Not adding configured expansion modules to Siemens S7-1200 without a stop?

[Johan_Swe]

Hi

First post here!

I admit I am not too used to handle interrupt OBs in Siemens.
I have a customer who has been buying a standardized solution from me for some time. It is a small cabinet with a straight forward PID controller solution that they use for a certain type of machinery that they build and sell. Lately, a new need has come up and in some circumstances we need to use an expansion module to increase the number of digital inputs.
To be more precise, we add a 6ES7221-1BF32-0XB0 (8x Input module) to our 6ES7212-1HE40-0XB0 (1212C DC/DC/RLY CPU).
However, this is only in some of the cases, and the majority is still without any expansion module.

To keep version handling to a minimum and simplicity to a maximum, I would like to be able to only have one TIA project, regardless of the input modules existence. This partly also because the customers experience with PLCs is very limited but they still need to get online sometimes, for maintenance- and fault finding reasons, eg. It might seem like a stupid problem, but it would help us a lot. I can see the troubles coming with the customer mixing up the versions and so on.

Do you know if there is any way of doing this with a 1200?
Making some kind of settings in the TIA project, using some Interrupt OB, or whatever is needed to have just one project that makes the CPU stay in run even if the configured expansion module is not present? Preferably of course without even getting a fault LED, but in this case we could live with that. The main thing is that we want a project that has a certain HW configuration in it, and that one part of this is sometimes "missing".
Is this possible?

Very grateful for any advice,
Thanks in advance!

Johan

 

[L D[AR2P#0.0]]

I would consider using an ET200SP station as the expansion module - you can disable the whole station programmatically so the H/W config online shows no errors and the CPU will show no errors. I have also re-configured an ET200SP station's slots dynamically so I assume you can do this to the CPU as well but it is more involved.

 

[mk42]

Welcome!

see the app example below for a general discussion of "Configuration Control". For the central rack, you activate it in the HW properties -> Advanced configuration -> Configuration control -> allow to.... I've never done it in a 1200, myself, but it looks like the setting exists, even for the central rack. The short version is that you configure the HW in the project to have the maximum configuration, and then in a Startup OB you write a data record to the CPU to tell it what hardware should physically exist for this specific machine.

SIOS

support.industry.siemens.com

 

[BryanG]

Go to the view of the PLC (Device view), just after the name of the PLC is a button, hover over it and it is called 'Modules not plugged in'. Click on it and a space opens up where you can drag, well like the name says, modules that are not plugged in. Sorry, still getting the hang of the new system, so the alignment isn't the best

 

[Johan_Swe]

Thank you all very much!
That was quick, and I got the problem solved!

The ET200SP solution would solve my situation but Im afraid I would have some trouble justifying the price tag in relation to the small change. If the other suggestions had not solved this, I would have gone for it though and I appreciate it!

Regarding configuration control, that is more or less exactly what I was looking for! Great and pretty solution! I have not heard about it before but it certainly does the trick.
As for now (like a "step one") I tried just moving the expansion module to the "not plugged in" field as in BryanGs suggestion and its definitely a very simple and usable way of getting around this. It solved my problem right away and before I have made a fancier program with configuration control, this works great!

I would not have found any of these solutions myself and they are all great, so thanks a bunch!
Saved my day!

/Johan