A multipurpose process simulator for automation engineering laboratory

A simple electronic system is described which can be associated with a personal computer (PC) and used to simulate a wide class of real processes. The unit consists of an electronic circuit with one 8-bit microcontroller and several discrete and analogue I/O ports and a serial interface for communication with a PC. The I/O ports reproduce the real system interface, while the PC runs the chosen simulation program and shows the pseudo-system's behaviour in a graphical environment. This simulator is a low cost, compact and versatile solution developed for training on PLC programming and testing. A great number of different simulated processes can be created on the PC by using a high level language (e.g. C or Pascal). Two examples of such simulated systems are shown: a simple one using basically discrete I/O and another one devoted to analogue closed loop control with the PID functions.