Siemens S7-300 + PanelView

I was wondering if anyone has information off hand on connecting a PanelView (or PV Plus if necessary) to a S7-300 series processor. My company usually just deals with AB, but a customer requested a Siemens processor.

It looks like the 312 comes with 1 RS-485 which I suppose could be converted to RS-232, but we need also need to be online with the processor and have the panelview communicate. AB used to sell panelviews that had Profibus communications built into them, but have discontinued them.


Any help in the right direction would be appreciated!

The PV Plus can communicate to the Siemens Line with the Kepserver drivers that come with RSViewME. (Using the Serial Port included with the STD build HMI)

The successful connections that I've seen use an RS-232 to MPI protocol converter box to communicate with the S7-300 controller.
On the PanelView Plus side you need to add a null-modem adapter or cable to the standard MPI interface serial cable, and of course you're going to run the KepserverEX MPI driver inside the PV+ terminal and on your RSView Studio development computer.

You'll need another MPI/RS232 converter to get your programming computer online with the system at the same time.

Cool, thanks for the reply's everyone. I'll have to dig into the pricing for all that. My company rarely uses Siemens, so I wasn't sure the best way to go. They want everything done as cheap as possible.

Ken, would you happen to know if it's significantly more to go ethernet? We always try to push ethernet, but a lot of the time (with AB) it's not the cheapest route, so they usually shoot it down unless one of our customers requests it.