Simatic s7-1200 Memory card program

[opmal7]

I have a product that uses a Siemens Simatic s7-1200 PLC.

My company did not write the PLC program, but we have the program on an SD card. We usually are working on existing products that are sent to us for repair, and our procedure is to install the SD card, power on the PLC and it loads the program from the card. Once the light blinking is done, the program is loaded and away we go.

We are now building the product from scratch, so the PLC has never been powered on before. We tried the same procedure to load the program from the memory card, but didn't have any luck. Does the PLC need to be setup or configured first, before you can load the program from the memory card?

If anyone has any helpful articles or youtube videos, I would appreciate it. I have been looking, but haven't found anything yet.

 

[mk42]

If the memory card is configured correctly, and the project matches the CPU part number, it should work, as far as I know.

 

[BryanG]

You shouldn't need to do anything before using the memory card, with reservations. Everything must match what the memory card is expecting to find. So if the firmware on the PLC is older than the card expects, you will get an error. Generally I have found that newer firmware will accept older programs. When you say it fails, how do you know? Red flashing lights can mean a variety of things, I thought a program hadn't copied but it was actually telling me that the supply to the Analogue Expansion wasn't connected. Have you tried connecting to the PLC with the Siemens software, the diagnostic buffer will tell you the problem.

 

[opmal7]

When I insert the memory card and turn the PLC on, the lights never stop blinking. Normally, when they stop blinking and turn solid that means the program is loaded, so I'm not sure what it means when the lights keep blinking (assuming the program has not loaded).

If there is a hardware or firmware mismatch, can I still use the program from the memory card or does a new program have to be created from scratch?

 

[moggie]

I have a product that uses a Siemens Simatic s7-1200 PLC.

My company did not write the PLC program, but we have the program on an SD card. We usually are working on existing products that are sent to us for repair, and our procedure is to install the SD card, power on the PLC and it loads the program from the card. Once the light blinking is done, the program is loaded and away we go.

We are now building the product from scratch, so the PLC has never been powered on before. We tried the same procedure to load the program from the memory card, but didn't have any luck. Does the PLC need to be setup or configured first, before you can load the program from the memory card?

If anyone has any helpful articles or youtube videos, I would appreciate it. I have been looking, but haven't found anything yet.

This may help
https://support.industry.siemens.co...1/usage-of-s7-1200-memory-card?dti=0&lc=en-WW

 

[BryanG]

Not a problem I have seen, and a web search didn't bring up anything. Any chance that someone has had an 'accident' with the memory card, or formatted it? Do you have another PLC and memory card you can try?