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Beckhoff / ADS

Beckhoff protocol to communicate with TwinCAT devices.
MIT License
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ADS for .NET and Mono #83

Closed robertsabo0 closed 5 years ago

robertsabo0 commented 5 years ago

Dear,

I'm working on implementation of reading PLC with TwinCAT 2 from .NET application. On windows, I succeed, and all is good. But on Linux (using mono) I cannot connect to PLC.

I installed c++ lib as docs says (https://github.com/Beckhoff/ADS)

When I run my code I got error that dll is not found: Unhandled Exception: TwinCAT.Ads.AdsInitializeException: ADS could not be initialized because the 'TcAdsDll.dll' is not found! Please check DLL search paths! (tcadsdll.dll) ---> System.DllNotFoundException: tcadsdll.dll at (wrapper managed-to-native) TwinCAT.Ads.Internal.TcAdsDllWrapper+UnsafeNativeMethods.AdsGetDllVersion()

I guess the reason is that I installed c++ lib for ADS, not .NET.

Am I wrong? Is it possible to read TwinCAT using .NET from Linux?

pbruenn commented 5 years ago

Hi Robert, TwinCAT ADS .NET from: https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tcadsnet/html/twincat.ads.intro.html&id= requires TwinCAT ADS-DLL from your TwinCAT Installation :-( https://infosys.beckhoff.com/content/1033/tcadsdll2/html/tcadsdll_intro.htm?id=3725064819111272020

The opensource library (AdsLib) you find here on GitHub is intended as a replacement for TwinCAT ADS-DLL, but the feature set is not 100% equal. The opensource library is limited by:

I don't know the details of TwinCAT ADS .NET, but I am pretty sure the missing router is already a show stopper to make it work with opensource AdsLib.

I know of a Python wrapper which uses AdsLib: https://github.com/stlehmann/pyads

Maybe you find a .NET fork on github, too: https://github.com/Beckhoff/ADS/network/members

Regards, Patrick

arj3090 commented 5 years ago

There is an ADS driver on Sourceforge that uses the TCP/IP stack instead of the AMS router, so it will possibly work on Linux under Mono:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/twincatads/

The catch is the TwinCAT 2 AMS router has a flaw in which it will catch traffic and no matter which TCP/IP port it is received on, it will respond to the standard TwinCAT port, therefore the driver will not work if TwinCAT 2 is installed on the same PC (Of course Linux is not an issue). So far my tests seem to show this flaw does not exist in the TwinCAT 3 router.