Quickie - talking to a PLC via Citect

Hi

This is probably a question with a very simple answer but its late and I can't figure it out. If this is me being a complete buffoon then please excuse me.

I'm trying to connect a PC via Citects SCADA software, to an S5 PLC (actually 7 PLC's but if I can get one working I'm sure I'll suss the rest out).

I've set up an I/O Device in the Citect software and called it PLC1. I've told it that its going to be operating on the S5 protocol.

Now... how do I actually send something to a specific data block?

I want to send 255 words to DB11 and 255 words to DB71 in the PLC.

How do I directly address those words from my Citect software.

I tried to make a Tag up in the Variable Tag list of the type STRING, with the address DB11.DBW0 but I get a "Bad I/O device" error.

I'm a bit lost on this.. do I need to set up a different I/O server to talk to these PLC's.? Any ideas how I read and write to the data blocks??

I'm lost :-((

Thanks for any light you can shed on this

Cheers

JT

Check if the 'computer setup' has the projectname that you want. Your s5-plc should be 'external I/O device'

Simatic S5 _ Serial Data Types



Data Types Address Format Citect Data Type



DATA WORDS Db:w BCD / DIGITAL / INT / LONG / LONGBCD / REAL/ STRING

DIGITALS Db:w.n DIGITAL



b data block number in PLC

w word number

n bit number 00 - 15


example


Data Type DIGITAL

Address D010:001.14

Comment Digital _ Block 10 : Word 1.Bit 14



Data Type INT

Address D0010:002

Comment Data Word _ block 10 : Word 2

you can read and also WRITE data to tags

I do not have the software here and i do not know how to adres strings...so sorry on that one.

Ivo

You're a diamond!

Many thanks for that. I'll have a play about with it and see how it goes.

Cheers

JT

Just had a go with that and it works a treat. You can use the same format ie. D011:001 for INT's and STRING's.


Thanks again.

JT

You're welcome.

But you have given up on using array's?

Ivo

No.. I was just wondering if there's a way of mapping a lot of data from an array into sequential words in the PLC.

For instance... I have a tag that is a LONG array with the address LO[31]

I want those elements to be mapped to DW's 0 - 31 in the PLC.

Is there a way of mapping them all across without having to make 32 separate tags in the PLC, each one pointing to an individual word?

???

JT