Receive emails with PLC

boneless

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Hi all,


Silly question..
We are working on a project where customer receives email in case of alarm. (Siemens S71200 + TP700 Comfort).

Now they want to know if they can send emails to the PLC. I am assuming ask for status or something.
As far as I can find, this is not possible with Siemens. I am actually unable to find anything atm.



You guys ever run into this?
 
As for a PLC I have never heard of one that accepts email.

You might be able to work something into a good SCADA system that when emailed a certain code would email a specific set of PLC readings to a certain email address, probably wouldn't be able to do a direct email reply.
 
You could trigger an Outlook rule based on the subject and sender to open a purpose built HMI that runs a macro on startup.
 
In theory you could do it if the PLC were to try to read messages from a server say every hour, because you can do it from the command line, like this:
https://mediatemple.net/community/products/dv/204404584/sending-or-viewing-emails-using-telnet


There are system that use SMS to message a PLC:
https://unitronicsplc.com/Download/...g/Sending_SMS_messages_from_a_cell_phone_.htm


Email push to a mobile is a lot more complicated and I think way beyond what a PLC or HMI is capable.


If they want to change setting on the system then obvioulsy remote access to the HMI is much better. Or remote access to web pages in the PLC. I think you need to ask them some questions about why they want to do it by email, and which Muppet thought it would be a good idea.
 
Turning a PLC into a mail server/recipient is a non-trivial but probably doable task; doing so in a way that validates the sender as an authorized entity would probably be a herculean, very expensive task.


If it has to be email an you don't want to add the supplementary status data to the initial alarm message itself as suggested by Friedrich, then the SCADA suggestion by Aabeck would be the best approach: have the PLC push any supplementary data to a nearby server of some kind (Rasberry PI?) and let that respond to the email.



Otherwise get more info on the basic functionality the customer is actually looking for and build a solution for that.
 
Thank you all. That kinda confirms my suspicions, there is no easy way to do this. Seems like a nice-to-have option anyway.



@Friedrich, not sure what they want. Perhaps they want to know status (pressure/temperature/level) even if there is no alarm. Maybe they want to start/stop the system. Idk.


Thanks!
 
You can indeed Have the PLC send the Alarm or condition to A HMI or SCADA. I have this setup in MY GE HMI it sends Email when Alarm of a few of our processes to necessary Recipients.Watchman and Control engineer ect. You can also Have a simple HMI like a Maple HMI send Email or Text SMS. Some Phone Carriers Like Verizon have email to sms. Your HMI could send email to [email protected] for a simple TEXT if you wanted to send a photo it would be [email protected] you can look at the carriers data to see if they support the SMS features..But many HMI Scada can indeed send out an EMail with an alarm or condition of your choosing.
 
Hi,

Yes we got the sending part to work without any issue.
It is the receiving part I was unsure about.
 
The Schneider M241 (runs on Codesys) has receive email function blocks but I have not ever used them so I do not know what it takes to set it up.

I was told once about another application that I was not involved in, but in that case, they were using the Unitronics plc and they set it up so that they could send an email at any time to the plc and the plc would reply with status etc.

So I believe it is possible, but I have no experience setting it up.
 
Last edited:
For the Siemens S7-1200 and TP700 Comfort Panel mentioned by the OP.
S7-1200 can send but definitely not receive emails.
TP700 can send but probably not receive emails.
I was thinking that possibly there is a way using VBS, but after searching on several VBS forums I cannot find anything that would run on Windows CE without Outlook.
There are a bazilion hits when you search for sending emails. Almost nothing for receiving emails.
 

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