# Data Acquisition with Beckhoff ADS Plugin In this tutorial, we introduce how to collect data from Beckhoff software PLCs using the Neuron ADS plugin. ## Environment Setup We use two PCs connected to a local area network in this tutorial. - One is a Linux machine with Neuron installed. Consult the [the installation instruction] on how to install Neuron. - The other is a Windows machine with TwinCAT 3 installed. Refer to the [Beckhoff TwinCAT website] to download and install TwinCAT. | | PC 1 | PC 2 | | ---------------- | ----------------- | ------------------- | | Operating System | Linux | Windows | | IP address | 192.168.1.152 | 192.168.1.107 | | AMS Net ID | 192.168.1.152.1.1 | 192.168.1.107.1.1 | | Software | Neuron | TwinCAT 3 | | Network | Connected | Connected | ## Configure TwinCAT Before Neuron and the TwinCAT PLC can communicate with each other, we first need to add a static route for Neuron in TwinCAT. We also need to find the AMS Net ID of the TwinCAT PLC and the index group and index offset of the variables. ### Add Static Route in TwinCAT 1. Open the **TwinCAT Static Routes** dialog box.

_{Fig.1 - Open the TwinCAT static routes dialog}

2. Click **Add**.

3. Provide the information as highlighted in the following image. Note that the **AmsNetId** is the IP address of the Neuron PC appended with ".1.1".

4. A successfully added route is shown as follows.

_{Fig.4 - TwinCAT static routes dialog updated}

### Get AMS Net ID and Port Number 1. Open the **TwinCAT System** dialog to show the AMS Net ID.

2. By default, TwinCAT PLC port number is 851.

### Get Index Group and Index Offset of Variables We use the following TwinCAT PLC program, which defines enough variables for testing in this tutorial.

_{Fig.7 - TwinCAT PLC project main program}

#### Find the Index Group The [Beckhoff index group/offset page] lists the index group to access the PLC memory range. For the %MW field, the index group is 0x4020. For the %MX field, the index group is 0x4021. For the variables *b、i8、u8、i16、u16、i32、u32、i64、u64、f32、f64、str* defined in the main program, the index group is 0x4040.

#### Find the Index Offset Open the TwinCAT PLC data area tab to find the index offset of the variables.

#### Get the Index Group/Offset by TPY File We could also find the index group and index offset through the TPY file. 1. Ensure **TPY File** is enabled.

_{Fig.10 - TwinCAT PLC project setting tab}

2. Open the TPY file in the TwinCAT project directory.

TwinCAT PLC project tpy file path — _{Fig.11 - TwinCAT PLC project TPY file path}

3. The TPY file contains the index group and index offset of each variable defined in the PLC program.

TwinCAT PLC project tpy file content — _{Fig.12 - TwinCAT PLC project TPY file content}

## Configure Neuron ### Add ADS South Node In the Neuron dashboard, click **South Devices -> Add Device** to add an ADS node.

_{Fig.13 - Add ADS south device in Neuron dashboard}

### Configure ADS Node Click the node configuration icon to configure the newly created ADS node.

_{Fig.14 - Configure ADS node in Neuron dashboard}

### Add Tags to the ADS Node For each variable in the aforementioned TwinCAT PLC program, we add a corresponding tag to the Neuron ADS node. The [Beckhoff data types] page lists the size of the data types. Together with the program source code we could derive the data types of the tags.

For tag addresses, the index offset component is shown in the TwinCAT PLC data area tab.

The following figure shows all added tags in the ADS node.

Neuron version 2.3.0 upload topic setting — _{Fig.17 - ADS node tags in Neuron dashboard}

## Monitor Data ### Read Tags Once the TwinCAT PLC is in running mode, we could see the variable values in the interface.

_{Fig.18 - TwinCAT variable values in running mode}

In the Neuron dashboard, click **Monitoring -> Data Monitoring**, check whether the tag values are read correctly.

### Write Tags In the Neuron **Data Monitoring** tab, click **Write** on the *main.MXtest1* tag to write a true value.

Click **Write** on the *main.MWtest1* tag to write the value *6666*.

After a successful write, we could see that variable values do update in TwinCAT.

_{Fig.22 - TwinCAT variable values updated}

[the installation instruction]: ../../../../installation/installation.md [Beckhoff TwinCAT website]: https://www.beckhoff.com/en-us/products/automation/twincat [Beckhoff index group/offset page]: https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tcadscommon/12495369867.html [Bechhoff data types]: https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tc3_plc_intro/2529399691.html