The communication driver used for Allen Bradley PLCs utilizes the CIP protocol.

The CIP protocol (or Common Industrial Protocol) is a network protocol that allows transmitting values of data objects.

Different from other protocols, in that, other protocols are usually designed to support regist...

In this video, you will learn about the producer-consumer and the explicit messaging models, benefits, and considerations.

An Allen-Bradley Logix 5000 controller produces and consumes system shared tags.

For two or more controllers to share produced or consumed tags, controllers must be on the...

Let’s program an example of “Produce Consume” method.

We will program and setup two PLC programs and “Studio 5000 Logix Emulate” on a PC to simplify our example and call them “RealPars_ProduceConsume_PLC1” and “RealPars_ProduceConsume_PLC2”.
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We will add the Remote PLC2 “Produce Tag”. This tag will be consumed by the “Local PLC1”.

On the “Edit Tags” tab, create the new tag. The tag will be named, “ME_to_REMOTE_DINT” and created as a “Double Integer” data type.

Then right-click anywhere over the tag and select Edit “ME_to_REMOTE_DIN...

Let’s create the PLC “Consume tag”. On the Edit Tags tab, create another new tag. The tag will be named, “REMOTE_to_ME_DINT” and created as a “Double Integer” data type.

Right-click anywhere over the tag and select, Edit “REMOTE_to_ME_DINT” properties. Select “Consumed” as the data type.

Now s...

Let’s add the “Produce” tag in the “Local PLC1” program.

The produce tag will be named “ME_to_REMOTE_DINT”. Create the tag in the “Edit tags” section as a Double Integer data type.

Then right-click anywhere over the tag and select Edit “ME_to_REMOTE_DINT” properties.

Enter the Description and...

Let’s create the PLC’s Consume tag. On the “Edit Tags” tab, create another new tag. The tag will be named, “REMOTE_to_ME_DINT” and created as a “Double Integer” data type.

Right-click anywhere over the tag and select, Edit “REMOTE_to_ME_DINT” properties. Select “Consumed” as the data type.

The ...

In each PLC we configured a “Produce” tag and a “Consume” tag.

The “Local PLC Produce” tag data will be consumed by the “Remote PLC Consume” tag. The “Remote PLC Produce” tag data will be consumed by the “Local PLC Consume” tag.

You can always check for configured “Produce” tags by left-clicki...

When we use “Message Blocks”, we’ll only need to program the Local to perform the READ and WRITE between the two Local and Remote PLCs.

First, under the Controller Organizer, we created a new Program named “Explicit Messaging”. Then we created a new ladder Routine named ME_READ_WRITE_REMOTE.

We...

We will use the CIP Data Table Write Message Type. The Source Element tag will be MSG_ME_to_REMOTE_DINT and the Destination Element will be MSG_REMOTE_to_ME_DINT using one element. These tags were previously created in both the Local and Remote PLCs as 32-bit integers.

Under the Communication ta...

Let’s download our two PLC programs into the Studio 5000 Logix Emulate software so we can test the “Produce Consume” and “Explicit Message Block” communication methods.

With both programs running Online, we’ll enter a value in the Local PLC1 ME_to_REMOTE_DINT tag of 1111 and observe the communic...

We can see the timers running and the timer done bits energizing the rungs for both READ and WRITE message blocks.

We’ll enter a value in the Local PLC1 MSG_ME_to_REMOTE_DINT tag of 3333 and observe the communication to Remote PLC2 MSG_REMOTE_to_ME_DINT tag value changed to 3333.

In this case, ...