Siemens

Siemens Devices

The Siemens drivers in Ignition support basic connections to S7 devices. Ignition connects to these PLCs via TCP/IP using the S7 protocol. Similar to Modbus and some Allen Bradley connections, the Siemens S7 devices do not support tag browsing. You can create S7 Tags manually in Ignition, or use Ignition's Tag import/export to create all of your Tags quickly in Excel or another spreadsheet program. Currently, Ignition has drivers for the following Siemens PLCs:

  • S7-300

  • S7-400

  • S7-1200

  • S7-1500

Considerations for 1200 and 1500 Devices

The following considerations and configurations changes must be made when using the S7-1200 and S7-1500 drivers.

  1. Only global DBs can be accessed

  2. The optimized block access must be turned off

  3. The access level must be "full" and the "connection mechanism" must allow GET/PUT

  4. Reads and Writes can not be used in TM/CT areas

Connection to a Device

  1. Go to the Configure section of the Gateway webpage.

  2. Scroll down and select OPC-UA Server > Devices.

  3. On the Devices page, find the blue arrow and click on Create new Device.

  4. On the Add Device Step 1: Choose Type page, select Siemens S7-1200, and click Next.

    There are four modules to choose from

    • Siemens S7-1500
      Which connects to Siemens S7-1500 PLCs over Ethernet.

    • Siemens S7-1200
      Which connects to Siemens S7-1200 PLCs over Ethernet.

    • Siemens S7-300
      Which connects to Siemens S7-300 PLCs over Ethernet.

    • Siemens S7-400
       Which connects to Siemens S7-400 PLCs over Ethernet.

  5. On the New Device page, leave all the default values and type in the following fields:
    Name: S71200
    Hostname: type the IP address, for example 10.20.4.71

  6. You can check the box for Show advanced properties? to see the additional settings, but you can keep all the defaults.

  7. Click Create New Device.
    The Devices page is displayed showing the Siemens device is successfully created and added to Ignition. The Status will show as Disconnected and then Connected.

Unlike other PLCs, but just like Modbus, Siemens devices do not support browsing, therefore you can not browse the tags by going to the OPC Connections > Quick Client in the Configure section of the Gateway. To see and browse the tags, you need to create the tags manually as described in the Addressing section.

Configuring Siemens Addressing

The S7 protocol does not support tag browsing. Therefore, you must configure all tags in the Designer. This can be done either manually, as needed, or by importing bulk using the Tags CSV import functionality.

To manually specify each address

  1. From the Designer, in the Tag Browser, right-click on Tags folder, and then go to New Tag > OPC Tag.

  2. In the Tag Editor window, as an example, you can set the following values:
    Name: Tag
    Data Type: Int4
    OPC Server: choose Ignition OPC-UA Server from the dropdown
    OPC Item Path: [S71200]IW0, the S71200 device name goes in the square brackets then you give the address to PLC which in this example is IW0 (Word at Offset 0 in the Inputs area). The Configuring Siemens Addressing section below, explains how your can construct these addresses.

  3. Click OK.
    Now you can see the Temp tag in the Tag Browser.

Address Syntax

You need a device name plus a tag address to create a tag. The device name is a known, but the tag address needs to be configured. Once you have both the device name and tag address you enter them in the in the OPC Item Path field of the Tag Editor window using the [device_name]address format, where device_name is the name of the device and address is the configured tag address which is described here.

Tag addresses are made up of three different components: Area, DataType, and Offset.

 

Area Syntax

 

DataBlocks

DBn

 

Inputs

I

 

Outputs

Q

 

Flags

M

 

Timers

T

 

Counters

C

 

 

Data Type Syntax
Signedness

Bit

X

N/A

Byte

B

Unsigned

Char

C

Signed

Word

W

Unsigned

Int

I

Signed

DWord

D

Unsigned

DInt

DI

Signed

Real

REAL

Signed

String

STRING or STRING.LEN

N/A

To form an address, you combine syntax for the desired Area and DataType with an Offset into that area.

Examples

 

Area+Data Type+Offset

 

IB0

Byte at Offset 0 in the Inputs area

IW0

Word at Offset 0 in the Inputs area

DB500,DI8

DInt at Offset 8 in DataBlock 500

ISTRING24.50

A String of length 50 starting at offset 24 in the
Inputs area

IX20.3

Bit 3 of the Byte at Offset 20 in the Inputs area

T0

Timer at offset 0 (No DataType is specified for
Timers)

C0

Counter at offset 0 (No DataType is specified for
Counters)

Offsets

It is important to note that offsets are absolute. IW0 and IW1 share a byte. To get 2 consecutive, non-overlapping words you need to address IW0 and IW2.

Bits

Bits are addressed by using the Bit DataType (X) and appending .bit to the end, where bit is in the range [0-7]. When addressing a Bit at a given offset, that offset is always treated as a Byte.

Strings

Strings are assumed to be in the S7 string format and have a max length of 210.

Timers

Timers are scaled up to a DWord and converted from S5 time format so they can represent the time in milliseconds without requiring any multipliers. When you write to a timer it is automatically converted from milliseconds into S5 time format for you. A DataType is not specified when accessing Timers.

Counters

Counters in the PLC are stored in BCD. The driver automatically converts to/from BCD for you and exposes any counter tags as UInt16 values. A DataType is not specified when accessing Counters.