Development of a FATEK PLC Simulator for Industrial Processes

In this article, the development of the software system—a virtual simulator for FATEK programmable controllers for industrial processes—is proposed. The main purpose of the development is to create a virtual tool that emulates the operation of FATEK controllers, with the primary task being the receiving and sending of data related to the controller’s resources, using the FACON communication protocol. The simulator implements a protocol that is described in the FACON documentation. The simulator works as a slave device and returns a response only to a received request from the master device (this can be any program—SCADA or HM). The communication is asynchronous, i.e., receiving messages occurs independently of the operation of the simulator itself. The simulator is implemented as a desktop GUI application using the C++ programming language and the C++ Builder platform. This simulator can be used to manage tested SCADA and HMI programs for technological processes, etc. The main part of this work is the correct reading/writing of controller memory data (inputs/outputs/memory bits and registers). Through the developed simulator, you are fully tested under conditions of impossibility of using a real programmable controller.