-10 module connected to the lights or connected to the inputs of a PLC to sequentially turn on motorized circuit breakers.
Even though most PLC’s allow the implementation custom protocols the limitation serial com port bitrate maxes out around 115.2k. So sending DMX512 directly isn’t feasible on a low cost PLC without an expensive add-on module.
It would also give us all the abilities the QLC on raspberryPi has when it comes to the gpio’s. But with far superable input protection and configurations. and the total cost of a fully functional industrial PLC can costs less than the cost of a Raspberry Pi with the all the minimum necessary peripherals need for a raspberryPi function.
Another benefit of using a PLC over the raspberry Pi is that they are almost all UL or CE devices unlike the raspberry pi.
Below is a few links that may help explain what Im wanting to achieve and explain Modbus for those not familiar with the protocol.
Example of Beckhoff’s version of what Id like to achieve.
http://m.beckhoff.de/english/applicat/stage_text.htm
Beckhoff DMX master/slave module.
http://download.beckhoff.com/download/D ... EL6851.pdf
Beckhoff DMX manual
https://download.beckhoff.com/download/ ... 6851en.pdf
Qt Modbus Document
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5.11/qtmodbus-backends.html
Modbus Protocol Document
http://www.modbus.org/docs/Modbus_Appli ... V1_1b3.pdf
Modbus TCP/IP Document
http://www.modbus.org/docs/Modbus_Messa ... _V1_0b.pdf
Wago
https://www.wago.com/global/dmx
Codesys
https://www.codesys.com