CODESYS VIRTUAL PLC
The latest evolution of Industrial Automation 5.0
Visit CODESYS at booth 1587 and see the new products CODESYS Virtual Control SL and CODESYS Virtual Safe Control for hardware-independent scalable solutions.
CODESYS has been offering hardware-independent Software PLCs for 30 years and continuously expanding their products. Today, CODESYS provides hardware-independent Soft PLCs for Windows, as well as for Linux x86 and ARM-based systems with excellent real-time performance.
The CODESYS Virtual Control SL is a more advanced product for the future. It allows the CODESYS Soft PLC to run in a virtualized environment without the need for specific device hardware. Instead, the device gets replaced by containers and hypervisor technologies.
Multiple CODESYS Virtual PLC containers can be created on a device. The Virtual PLC is connected to the real Automation World via virtual LAN and remote I/O. CODESYS is already delivering CODESYS Controls in Docker containers to selected customers, and the product will be available for purchase in the CODESYS Store soon.
CODESYS device manufacturers can offer their customers images and configurations for the CODESYS Virtual Control SL on their devices. This gives system integrators maximum freedom in the development of control applications to organize them in separate micro-services.
To deploy or orchestrate CODESYS Virtual Control SL, CODESYS users can choose from industrial IPC devices, servers, or cloud platforms.
Performance can be precisely scaled to meet the needs of any application. All control instances can be orchestrated via Linux commands or scripts, with appropriate tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Open Shift) or directly from the CODESYS Automation Server. Access to the field device level is via virtual LAN, which is available in all managed industrial switches.
With CODESYS Virtual Safe Control, containerized platforms can be used as a safety controller – including SIL3 certification with no safety requirements for the hardware.
The software solution creates dual-channel capability through "Diversified Encoding". The processing of the application is split into two logical software channels. Both channels run on a virtual PLC in one process sequentially one after the other on one CPU core. They constantly check each other. Diversified Encoding distributes the safe inputs to both channels and, conversely, combines the outputs of both channels into safe outputs. This includes data streams that are generated by safe network or fieldbus protocols. The safety concept of SIListra Systems GmbH has been approved by TÜV SÜD.
CODESYS is the global market leader of manufacturer-independent IEC 61131-3-automation software with over 5 million device licenses sold worldwide. More than 500 control system manufacturers and tens of thousands of companies worldwide use CODESYS’ products.
The CODESYS Development System is the basis of a comprehensive suite that covers the software side of automation including Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), communication, Software PLC, motion, drives, CNC, robotics, redundancy, and visualization.