Protool V6 + OPC

Hi,

I'm new for Siemens protool.
I have a Siemens protool project that talks good with Simatic PLCs.
The problem is that I need to integrate into protool some tags from a third party OPC server. (Protool to act as an OPC client).
Is it possible to have protool to talk to simatic PLCs and in the same time
to talk to a OPC server?
What are the main steps to do this?
Can one have alarms, trend logs in protool from a OPC server?

Thank you.

Andras

Yes.
You can have both an S7 PLC and a 3rd party connected at the same time, and you can have alarms and trends etc.

But.
The important bit is that both the S7 and the 3rd party must be OPC servers. It is not possible to combine the internal S7 driver and the OPC Server. So you need to install Simatic Net for the particular hardware (ethernet or Profibus CP) that you are using.

This is one point where WinCC Flexible has moved one step forward.
Here you can indeed use both the internal S7 driver parallel with a 3rd party OPC Server.

If the protool is an OPC client then you should be fine and you will be able to get your data. In case you wanted both to be OPC Servers then you can use this OPC Siemens OPC Server:
http://www.matrikonopc.com/opc-drivers/309/base-driver-details.aspx

You might wanna use data manager too to transfer data between the opc servers:

http://www.matrikonopc.com/products/opc-data-management/opc-data-manager.aspx

Hope this was helpful

Wassim Daoud
Global Solutions Architect
www.MatrikonOPC.com

Thank you for the answers.

What I wanted to say is:
* Protool as OPC client to connected to a third party OPC server
* Protool connected to its simatic PLCs(via Profibus DP)

If I'm getting it right it is not possible to have both connections.
According to Jesper, the Protool cannot talk to a OPC server and to S7 PLC via profibus.
It can either talk to one or more OPC servers, or to one or more S7 PLCs via profibus, but
cannot talk to one or more OPC servers in parallel to S7 PLCs.

The solution than is to move the S7 profibus side to OPC(via matrikonOPC for example), than have the Protool connect to two OPC servers.

Or one can convert the protool project to wincc flexible(is this method painless? what are the experiences?).

Then if I install Simatic Net or matrikonOPC I suppose I need to redo all my 1000 tags and bind them to
the protool graphic again.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you.

Do you have an ethernet module on your simatic PLC?
With Protool being an OPC client, you can connect it to the MatrikonOPC server for Siemens and get your data from the Simatic PLCs via Ethernet not via ProfibusDP. The OPC Server can automatically detect your PLCs too.

I am not sure about your item mapping in the protool graphic, but you might have to do that anyways though.

Wassim Daoud
Global Solutions Architect
www.MatrikonOPC.com

It doesnt matter if it is Profibus DP or Ethernet.
Either way, there must be an OPC server.
An added complexity is that for "Profibus" there are both "S7 connections" and "DP master/slave connections".
Since you are using the integrated drivers for the S7 connection at the moment, I can tell that you are really using an S7 connection and not Profibus Master/Slave.
That boils down to that your only option is to use Simatic Net. Anything else requires big changes to the setup, like switching to ethernet.

Re converting to WinCC Flexible.
It is fairly easy. The tags will be kept, including the usage in the various screens.
Notice that if you change to OPC, the tags will have to be recreated, and also the linking to the various screen objects. This can potentially be a huge job.
I think it is recommendable to upgrade to WinCC Flex anyway. You will soon encounter problems with Protool RT and Windows compatibiltiy.

I attached the network settings. I think it is DP.
So its better to convert to wincc.

Thanks again