Enable OPC UA Server option on an already programmed PLC

[Azbb0]

Hello, im new to this PLC World, im a student currently in an internship, my boss wanted to know if i knew if there is any way to extract data from the PLC to see it in real time or as close as it can, i started to investigate and found OPC UA as an option, the PLC also has Secomea sitemanager but i found it very hard to setup and also kinda impossible to know the id tags of the things we want to see


My problem is:


I found OPC UA as an option and ET-200 CPU or S7-1500 is what we have currently in like 13 assembly lines, i connected succesfully using TIA v18 but when trying to do an "Upload from device" i got several errors, mostly wrong software, i needed TIA V17 and startdrive something something


I got TIA V17 and tried again only to receive the error that


"The consistent fail-safe upload is not enabled for the online device. Either the online device doesn't support fail-safe upload or the appropriate setting in the safety administration editor is not active and downloaded."


Searching i found out that maybe the program its block and i cant do a backup


My plan was to do a Backup of the PLC, modify some settings to setup OPC UA and then load it up to the PLC again
But now that im locked out of that option


Is it possible to enable OPC UA Server on the PLC without deleting the program it already has

 

[joseph_e2]

It's been a while since I had access to Portal, but as I recall the safety software was a separate license. If the PLC has safety programming in it, and you don't have that license, you might get that error.

Or...it could be locked by the developer. If that's the case and you don't have the source code and password, you're out of luck.

 

[JesperMP]

You need to get in contact with the original programmer.
You may get the original TIA project which you can then modify, or the programmer can enable the OPC UA server, or if that is not possible the original programmer can provide you with the information how to fetch data from the PLCs.

No matter if it is even possible, just uploading the TIA project from someone else's program and then hope to figure out what data to manipulate is not recommended.

 

[mk42]

The safety code can't be uploaded by default. There is a setting that enables it, but it drastically increases the load memory requirement.

It isn't so much a "developer lock" as it is a setting no one enables until they get screwed the first time. My guess is that someone decided that it's "safer" to make it not uploaded by default, but that wrecks the 1500 usability.

There are some other limits to safety usability for some devices like drives, where they prevent the whole system from being uploaded. These are at least partially fixed in V18, but of course you can't use that to upload from a V17 CPU.

The official stance is that 1500F upload is for "disaster recovery" not typical engineering, which boggles my mind. Every single engineer I meet in the US expects to be able to walk up to a PLC and start working on it from an upload.

 

[Azbb0]

Supposedly there has been some people who were able to get a backup from other PLCs some of them were installed 10 years ago or smth like that, could it be that because this is a newer installation it is locked?


If not, i dont understand how these people were able to get a backup

 

[Azbb0]

The safety code can't be uploaded by default. There is a setting that enables it, but it drastically increases the load memory requirement.

It isn't so much a "developer lock" as it is a setting no one enables until they get screwed the first time. My guess is that someone decided that it's "safer" to make it not uploaded by default, but that wrecks the 1500 usability.

There are some other limits to safety usability for some devices like drives, where they prevent the whole system from being uploaded. These are at least partially fixed in V18, but of course you can't use that to upload from a V17 CPU.

The official stance is that 1500F upload is for "disaster recovery" not typical engineering, which boggles my mind. Every single engineer I meet in the US expects to be able to walk up to a PLC and start working on it from an upload.

I knew there were going to be some troubles in what im trying to do, im not completely oblivious is just that supossedly someone was able to get a backup, multiple times from distincts PLCs, maybe i could too...? im an intern still, was asked if i could be able to do it, if i cant, they will call someone who is able to, but i would like to say that i could haha

 

[Azbb0]

You need to get in contact with the original programmer.
You may get the original TIA project which you can then modify, or the programmer can enable the OPC UA server, or if that is not possible the original programmer can provide you with the information how to fetch data from the PLCs.

No matter if it is even possible, just uploading the TIA project from someone else's program and then hope to figure out what data to manipulate is not recommended.

The only thing i need to do is enable OPC UA Server, give it an address, enable default siemens server and that´s all, i dont need to modify anything else, just want to see data from a OPC Client


We have sitemanagers from secomea but no matter how much i tried to use it, i just wasnt able to wrap my mind around it, i know they have the Gatemanager and the Linkmanager i dont have access to them i tried to use one of them and connect it to our network but i need Gatemanager and Linkmanager to start working on that, things that we dont have ourselfs

 

[Manglemender]

Also bear in mind that, in a Siemens PLC, the OPC-UA server is a licensed option so you should also buy a licence. Depending on how the program is written, you may also be able to read data using the PUT/GET method for S7300/400 systems. This also has to be enabled in the hardware config but maybe it already is? You would not be able to read from an optimised datablock using PUT/GET.

As JesperMP said. Get the original code from the machine builder. Ensure you have the correct add-ons and licenses (functional safety etc). Then do a code comparison online/offline and resolve any differences before you attempt to modify anything.


Something else to think about is that you don't really want to connect you machine directly to the corporate network so some sort of gateway device is reccommended.

Nick

 

[JesperMP]

The only thing i need to do is enable OPC UA Server, give it an address, enable default siemens server and that´s all, i dont need to modify anything else, just want to see data from a OPC Client

How would you know what addresses to access, what is the formatting ?
Even if the you access the variables by the symbolic name, the name can be chosen after any kind of weird system that original programmer decided.

edit: If you were to guess at the meaning of the variables in some of my programs, only based on the symbolic name, you would have no chance.

 

[mk42]

If not, i dont understand how these people were able to get a backup

1) If the other PLCs were 300's vs these 1500s (launched about 10 years ago), then they are different platforms with different restrictions and different default behavior.



2) There are two kinds of backups. One is uploading the project to do more engineering on it, the other is basically a binary backup image that can be transferred to a PLC to restore it to the exact state it was in at a certain point in time (or restore to a replacement CPU if the memory card dies also). You're trying to do the engineering upload, it's possible that even if the other folks were backing up 1500s, they only did the binary image backup instead.