Connecting to Siemens Simatic ET 200SP F

We’ve been asked to take some temperature readings in from an older machine with a Siemens PLC.

Below are the details of the PLC, but we can’t get it to connect.

Does anyone know if this is actually supported? I’ve tried with all drivers but no help. Are there other settings I can try?

We connect to them over Profibus using a profibus card in an AB rack.
Not sure what your current PLC situation is though.

Do you have the plc project? Without that, there is no way to enable access to that plc.
The recommended way to connect to S7-1500 plcs is the embedded OPC-UA server. It depends on the firmware version if this feature is available in your processor. In addition, the server has to be licensed.
There are also 3rd party opc-ua servers with support for S7-1500.
Ignition’s S7 driver can also be used if you disable the processors security mechanisms. Instructions are here.
Note that the this is a failsafe controller, so access is most probably password protected, at least for the failsafe program parts,

We normally don’t do Siemens (our project there is using Beckhoff, but there are some stand-alone machines in the line with Siemens PLCs). The client does have access to the PLC project, so it should be possible to do some modifications.

I didn’t notice it was a S7-1500 series PLC. So I’ll first try using the Siemens driver, but the other two can be a backup.

Does it work with this driver Siemens s7-1500?
Because ET200SP have a 1500 part number…
s71500

Hmm, apparently it was already configured correctly, and the driver doesn’t work…

I am pretty sure the ET200 can only talk Profinet or Profibus and not straight up ethernet.

I believe it depends the model.
In the configuration there’s an Option to enable OPC-UA

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The CPU1512 is a S7 1500 processor in the ET200SP design. You are mixing it up with the ET200 remote IO modules.

If you enabled the put/get protocol the driver will definitely work. How do you know it was correctly configured?

Ahhh yup.

Guess it will have to wait until I can actually go there, and investigate it myself. At the moment, I’m relying on the information coming from their own technical manager. I can’t meet in person due to quarantine…

They sent me a screenshot of the PLC config, but now, I realised it’s not from their PLC, but it’s a screenshot from the Ignition webpage … :roll_eyes:

There are OPC UA Servers for Siemens PLCs that connect directly to the programming interface of the PLC and allow online browsing of the PLC structure. No additional setting required. No PLC program required.
Maybe you try the OPC Server from https://tanindustrie.de

If you can’t use the onboard OPC UA server and you’re open to using a 3rd party server I happily endorse Tani. They are experts in the S7 protocol (and Siemens in general) despite it being undocumented and closed to the public.

I tried all this as well, in the end the OPC-UA enabled on the PLC (required firmware > 1.8 from memory) worked damn near perfect.

Remember if you use the native S7 stuff, you won’t have the tag browser etc and you have to address bits and words and things manually. IF you can use OPC-UA do it!

thanks for sharing and it makes sense as the communication between PLC layer and SCADA layer is typically done through OPC-UA protocol.