Connection between two PCs with Simulink

I am doing a master degree project and it is based on Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) to a quadrotor model. The difference between common projects I will not use a external hardware (like a board, Arduino), I will use an other computer (PC) to be the hardware and run the controller block of my model. That is, I want run a model in Simulink (PC1) but only the controller block must run in the PC2 and the two PCs has to exchange the informations (inputs and outputs of this controller block).

How can I do it??

Please contact if you nedd further information.

My email is: [e-mail]

TKS.

Answer 1

[Mark McBroom]

The solution depends on whether you need real-time performance. If real-time performance is not needed, then you can run Simulink on the two computers and use the UDP send/receive blocks ( available in the Instrument Control blockset) to send data between the two computers. You will need to configure the UDP Rx blocks to "block" and not execute until data is received. In this way you can keep the execution of the two models synchronized.

If you need real-time performance, then you will need to leave the Simulink environment. The most common workflow is to generate C/C++ code from the two Simulink models using Simulink Coder/Embedded Coder and then compiling/linking the code to run on a system with a real-time operating system. MathWorks sells a turnkey software/hardware solution called Simulink Real-Time and Speedgoat, but you can use any RTOS/hardware combination that has the horsepower to run your C/C++ code in real-time.

Note. If psuedo real-time is acceptable, you can stay in the Simulink environment and use a "pace" block in the two Simulink models that will slow the simulation of both models to ~real-time. The Pace block is available in the Aerospace blockset, but other implementations can be found on MATLAB central.

[Flavio Cruz]

Hi Mark M. Thanks a lot for the information. It will be very important for my project. First of all: a pseudo real-time is acceptable. I've just tried to use the UDP blocks. But the a message error appears: This block cannot be assigned continuous sample time. How can I fix it?

If it is necessary, I can send the model file.

[Oscar Parra]

hello, I have read this answer and it has been useful to me as I have the same doubt as flavio, however I can't make any progress.

I have configured the UDP blocks on each computer but I can't get them to communicate with each other.

Could you help me with this?

[Walter Roberson]

You should never use blocking with udp, as udp is an unreliable transport by design. For example it would be considered valid for a udp driver to just drop all packets it has for input or output if the operating system ddecided that it wanted to give priority to polling the mouse.

[Walter Roberson]

Udp is inherently discrete packets of information. You cannot interpolate to send 0.381 packets to meet interpolation tolerances. Therefore you cannot use udp with continuous systems, and needto switch to discrete.