One of the great features of Red Lion Crimson 3.0 and 3.2 is the in-built emulator. Providing about 90% of the functionality of the actual device. The emulator can simulate and test device communications, protocol conversion, scripting, display pages, and more.
To use the emulator the crimson database needs to be sent to the emulator instead of the actual Red Lion device by selecting the menu item Link/Options… and ticking the Sent to Emulator checkbox as shown below. Clicking download or update will now send the database to the Emulator.
The emulator can further be configured to use specific serial/ethernet ports depending on which device is being emulated, and which port(s) on the host PC is connected to which external devices. For example, to communicate to a serial device on Serial Port one of a DA50 that is connected to COM1 on PC with a Modbus device on DA50 Ethernet Port 1 connected to PC Realtek network port the emulator options would look like below.
For best results, the network settings for the PC physical port, the associated DA50 port and PLC should be in the same subnet, but with different IP addresses and not clash with any other devices on the network.
PC: 192.168.1.111
DA50: 192.168.1.20
PLC1: 192.168.1.100
IMAGE: PC Network Configuration
IMAGE: DA50 Network Configuration
IMAGE: PLC1 Connection Settings
The webserver on the emulator is fully functional and allows navigation between pages. The FlexEdge devices also provide access to the System Pages.
IMAGE: Page 1 viewed directly on emulator
IMAGE: Page 2 viewed in PC Internet Browser
IMAGE: Web server details
Note that Crimson 3.1 does not currently have a working emulator. There are options and tick boxes like in Crimson 3.0 and 3.2, but it does not work. For devices that require Crimson 3.1, there are 2 options. Develop parts that need testing in Crimson 3.0 and import or copy and paste into Crimson 3.1 or develop in Crimson 3.1 and import as a different device in Crimson 3.2. This is generally sufficient for testing purposes.
For more information on Crimson software, Red Lion get in touch with us on 1300 556 601.