Siemens S7 clone?

Am I reading this right?...... It seems this company has duplicated the functionality of a Siemens S7 in the form of a soft PLC. I even see where there is mention of Beckhoff hardware. Does this mean you can turn a CX1020 into a PLC that can be programmed using the Siemens software?

https://www.ibhsoftec.com/epages/63444704.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/63444704/Products/1300

Not sure how much an S7-315 costs, but would risk that is less than that software license + computer to run it in.

Ohh, and let's not forget how reliable Windows is.

There are (have been) severail S7 clones. They are all S7 Classic (S7-300), not S7 TIA (S7-1500).
There are the ones from IBH. These have been around for quite some time.
SAIA had one, not sure if it still exists.
INAT had one that was a powerful CPU that could be installed in an S5-135U rack. I think that it is discontinued now.
And Vipa has had S7 compatible CPUs for many years.
There is Speed7, which still exists.
And then one more which I dont remember...

cardosocea said:

Not sure how much an S7-315 costs, but would risk that is less than that software license + computer to run it in.

Ohh, and let's not forget how reliable Windows is.

Click to expand...

The IBH/Beckhoff 315 and 416 CPUs cost less than Siemens 315 and 416 CPUs.
And they run on Windows CE which is pretty robust realtime OS.

edited :416 instead of 317.

JesperMP said:

There are (have been) severail S7 clones. They are all S7 Classic (S7-300), not S7 TIA (S7-1500).
There are the ones from IBH. These have been around for quite some time.
SAIA had one, not sure if it still exists.
INAT had one that was a powerful CPU that could be installed in an S5-135U rack. I think that it is discontinued now.
And Vipa has had S7 compatible CPUs for many years.
There is Speed7, which still exists.
And then one more which I dont remember...

Click to expand...

This kind of surprises me because I would have thought there would have been some patent or intellectual property issues.

You can only patent something that has a unique function not done before.
Maybe there were some patens, but they must have expired long time ago.

You cannot outright copy the code or documentation of a device, but you can always reverse engineer the functionality. Thats what the clones have done.

In the US, my understanding is that there are some pretty big legal lockdowns on Reverse Engineering things, as a favor to the big copyright holders (to prevent ripping DVDs, etc).

In Europe and most of the rest of the world, my understanding is that the right to Reverse Engineer something is better protected.

Siemens has its soft controllers, so it isn't completely unfathomable that someone else would have made a soft controller that is intended to work the same. This feels like a REALLY specific use case to me (S7 on Beckhoff HW). I'm curious how much money the company is making, or if the product exists to fulfill a specific request from a large user? Or is the beckoff HW liked that much better by its users, but they still want an S7 interface for reasons?

The Wiki says that it supports a variety of versions of Windows, not just CE. I'd be curious to see what they are using for the realtime layer, if they have one. As others have said, by itself, Windows and realtime pretty much don't go together, but there are ways to make it work.

Some of the companies like Helmholtz, Vipa, Inat etc. were working together on different parts. One company does the electronics another the software, and in the end both sell the same product with a different label.

What I have heard is, that some founders and employees are ex Siemens-guys who made money out of their internal knowledge. And there were legal issues especially with Vipa.
In the TIA-Portal development they have taken care about that there are only few persons who have knowledge about all of the internal details.

Thomas_v2 said:

What I have heard is, that some founders and employees are ex Siemens-guys who made money out of their internal knowledge. And there were legal issues especially with Vipa.
In the TIA-Portal development they have taken care about that there are only few persons who have knowledge about all of the internal details.

Click to expand...

Vipa, as I remember was really dodgy and Siemens did have a leg to stand on against them.
Apparently it's ok that the internals are similar or compatible to the Siemens stuff, but making the box exactly the same apart from the logo is asking for trouble in my opinion.