Frequently Asked Question

Although Typhoon HIL device can act as a Modbus Server or Modbus Client (or Slave/Master respectively) it is possible to implement Modbus Client in SCADA (for example SCADA control system). It is important to note that it is not possible to implement Modbus Client and Server in the same HIL device, as it require different physical devices.

For this purpose inside Typhoon HIL Software Toolchain we have provided dedicated application programming interface (Modbus API). This API can be used both from HIL SCADA and also from Standalone HIL SCADA. Modbus API is based on PyModbusTCP library.

The main idea behind Modbus API is to create python instance which is acting as a Modbus client. You can make more than one instance of TCPModbusClient and for each of them, you can define different server (host) addresses. In your application Modbus server can be a HIL device, any other device, or both of them. 

The whole concept is illustrated in the example model which can be found in the Typhoon HIL Control Center installation folder. You can read more about this model in the application note Modbus Device with HIL SCADA-based client.
In this example, HIL device is acting as a Modbus server (battery server.tse) and HIL SCADA is working as a Modbus client (scada client.cus).
The picture below illustrates the whole setup from the example.