Citect comms to TI545 via Siemens CP1613

I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into Siemens communications and may be able to help me with a communications problem I'm having?

I have a PC running Win2K and Citect V6.1 that currently communicates to two Siemens (Ex Texas Instruments?) TI545 PLCs. It does this using A CP1434TF communication card in the backplane of each PLC rack, and uses the Sinec H1 protocol over ethernet twisted pair. The PC has a Siemens CP1613 PCI card in it. This setup works well, however I have had the need to create a spare PC for backup purposes using a spare CP1613 card that we have. I have installed Windows XP SP3 on this new machine. I have installed the SIMATIC NET PC software V6.3 that contains the XP drivers for the CP1613 and set up communications as per the W2K machine. My problem comes when I actually plug in the network cable to the XP machine and start Citect. On the running W2K machine Citect goes #COM. When I take the network cable out the Citect I/O server starts communicating again! I'm currently using the TINECNT driver in Citect which the already-running machine is using so I assume this is correct?

I am not very familiar with Siemens hardware/software so I'm sure I have possibly missed a step or two in the setup.

Does anyone have an idea of how to setup the CP1613 card to talk to TI545 PLC, and how to pass this to Citect on XP? Is the CP1613 card even necessary? Can I talk to the TI545 directly through a standard NIC in the PC?

Regards

labroy

An update for anyone interested.

In the 'Set PG/PC Interface' tool I noticed that when running the diagnostics for the CP1613 the status for the TI545 PLCs that I'm trying to talk to was "establish". The PC that is already communicating says "active". A check of ethernet addressing found that the MAC ID that I had set for the CP1613 was identical to the other card! I changed the address to something different and no longer got #COM on the running machine when plugging the new PC into the network. Diagnostics still says "establish", however and citect on the new XP machine would still not communicate.

After a bit of reading I discovered that the Sinec H1 CP1434TF card that is in each of the PLC racks requires a configuration downloaded to it to match the setup of the CP1613 card in the PC. A check of that config revealed that the MAC ID setup in the CP1434TF card for the PC was not the same as the address I had given the CP1613 in my new PC! Changed the CP1613 MAC to match the CP1434TF setup and what do you know, citect could communicate!! Diagnostics on the CP1613 now says "active".

Needless to say I have had a fair bit of frustration getting to this point, but I know a lot more about legacy Siemens gear that I did a few days ago!

Siemens is frustrating! I prefer to use other brands. The Germans are always right of course! LOL

Hello Labroy

The reason I think the communication get lost when you plug in your new windows xp system is because on the H1 network are at that time two nodes with the same network name.
What did you configure within Simatic net?
Did you use COML-TF tool?
Also if you want to be able to connect these two stations at the same time to the network and establish communication with the 505-CP1434 TF cards you have to change the settings in the new windows xp machine and have to add this extra settings also in the 505-CP1434TF modules with a configuration program called “505-CP1434TF configurator”

However if you don’t want to do all this and you just need this windows XP station when the existing windows 2000 station is defect then you technically you don’t have to change anything in the windows XP station but you have to remember then that only one of these two system can exist at the network.

For testing you could unplug the windows 2000 system from the network and plug in the windows XP station to see if the communication will work then.

Regards
Henny

Hello Labroy

As answer to one of your questions in your first mail about having to use a CP1613 card in the pc that runs scada and communicates with the TI545 plc over the 505-CP1434TF module.

I’m not sure about Citec but we used this kind of communication with the H1 modules and Wizcon scada system using a standard Ethernet card in the pc and installing the INAT H1 driver that can be downloaded at :
http://industrial.softing.com/en/pr...atic-s5-s7/pc-h1-linking-for-windows-pcs.html

Be aware that this product has to be licensed otherwise it will run for 12 hours before it shuts down and communication get lost.

But because you have already have a running scada system with the CP1613 ethernet card in the pc and have a working system in windows 2000 then I would stay to this.

In wizon scada at the communication driver their was a text file with the H1 communication settings for the Peer services

Here is an example from one or our systems that had to communicate with 3 different 505-CP1434-TF modules when we had SINEC H1 communication before we made the change to OPC communication with CTI plc,s(newer replacement of TI plc,s) using their new 2500P-ECC1 Ethernet communication cards.

Card=0

RTSAP = WIZREAD
WTSAP = WIZWRITE
LTSAP =WIZDEV1
03 = 080006010303
04 = 080006010305
06 = 080006010306

These jobs and names should also exist in the 505-1434 TF cards and for that you have to make use of a program called “505 h1 configurator”

So I think you have to search in your windows 2000 running citec application to these kind of settings with LSAP,TSAP etc.
If you want to add your new system then you have to make a new pair of settings in the 505-1434 TF modules.

For example let’s assume that I want to add an extra system to it than it could be:

Card=0

RTSAP = WIZREAD_1
WTSAP = WIZWRITE_1
LTSAP =WIZDEV1_1
03 = 080006010303
04 = 080006010305
06 = 080006010306

Hope this will help you

Here is also the link to CTI the company that produces the newer 2500 plc,s based on TI plc,s.
http://www.controltechnology.com/


Regards
Henny