How to connect a Maple Systems HMI + PLC Combo Unit to any Modbus PLC

Initializing a new Project

Open up a new project in MapleLogic, select your PLC type (modular ES or micro FB), and name your project.

Configuring the PLC’s IP address

Open up the PLC parameters and go to the “Ethernet” tab, then change your PLC’s IP address to what you’d like. Be sure to take note of this IP address for when we configure the HMI + PLC side. Hit “OK” and save your new IP address.

Create a base project

Finally, you’ll want to create a new main scan program in MapleLogic. The PLC project won’t compile or download properly if there isn’t a main scan program.

Connecting to the PLC

Firstly, you’ll want to make sure to connect your PLC to your computer with a mini-USB cable. You’ll also want to make sure to set MapleLogic to download via the USB (or Ethernet) cable of your choice like so

I’ll walk through a download using a mini USB cable. You can download to your PLC over Ethernet, but the PLC’s IP address out of the box is 100.100.100.100, so you’ll need to change your PC’s IP address accordingly to make an initial connection to your PLC.

Link + Download + Monitor

 Next, you’ll want to press the “Link + Download + Monitor” button and accept all the prompts.

Create a new MAPware-7000 project

To start, we’ll make a new MAPware-7000 project, name it, and select our HMC model

Adding a New Ethernet Connection

Then we’ll go to “Network Configuration > Com3 (Ethernet)” then we’ll right-click the page to add a new device connection.

Configuring the Modbus Settings

Now we’ll configure this connection node, being sure to configure it as a Modbus Master node, and pointing it to the IP address we set our PLC to.

Adding Modbus Tags

Now that we have a communication node in our MAPware-7000 project, we can create tags on our device that are tied to Modbus addresses on our PLC. We’d do this by going to our tag database, and adding new tags under the node we just created.

Worth noting is the “Register/Coil Type” dropdown. This allows you to pick the register type of your Modbus tag, with 0x, 1x, 3x and 4x registers being defined as “Coils”, “Input coils”, “Input registers” and “Holding registers” respectively.

Configure the HMC screen

At this point we’ll want to display a handful of Modbus Tags on our HMC screen, so we’ll go ahead and make some more tags, and attach some MAPware screen objects to them.

Wiring the PLC

To start, you’ll want to make sure to wire your PLC properly for a serial connection. On the CPU itself there’s a terminal block that allows for both RS-232 and RS-485 connections. The pinouts for these connections are outlined in the user manual for your PLC.

This tutorial will cover an RS-232 connection, but the concepts will still apply for an RS-485 connection.

Noting our Serial Settings

Within the PLC Parameters of our MapleLogic project, we’ll want to go to the “ch 1” tab and take not of our serial settings (or tweak them to our liking)

We’ll want to make sure to note the baud rate, parity, data bit, and stop bit so we can match them on the HMC side

Configuring our Modbus Station ID

Next we’ll go to the Modbus tab and make sure the “Slave ID” is set to 1

Download our project

Once we’ve configured all the serial settings on the PLC, we’ll connect to our PLC and download to it the same way as before.

Wiring the HMI + PLC

To start, much like on the PLC side, we’ll want to attach our RS-232 wires to the proper terminal slots on our HMC’s COM 1 port.

Be sure to cross the RX and TX wires between the two devices.

Adding a New Serial Connection

Much like the Ethernet Node, we’ll go to “Network Configuration > Com1” page, and right-click the page to add a new device connection.

Configuring our Serial Connection

Now we’ll configure our new serial connection node. Be sure to register this node as a Modbus RTU (unit as Master) node, and make sure that the “Address” field matches the “Slave ID” from the PLC, and that all of the communication settings in the bottom-right match those on the PLC.

Creating Serial Modbus Tags

As before, we’ll create new tags associated with our Modbus node, and attach them to our screen like before.

Create Local Copies of our Modbus Tags

We’ll start by creating tags on the local node (the one labeled after your HMC model) that match the type of the Modbus registers we want to transfer over

Creating a New Global Task

Now we’ll go to the “Tasks” page of our HMC project, and be sure to select “Global Tasks”

Transferring a “word” register

For a non-boolean “word” register, you’ll use the “Copy HMI/PLC Block to HMI Block” define which tags you’re transferring from and to, and click “Add” to add this task to your global task list

Transferring a boolean register

For a boolean register, you’ll instead use the “Copy Tag B to Tag A” task instead. “Tag B” is still the source, and “Tag A” is still the destination, but the idea is the same.

Writing to the PLC Modbus registers

If we need to write local tag values back to the PLC, we can do so, by setting up a global task going in the opposite direction. But if we have global tasks both reading from and writing to the same tags, we’ll want to use the control addresses of the global tasks and implement these in the logic to tell the HMC which direction the data is flowing.

Now we’ll set our HMC’s IP address to something in the same subnet as our PLC. We’ll do this by pressing and holding the top-left corner of the HMC to go into the HMC system settings. Then we’ll click the “Network Settings” sidebar item.

Configuring the HMC’s IP Address

In the Network settings, we’ll want to set our HMC to a static IP address, and change our HMC’s IP address and subnet mask to what we desire.

Preparing the Project for Download

Now we’ll go back into our MAPware-7000 project, navigate to “Tools > PC Communication Mode”, select “Ethernet” and change our base IP address to the IP address we just set our HMC to.

Downloading our Project

Now we’ll make sure our HMC is connected and powered on, and click the download button in MAPware-7000. After compiling the project, we’ll make sure the IP address on the download window is correct, and download our project.

If this is your first time downloading to your HMC device, you’ll want to download the “Firmware” to your combo device first.