Hello friends! I am a pre-development engineer in Siemens. I used to work more with math and algorithm, but recently with practical tasks. My personal feeling is that troubleshooting PLCs with real machines (such as a montage station) is really annoying, such as:
1. to repeat a test, I need to click several buttons in sequence manually. I won't/can't code a program, because I need to observe some data step by step, or coding the test program takes more time than manual operation.
2. some strange failures occurs, but I can't recreate it. I know I missed something, or background things changed, but I don't know exactly what should be fixed.
3. I have TIA Portal Trace, but it supports limited signals/tags and data length.
4, even if I have Trace function and some records, I can't use it for debugging.
For point 1 and 2, I programmed an ugly workable code to save DB data in each PLC cycle. I know there are SPS recorder or IBA recorder, but they can't solve all problems, are also quite expensive. I assume that many automation engineers may have similar complaints. I have the chance to improve future Siemens products, so I want to know more of your stories and suggestions, thanks.
1. to repeat a test, I need to click several buttons in sequence manually. I won't/can't code a program, because I need to observe some data step by step, or coding the test program takes more time than manual operation.
2. some strange failures occurs, but I can't recreate it. I know I missed something, or background things changed, but I don't know exactly what should be fixed.
3. I have TIA Portal Trace, but it supports limited signals/tags and data length.
4, even if I have Trace function and some records, I can't use it for debugging.
For point 1 and 2, I programmed an ugly workable code to save DB data in each PLC cycle. I know there are SPS recorder or IBA recorder, but they can't solve all problems, are also quite expensive. I assume that many automation engineers may have similar complaints. I have the chance to improve future Siemens products, so I want to know more of your stories and suggestions, thanks.