Wago Ipc

[MarkTTU]

OK guys I'm looking for opinions from anyone who has used the Wago IPC product. I had a supplier show me a 758-870 yesterday for the second time (he showed it to me last year as well) and I must admit there are a lot of apparent pluses to the HMI/PLC/PC all in one device, but I'm not much of a fan for PCs replacing PLCs.

Anyone using these things? Any success stories? Any horror stories?

I've used nearly 100% Automation Direct PLCs for almost 10 years now and I love them, but I must admit I like the looks of the Wago IPC.

Thanks for any comments or thoughts.

 

[ndzied1]

The IPC appears to program in CoDeSys which I've used. It is an IEC61131 language that has drivers for many hardware platforms and supports all the 61131 languages and something else called continuous function chart (CFC) which I don't understand yet.

Different hardware manufacturers license CoDeSys to run on their platforms. The base language and functionalities are the same but each mfg. has to customize the software for their hardware. This generally seems to be done with what it called Targets.

I took a quick look at some of the documentation here:
http://www.wago.com/wagoweb/documentation/navigate/nm2dk__e.htm

The screen shots shown are all in German in the Quick . If you can't read german, I would make sure that WAGO has translated all the screens before starting. Also, I couldn't find a download of the programming manual on the WAGO site.

I have used the Moeller Version of CoDeSys for a couple projects. One was an all-in-one HMI/PLC but the HMI part still programmed in its own software. The nice thing was that the CoDeSys software can output what is called a "Symbol File" that the HMI software can import and all the Tags are then automatically created in the HMI package. The other jobs I did with it I used a separate HMI from Beijer and used modbus to communicate to a standard HMI.

I'm not sure if this helps you at all but that's what I know.
... Your milage may vary

 

[BobB]

There are quite a few of these things around. I have no desire to use them at all. They are mainly small I/O count in the units and you have to wire to the door. Many have expansion I/O that can be mounted in the control panel as basically remote I/O.

My main objection is that the screen is the thing that is most likely to fail or be damaged. Then you have to replace the whole thing, apart from the fact that the machine/process cannot run for a period of time. With a separate PLC the machine/process can usually run without the screen.

I view them as a "good idea" from the marketing department.

 

[MarkTTU]

Bob, I'm not sure what you mean with the screen. This thing has a VGA (or DVI) output for any monitor to plug into. If you want a touch screen (who wouldn't) then you plug the touch screen (elo) into the VGA port (for the display) and into a USB port (for the touch part)... I would think that even if the screen died the IPC would still be running, but I'll admit I don't actually know that.

 

[BobB]

I am probably mistaken. I thought it was one of those door mounted types that are a combined HMI/PLC in one. Omron, Horner ets have them.

The Wago distributor here basically only sells I/O and terminals and so I have not seen this one. Sorry, my mistake.

 

[MarkTTU]

No worries; I'm looking for any and all opinions... Like I said in my first post, I'm not sold on replacing a PLC with a PC, but this thing appears to have lots of things going for it architecture wise and I'm told (by the supplier) that its very stable.