P-NET Fieldbus

Dear friends,
We have a Shortning Plant supplied by Gerstenberg Schroder ( Germany ). For automation of the same they used P-NET Fieldbus system. The configuration of the system is as follows:
05 nos. of PD3221 UPI
02 nos. of PD3100
01 nos. of PD3230 Weight Transmitter
Coupled with PD3000 P-NET Controller.
I have no experiance or idea of Field Bus system apart from basic. How they program, what language they use for programming? How to take backup of the program? etc.
Can anyone pls advice me for the same.
Regards,
Neeraj

Seems to be a Danish company. Didnt know it.
As far as the home page it looks as they manufacture specialised OEM equipment. So I dont know if you are supposed to change programs or configuration. If that is not the case, you should follow the manuals to the letter. If you need assistance that cannot be found in their manuals, you should contact them directly.
They also have remote assistance via modem it seems.
http://www.gs-as.com/Home.aspx?ID=163

Thanks Jesper,
You are prompt & caring as always. I did follow the route you have suggested. All this started with our Shortning Plant supplier's visit to us & their suggestion for changing the control system of the plant from P-NET to Siemens PLC. With all this recession & the working style of my principals, changing control system will not materialize unless there is a miracle. So I put up a query & also sent a mail to them. What I found out is again a nightmare.
The programming language is in Process Pascal (I don't have any idea what it means), for certain reasons the co. doesn't gives out backup of the program (not even to OEM, that's outregeous). The least things these guys did was to send me the address for a service provider which even they don't know will be able to help me out. After learning all these things I realised why the OEM was bent on changing the control system to Siemens PLC.
Anyway lets see how long it runs without problem, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

So you are saying that the supplier (Gerstenberg Schroder) suggest to change from P-NET for S7 ?
Their suggestion was too costly, and your idea is to do it locally. And for that you want the original sorce code of the program.
I can understand why they dont just hand it over to you. The source code of the control system is the lifeblood of an OEM company. Its value is extremely high as there may be both specialized know-how, and just sheer man-years worth of coding in there.

We also manufacture machines, and some of them gets very old. Mechanically they are OK, but the control system may be totally obsolete. Spares are costly or maybe impossible to get, and the legacy technology means troubleshooting and maintenance is very timeconsuming.
So, we offer upgrade kits for these older machines. Some customers find our prices outrageous, so they go to 3rd party suppliers that have basically reverse engineered our control systems. And some customers even attempt to upgrade by themselves. I dare to say that the success ratio of our kits are 100%, the 3rd party suppliers achieve approx 50%, and the end-customers who try temselves achieve 0%.

Dear Jesper,
You are correct upto an extant. GS Suggested an upgrade as even they don't have the source code for their own machine. In this kind of situation how they will be able to support the machine. The source codes may or may not be with PROCES-DATA who has supplied P-NET hardware.
My problem is simple. I know I will be cooked & eaten by any one of them i.e. if I have to change the system it will be high cost from GS, if I don't change the system ( as I am in Kenya )& in case of problem I will have to bring a techie from Europe - PROCES DATA to change or reprogram.
That was the reason I posted this thread. I just wanted an advice for which way to choose.
Fieldbus is an unknown thing for me while S7 is known & we do have Siemens office in Nairobi.

neerajpuranik said:

GS Suggested an upgrade as even they don't have the source code for their own machine.

Click to expand...

Incredible. That they dont own the source code to their own machines is idiotic. I know that some companies have the programs written for them by another company, but they should have required that they own the rights to the source code.

I was curious as to what P-net was and discovered the following:

Interesting overview of Process Pascal here:
http://www.proces-data.com/4T/00S001P1D5/HSOJA-01/Description_ENG.htm

and P-net here:
http://www.proces-data.com/index.html?4T/00S001P1D5/5DHIH-01/Description_ENG.htm

Interesting the IEC has categorized Fieldbuses, of which P-net is one:

IEC 61158 standard with eight different protocol sets called "Types" as follows:

• Type 1 Foundation Fieldbus H1
• Type 2 ControlNet
• Type 3 PROFIBUS
• Type 4 P-Net
• Type 5 FOUNDATION Fieldbus HSE (High Speed Ethernet)
• Type 6 SwiftNet (a protocol developed for Boeing, since withdrawn)
• Type 7 WorldFIP
• Type 8 Interbus

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fieldbus

Some effort at dabbling in Process Pascal and P-net might yield some benefits.

Dan