PCS7 WinCC comms to S7-1200 cpu

[leem2209]

Hey folks... I've been thrown into the deep end of a dodgy pool. A life line would be appreciated.

Our one and only resident PCS7 knowledgable engineer has left the building. Let's pretend his name was elvis.

So Elvis was the only guy who maintained, updated and gathered data using the PCS7. When he left people panicked. Except me. I saw it as an opportunity. And as such it's now in my hands to deal with this little issue.

We had a new machine installed which replaced an old knackered machine.

There are hard wired and signals from the DCS to the machine. Mainly, run, critical alarm and two confirmation signals from attached valves. These basically mimicked the old machine except some of the signals had to be high instead of low and low instead of high. That was no big issue to resolve in the DCS by inverting relevant bits. This has been enough to get the machine running.

Now we are trying to establish the comms between the WinCC and the machine which has an S7-1215 CpU. This give temp, pressure and flow readings and alarm messages too.

I have been working with our local siemens service engineer, who also admits that pcs7 isn't his strongest point and between us we cannot get comms to the WinCC.

The machine is connected on the simaticnet network. The engineering station doesn't have an IP address as the networks are ISO configured (hope you understand that bit) we have tried using IP address and MAC address to reach the CpU to no avail. We have a PG station on the network too with TiA portal and that connects no problem, as that has its own IP for the network.

Any ideas how to set up the comms in WinCC?

Cheers you awesome bunch!

 

[mk42]

I haven't worked with PCS7 in a while, so I'm not sure how (or if) the 1200 can be worked in. I know layer 2 vs layer 3 networking, but I'm not familiar with the PCS7/Simatic Net networking terminology anymore. Surely the WinCC station/OS has an IP address, correct?

What I CAN say is that if you use "standard" DB's in the 1200, instead of the default "optimized", then an HMI can read from it as if it were an S7-300. You probably don't want to change that attribute on your whole project, so it may make sense to have a PCS7COMMS DB with the optimized attribute unchecked, and then copy all the data you want to transfer into it.

 

[leem2209]

So what we have is:
One ES - engineering station
Two OS servers (blind) two for redundancy.
Two OS clients for the control room
One Web client for remote viewing

The servers contain the main WinCC project while the clients have their own WinCCprojects for localised need... As far as I am aware.

But maybe you have a point... The servers will be on the network with IP addresses surely??? I'll check that in the morning. Cheers mk42

 

[KalleOlsen]

On your ES there are installed several PCS7/WinCC pdf's. I would guess that the comms setup is found in a 'getting started' -pdf.

(I don't have PCS7 on this PC, so I cannot be specific, sorry).

Kalle

 

[Chris Hasler]

I have looked into doing the same thing as the vendor for a similar machine setup.

You don't have any way of addressing a S7-1200 PLC using an ISO network, so you will need something to act as a relay between the PLC and the PCS7. This could be any of the S7-1500, 300 or 400 PLCs you may already have in the plant. The interface PLC would read from the machine to data blocks or memory ranges as required, with the PCS7 looking at those tags.

My installation involves a number of machines so a dedicated S7-400 PLC is acting as an interface. Cost wise this was the best option, but for one machine it is a bit of an investment.

There may be a few other options available to you.

 

[Thomas_v2]

Which version of PCS7 have you running? The PCS7 version runs always only with a specific version of WinCC.

Out of the Box WinCC is only capable to communicate with a S7-1200 with version 7.2 and above.

The older WinCC versions were in general possible to communicate with a S7-1200 and "un-optimized" datablocks, but on communication setup WinCC asks the PLC some specific details, and the S7-1200 gives the wrong answer and then WinCC denies to communicate with this device.

You could use a S7-400 as mentioned as relay between the 1200 and WinCC. The advantage is that you can use the standard library objects of the PCS7 system (Motor blocks / symbols, message blocks etc.).

Otherwise you could use the Simatic-Net OPC-Server which supports the S7-1200. But then you have to do all the animations, alarms etc. manually, which usually isn't the real PCS7 concept. And you have to check, if the Software is compatible with the PCS7 setup. If software is not official apporoved to run withing the PCS7 system by Siemens, you may run into unsolvable problems and loose the support if you do so.

 

[leem2209]

Hmmmmm..... my last post on this thread seems to have not posted! grrrrr.... Now can I remember what I wrote?

Update on the PCS7 comms.....

Working with the siemens support engineer we couldn't seem to get any comms to our S7-417H CPU in our DCS system.

It turns out that the engineer who started the job (who no longer works for us) didn't actually do a hardware config download when the CP cards IP address was set. The reason was that there was never a slot given to stop the plant in order to stop the CPU in order to do the download.

So now we are waiting to get that slot to see if it works. The hardware config is set-up for it in the project already.

Now, we run a dual-redundancy system. We have two 417H cpu's running as a master and slave. The siemens engineer thinks we may be able to download the hardware config without stopping the system.

I recall seeing this once where the system brings up a list of actions which you can step through or automatically cycle through. Steps will stop one CPU at a time in order to do the HW download while still leaving the other running to prevent a shutdown.

Is this correct? It would be great if it is!!!

 

[marcius]

I've never tried it myself, but looks like it is possible. Take a look at chapter 14:
http://support.automation.siemens.com/WW/view/en/1186523

 

[leem2209]

Info I've been given:

We spec'd our system (it was an upgrade from an older DCS) to enable hot swap of components. Which means hardware fitting and HW config downloads on the run.

Siemens have said that depending on the S7-417 CPU firmware, it is possible. I've exported the HW config and sent the file to him to review and just waiting on a response.

I'm a cautious guy and want to double check first, remember I now have 12 days of PCS7 experience... maybe I'm at intermediate level now???