No hardware required

Evaluate the industrial drivers without a PLC

Serial Studio's OPC UA, Modbus, Siemens S7, IEC 60870-5-104 and Sparkplug drivers each ship with a simulator that runs on your own machine. Open the project, press Connect, and watch real tags arrive. The protocol stack you exercise is the one that talks to a controller in a cabinet, not a mock of it.

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Every driver below is a Pro feature. The trial unlocks all of them for fourteen days.

Five protocols, five simulators

Pick a protocol and run it now

Four of the five start the simulator for you the moment you press Connect, and stop it again when you disconnect. For those, the whole evaluation is opening a project file.

OPC UA IEC 62541

A bottling line with tags that misbehave

A Python server models a filler, capper, pasteuriser and utilities: typed tags, a six-element float array, string status tags, engineering units and ranges, and a sensor that reports a Bad status for five seconds out of every ten. Browse the address space, tick the Plant folder, and generate the dashboard from the selection.

$ pip install asyncua $ python "examples/OPC UA PLC Simulator/opcua_plc_simulator.py" # then press Discover at opc.tcp://127.0.0.1:4840
  • Browse and subscribe exactly as you would against a real server
  • FaultySensor holds its last good value through the fault
  • Flags reproduce the awkward cases: --no-subscriptions, --drop-after, --secure-only
Driver reference Open the example
Modbus TCP / RTU

A hydraulic test stand that fails on purpose

A physics-based simulator acts as a Modbus TCP server and drives a realistic hydraulic stand through six states, including pump cavitation, emergency stop and a controlled restart. Serial Studio launches it for you when you connect.

$ pip install pymodbus # open "Modbus PLC Simulator.ssproj" and press Connect
  • Holding registers mapped straight onto gauges and trends
  • A failure and recovery sequence you can sit and watch
  • Raise FAILURE_PROBABILITY to make alarms fire on demand
Driver reference Open the example
Siemens S7 ISO-on-TCP

S7comm without a Siemens CPU

An ISO-on-TCP simulator that speaks S7comm well enough for a real session: connect confirm, PDU length negotiation, and read requests served out of a drifting DB1. It needs the Python standard library only, with no snap7 and no vendor DLL, and the same read service runs against it as against an S7-1500 in a cabinet.

# Windows: open the project and press Connect # macOS and Linux, because port 102 is privileged: $ sudo python3 "examples/S7 PLC Example/s7_plc_simulator.py"
  • Absolute addressing exactly as documented: DB5.DBD20:REAL, MW10:INT
  • A declared type that does not fit its address is refused, not read wrong
  • Generates a project from the variable list, one group per data block
Driver reference Open the example
IEC 60870-5-104 Port 2404

A substation link on a laptop

A simulated station served over IEC 60870-5-104: the STARTDT handshake, a full station interrogation, short-float measurands and single points, spontaneous updates afterwards, and honest k and w sequence-number accounting. Standard library only, and port 2404 needs no elevated privileges, so this is the one that simply runs.

# open "IEC 104 Station.ssproj" and press Connect # or drive it from another client: $ python3 "examples/IEC 104 Example/iec104_server.py"
  • Points are discovered by the interrogation, not typed in beforehand
  • Quality is kept per point: invalid, not topical, substituted, blocked, overflow
  • An invalid point keeps its last good value instead of drawing a fake number
Driver reference Open the example
Sparkplug B over MQTT

An edge node with a real birth certificate

A Sparkplug edge node that publishes an aliased birth certificate, alias-only NDATA afterwards, an NDEATH last will, and answers a rebirth command. Serial Studio's MQTT driver decodes it in Sparkplug mode. The node is started for you; the broker is the one piece that is not, so Mosquitto has to be listening first.

$ pip install paho-mqtt # a broker must be up on 127.0.0.1:1883, then # open the project and press Connect
  • Birth, data, death and rebirth, the parts integrations actually get wrong
  • Aliases resolved against the birth certificate rather than guessed at
  • Stop the node to watch the last will arrive
Driver reference Open the example
EtherNet/IP No simulator

The one that ships without a simulator, on purpose

Reading a single Logix tag means an encapsulation session, a forward-open on an unconnected message manager, a CIP path through the backplane and symbolic-segment addressing on top. A short Python stub could answer plausible bytes while exercising none of the parts that go wrong in a plant, so this example points at something real instead. Two options behave like the hardware.

# libplctag's own test server, no Rockwell licence: $ ab_server --plc=ControlLogix --path=1,0 \ --tag=Tank_Level:REAL --tag=Pump_Running:BOOL
  • ab_server ships with the libplctag sources and answers CIP tag reads
  • Studio 5000 Logix Emulate is the licensed option, and runs a real downloaded project
  • Any CompactLogix or ControlLogix on the network works with no extra software
Driver reference Open the example
What this actually proves

The trial is the evaluation

A simulator is only worth running if it exercises the code that will meet your controller. These do.

The same client, not a demo mode

The OPC UA, S7comm and IEC 60870-5-104 stacks are written in-house and built into the application, and the drivers' own tests run against these simulators. Nothing is stubbed out when you point the app at a real device instead.

Every industrial driver reads only

The S7comm, EtherNet/IP and IEC 60870-5-104 clients have no write path at all. There is no setpoint to send, no command to issue and no select-before-operate, so attaching Serial Studio to a running machine cannot change its state. That is usually the first question a plant asks.

Dashboards you did not have to build

Browse the tags, tick what you want, and generate the project. You get one group per folder or data block, LED widgets for bits, plots for numeric values, and engineering units and ranges carried across wherever the server publishes them.

Recordings that outlive the meeting

Anything you plot can be recorded, replayed, exported to CSV or MDF4 for CANape, DIAdem or asammdf, and rendered as a PDF report with per-parameter statistics. The evaluation leaves a document behind.

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