S7 1200 WebServer

Hi all,

Just starting to look at the webserver in the S7 1200 series. Wondering if anyone has used it, any thoughts?

And would love to see the results.

One of the "prettier" and yet simple I have seen is this one:
http://www.sps-forum.de/simatic/629...g-mit-hilfe-des-webservers-der-s7-1200-a.html
He posted the entire TIA project.

It is in german though (!). Google translate may be your friend.

That does look good! Thank you!

If you're looking at using all the automatically generated pages of the PLC, it can be a nice way to get the diagnostics. Note though that using it as a webserver can start to take up a decent chunk of memory/CPU, and more users equals a bigger processor hit. It isn't "free" from a resource standpoint, and you might not notice that its affecting anything at first.

I don't have any examples I can provide for the user custom pages, but my experience is that the server side includes to link buttons and fields to tags are a little non-intuitive. If you've done web page stuff before it might not be too bad, but it definitely isn't an easy jump for the average PLC guy. Overall, it definitely isn't as responsive as a "real" HMI, for some simple diagnostics/control it could be a nice solution.

However, it should be noted that a sizable fraction of the security vulnerabilities for the 1200's have been from the web page, and I'm sure that trend will continue. Part of that is because web page vulnerabilities are the easiest to look for, but part of that is just added risk from opening up a number of communications channels that wouldn't be there otherwise. It is important to ensure that your network is secure, firewalls are in place, etc.

Thanks for the heads up.

Reason for me asking the original question is that we have some old electrical boilers around that use a specific kind of step coupler. Heating elements are arranged in groups. For example, 50-100-200-400-400-..kW. Basically all this step coupler does is to active the groups almost in a binary counting fashion such that the load of the boiler is stepped up/down in 50 kW increments. Often this step comes from a dedicated 3-point-step controller.

Sometimes (rarely) one of the groups fails due to age, dry running etc. Since all groups are separately fused, it is easy to deactivate the group, but now there is a gap in the stepping.

The web server would give the client the opportunity to hook up a pc and change the group layout for the steps, without having to invest for an HMI.

Alternatively it would give the option of integrating the controller into the PLC, again without the need for an HMI. Reading above comment makes me believe that this might not be a good solution, but it could be, client is king after all.

All in all, keep the comments coming, I appreciate them!