Communication Monitor

The TwinCAT 3 Extension TwinCAT Communication Monitor contains a diagnostic window in which the DALI commands sent and the DALI events of the Tc3_DALI library are displayed.

Communication Monitor 1:

The TwinCAT Communication Monitor has been developed exclusively for use with Visual Studio 2017.

Installation with TwinCAT XAE (TCXaeShell)

If you use the TwinCAT XAE Shell, perform the following steps to install the TwinCAT Communication Monitor:

1. For a 32-bit operating system, the TwinCAT Communication Monitor folder must be created under:
C:\Program Files\Beckhoff\TcXaeShell\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Beckhoff Automation GmbH.
2. For a 64-bit operating system, the folder must be created under: C:\Program Files (x86)\Beckhoff\TcXaeShell\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Beckhoff Automation GmbH.
3. Download the TwinCAT Communication Monitor from the following link and save the *.vsix file that it contains locally:
TcCommunicationMonitorVSIX_V1.1.0.0.zip
4. Rename the *.vsix file to a *.zip file.
5. Copy the contents of the previously renamed file to the newly created folder.
6. Check that the following security settings are set correctly for all files:
Communication Monitor 2:
7. Restart TwinCAT XAE (TcXaeShell).
The installation is now completed.

Installation with Visual Studio

Download the TwinCAT Communication Monitor from the following link and save the *.vsix file that it contains locally:

TcCommunicationMonitorVSIX_V1.1.0.0.zip

The TwinCAT Communication Monitor is installed by double-clicking the TcCommunicationMonitorVSIX_V1.1.0.0.vsix file.

Start the DALI TwinCAT Communication Monitor

After the TwinCAT Communication Monitor has been installed, the DALI Monitor entry is available under the TwinCAT menu item.

Communication Monitor 3:

After starting the DALI Monitor, select the instance of the desired communication block (FB_KL6811Communication, FB_KL6821Communication or FB_EL6821Communication). All frames sent by the respective instance are then displayed in the DALI Monitor.

Communication Monitor 4:

In addition to the timestamp, address, DALI command and command priority, the instance path is also displayed. This indicates from where within the PLC program the DALI command was sent.

To display the frames, it is not necessary that the corresponding TwinCAT project has been loaded. Since the data exchange between the PLC program and the DALI Monitor was realized via ADS, it is sufficient if the TwinCAT router was correctly configured.