TIA does not allow HMI uploads

I put together a project 2-3 years ago with a 1200 and a ktp700 panel. Unfortunately I cant find my backup of the project.......I'm an idiot.

So anyway I was assigned to program in a new functionality on this installation. Was able to recover the logic from the controller, which was not as easy as I recall in classic projects, but I got it done.

I now reached out to siemens after not being able to find a way to recover the HMI runtime. This morning they informed me that with TIA this is not possible......at all.

I am quite frankly blown away that they didn't include this in the new software, and it seems extremely short sighted.

Now to begin the rebuilding from scratch.

Agreed.

It was possible on the older TP/MP panels (backtransfer), but wasn't really practical. I'm not sure if they ditched the feature so they could skimp on internal storage, or if they simply thought it wasn't important.

Ouch

Lesson to learn here. Always make sure you have a back up. Time is expensive.

Yeah.

I cant imagine how that ever was deemed acceptable.

Everyone here knows at some point somewhere a programmer is going to be asked to make a change to a system that they don't have a project file from.

The Siemens solution is that programmer builds a new HMI runtime from scratch????

I didnt realise that it wasnt possible to upload if you dont have the project mind.

Im doing some work on some TP1500 at the minute. I am going to try and upload them tommorow.

I suspect this is going to make some people think twice about Siemens if that is the case.

I reckon your backup schedule will be ***** hot from now on anyway

It doesn't help you now, but I put an archive of the whole TIA project on the desktop of our PC based HMI's. You can do that with the comfort panels that are Win-CE based as well (have only used comfort panel on one project). If you are worried about security, you can RAR compress it with a password.

I bought a bunch of USB thumb drives and started putting them at each PLC rack when I worked on a city-wide distributed control system. These days a thumb drive will easily hold the current and last 20 versions of a plc project.

Finally, cloud storage is worth looking into. Before it was really a thing, I used to attach backups to a gmail message and save it as a draft. Saved my butt once when I got a call and had to go directly from customer i site in Phoenix to customer m site in Boise, without stopping "home" to get required files.

"The Siemens solution is that programmer builds a new HMI runtime from scratch???? "

Thats what the memory card slots do on the back of the panel

Actually I need to look at what it takes to store complete project on those....
I think just the complete panel gets backed up using the memory card..

The backup that you can perform with the panel just creates a backup that can be used to load the runtime to another panel.

I tried that yesterday thinking perhaps I could restore it to the PG somehow from that. NOPE

It's almost as bad as having to use TIA Portal itself!

I actually have enjoyed TIA for the most part, but this new discovery is definitely a red x.

This is not restricted to Siemens you will find a lot of modern HMI's (many Windows based firmware) will not upload to an editable file unless the project file has also been downloaded along with the runtime file, the runtime file is generally compiled code.
Schneider Magelis is another that comes to mind, I believe even the AB Panelviews can be downloaded with the project information stripped out leaving the compiled code to run.

Steve