B&B Electronics MODSCAN32 - Manual - Manual (Page 26)

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WinTECH Software Application Overviews
The WinTECH Software suite of applications for Industrial Automation was designed to provide a cost-
effective solution to interface data from modbus devices into the PC Windows environment. Without the
overhead associated with a full featured MMI, these products provide an easy to use interface to remote
devices. Primarily used for simulation and verification of the protocol, WinTECH Software applications
are inexpensive tools which should be included in every test and commissioning engineer’s arsenal. In
addition, these tools support Windows OLE, which allows quick development of testing applications via
Visual Basic for customizing operation, (such as the case for production testing).
Each application supports physical connections to modbus devices via direct serial, modem, or TCP/IP
network. Standard Win32 drivers are used through-out the designs, allowing for their efficient operation on
Windows 95/98 as well as Windows NT.
ModScan
ModScan is a modbus master application, designed to read data from one or more connected slave devices.
The original 16-bit version of the application supports both RTU and ASCII transmission modes and allows
register data to be displayed in a variety of formats including decimal, hexadecimal, and floating-point
notation. ModScan also supports custom, (user generated), modbus commands and provides a scripting
facility for automated testing of modbus slave devices.
ModScan32 is an upgraded version of ModScan which takes full advantage of the Win32 platform.
ModScan32 is a multi-document design, allowing you to open and actively scan multiple arrays of data
points from an attached slave. The same formatting and scripting features as the 16-bit version are
supported, as well as OLE Automation and direct database access via the Microsoft JET database engine.
A recent addition to ModScan32 provides basic MMI capability which allows you to generate custom
displays of modbus data using various graphical interfaces.
ModScan(16) supports direct serial connections only, while ModScan32 may be used with modems and
network connections.
ModSim
ModSim represents the slave end of the communications protocol. This application may be used to
simulate data from one or more modbus slave devices for access by a modbus master. Display of data is
comparable to ModScan, in that register data may be displayed as decimal, hex, floating-point, etc.
Available as either a 16 or 32-bit design, ModSim supports multiple direct serial connections. ModSim32
may also be configured to operate as a modbus/TCP network server application for simulation of slave data
via network connections. OLE Automation is also supported by the Win32 version.
MNetSvr
MNetSvr is a Win32 application designed to bridge serial modbus devices to a network environment. This
application operates as a modbus/TCP network server, accepting requests from atached clients, collecting
the data via a serial port, and responding via the network connection. MNetSvr supports multiple
asynchronous network connections and is fully compatible with the modbus/TCP protocol as defined by
Modicon.