Siemens Scalance W700 Com Debug

aliceqrd

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Join Date
Oct 2018
Location
Washington
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8
Hi all,

First a heads up, this is my first time working with Siemens product so please bare with me. We are testing the Siemens Scalance W700 products for overhead rail applications.

Setup: Please see the image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ijj0dhWWVk7CuN89d244711bn1S3DP3x/view?usp=sharing
Blue connections are siemens provided cables, and dotted black connections represent Ethernet connections.

Goal: Trying to get the two PLC-s attached the access point to send and receive messages to/from the PLC attached to the client; with the client PLC is reading and sending data to the other two PLC-s.

So far, we checked there are no duplicate IP addresses. Other than that we read through some of the communication set up manual to debug the set up but still there are no communication between the PLC-s.

Grateful for any advice/guidance! Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Hi all,

First a heads up, this is my first time working with Siemens product so please bare with me. We are testing the Siemens Scalance W700 products for overhead rail applications.

Setup: Please see the image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ijj0dhWWVk7CuN89d244711bn1S3DP3x/view?usp=sharing
Blue connections are siemens provided cables, and dotted black connections represent Ethernet connections.

Goal: Trying to get the two PLC-s attached the access point to send and receive messages to/from the PLC attached to the client; with the client PLC is reading and sending data to the other two PLC-s.

So far, we checked there are no duplicate IP addresses. Other than that we read through some of the communication set up manual to debug the set up but still there are no communication between the PLC-s.

Grateful for any advice/guidance! Thanks.

Two big things to test are the following:

1) can the PLCs talk if they are directly connected via an ethernet cable?

2) can you ping the AP from the client network, or the reverse?

Some other things: Is the client connected to the AP? Does it have good signal?
 
Hi mk42,

1) can the PLCs talk if they are directly connected via an ethernet cable?

Reply: yes they can; we also did the same test using Vahle coax products with no com issues.

2) can you ping the AP from the client network, or the reverse?

Reply: No, we tried that couple times; perhaps obvious but if my pc is on the same network as the AP (or the client) then I can ping those devices fine.

Some other things: Is the client connected to the AP? Does it have good signal?

Reply: The client and AP are on different networks; the two networks are physically located very close to each other (maybe 3-5 ft apart, between client and AP). For reference the two AP-s are next to each other. According to the Siemens documentation/videos current distance between AP and client are well under the com limitations.

My understanding is that the client is suppose to communicate with the AP-s through radio waves via the Rcoax Antenna attachment (attached to the client).

Thanks,
aliceqrd
 
Hi mk42,

1) can the PLCs talk if they are directly connected via an ethernet cable?

Reply: yes they can; we also did the same test using Vahle coax products with no com issues.

2) can you ping the AP from the client network, or the reverse?

Reply: No, we tried that couple times; perhaps obvious but if my pc is on the same network as the AP (or the client) then I can ping those devices fine.

Some other things: Is the client connected to the AP? Does it have good signal?

Reply: The client and AP are on different networks; the two networks are physically located very close to each other (maybe 3-5 ft apart, between client and AP). For reference the two AP-s are next to each other. According to the Siemens documentation/videos current distance between AP and client are well under the com limitations.

My understanding is that the client is suppose to communicate with the AP-s through radio waves via the Rcoax Antenna attachment (attached to the client).

Thanks,
aliceqrd

When you did the test with the different vendor was it the same PLCs in this system with the same programs, or is it that you know it has worked in other systems?

The Siemens radios are wifi (802.11) devices, not that different from what you probably have in your home. They're probably more rugged, and have some proprietary magic in the comms, but overall it's the same standard and concepts.

Have you tried logging into the client and AP to look at their diagnostics? There are a number of steps that need to be performed to commission a wireless network: choosing SSID, frequencies, channels, etc.
 
mk42,

thanks for your advice! I finally was able to login and did the basic set up wizard to configure the devices. So currently, the test bench works! The other set of devices were plug and play, comes pre-configured, so no interface, and thus did not occur to me that there is a login web page; live and learn.

The password for these devices is not the standard admin admin; in the future if anyone else has the same trouble and finds this just shoot me a message (I am not sure if I am allow to post that info on here). Thanks again!
 
The password for these devices is not the standard admin admin; in the future if anyone else has the same trouble and finds this just shoot me a message (I am not sure if I am allow to post that info on here). Thanks again!

Sorry, should have warned you about that. I think what I heard is that the FCC has rules about only "qualified individuals" being allowed to mess with radios, and of course Wifi uses radios, even if common usage doesn't really consider the RF impact of things. Tech support was more than willing to give me the password when I called; I think they read me some pre-canned blurb so that I could be considered "officially trained".

I don't know why Siemens does this, just about every wireless router I've seen for consumer use has the default password printed right on the device!
 

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