T
Since Siemens is well into the process of phasing out S5, I'm looking at upgrading a S5 system to S7
The BIG problem is that our current S5 HMI (com 527) is TOTALLY incompatible with S7 stuff.
In investigating this change I've come up with what I would consider the normal problems. There are certain S5 modules that have no S7 counterpart (S5 458 has 16 isolated relay outputs) and the TOTALLY brain dead change of making the S5 front module connectors incompatible with the S7 connectors, basically demanding that you rewire the system (uck.....)
Now to the HMI. I'm pretty familiar with Labview, and I've upgraded our version to the Professional Supervisory Control Developers edition. It has all the drivers for both S5 and S7. For me, it's probably the path of least resistance. I could develop the HMI using the S5 serial bus. After it's running, I could get the S5 to serially communicate with the S7 and get the HMI working off the S7 system. After all that, then I could look at doing the grunt swap work.
Problem is, I'm not sure it's the best tool for the job.
Siemens is pushing WinCC. It probably integrates easier then Labview, in that I think it will import the tags directly ( probably 300 to 400 tags ). But I know someone who previously tested WinCC and found it to slow because it was disk based instead of ram based. The Siemens guy pretty much admitted that, but said it was fixed in the current version ..... Our current S5 cycle time is pretty slow, around 150 ms, but it may get faster with the change to S7.
The people who now own the company that made our device ( a medical cyclotron ) use Wonderware's Intouch. I have no feel for this, except that from the postings, it seems like the tool a lot of people are using.
On top of all that, I'm just leery about connecting my cyclotron control to ANY box running NT or 2000 or Microsoft BSOD box. Siemens makes these dedicated terminals, but they are running Microsoft Windows CE, so is that better, or not????
Ah life in the big leagues.. lot's of questions, and not a lot of real answers. Just sales garble..
Anyway, I'm pretty sure a lot of people have already been through most of these hoops, so I'd really appreciate it if they could pass on what they learned about what went right, what went wrong and why.
thanx
:->
tb
The BIG problem is that our current S5 HMI (com 527) is TOTALLY incompatible with S7 stuff.
In investigating this change I've come up with what I would consider the normal problems. There are certain S5 modules that have no S7 counterpart (S5 458 has 16 isolated relay outputs) and the TOTALLY brain dead change of making the S5 front module connectors incompatible with the S7 connectors, basically demanding that you rewire the system (uck.....)
Now to the HMI. I'm pretty familiar with Labview, and I've upgraded our version to the Professional Supervisory Control Developers edition. It has all the drivers for both S5 and S7. For me, it's probably the path of least resistance. I could develop the HMI using the S5 serial bus. After it's running, I could get the S5 to serially communicate with the S7 and get the HMI working off the S7 system. After all that, then I could look at doing the grunt swap work.
Problem is, I'm not sure it's the best tool for the job.
Siemens is pushing WinCC. It probably integrates easier then Labview, in that I think it will import the tags directly ( probably 300 to 400 tags ). But I know someone who previously tested WinCC and found it to slow because it was disk based instead of ram based. The Siemens guy pretty much admitted that, but said it was fixed in the current version ..... Our current S5 cycle time is pretty slow, around 150 ms, but it may get faster with the change to S7.
The people who now own the company that made our device ( a medical cyclotron ) use Wonderware's Intouch. I have no feel for this, except that from the postings, it seems like the tool a lot of people are using.
On top of all that, I'm just leery about connecting my cyclotron control to ANY box running NT or 2000 or Microsoft BSOD box. Siemens makes these dedicated terminals, but they are running Microsoft Windows CE, so is that better, or not????
Ah life in the big leagues.. lot's of questions, and not a lot of real answers. Just sales garble..
Anyway, I'm pretty sure a lot of people have already been through most of these hoops, so I'd really appreciate it if they could pass on what they learned about what went right, what went wrong and why.
thanx
:->
tb