Industrielle Automatisierungssysteme GmbH

PROFIBUS

Profibus Implementation for Open System Connectivity

Further informartions:
-	PROFIBUS Overview
-	System Configurator
-	PROFIBUS Components
-	Configuring PROFIBUS
-	PLC Interface
-	CFG Files

The system software EC32 is supposed to be an Open System Software and was designed to be integrated in a multi vendor environment. Because of this, we are committing strong efforts, to have options available for connections to many system families.
The first implementation was ModbusPlus, a protocol used for PLC from Modicon / Schneider.
In the second step, we implemented the communication facility for S5 PLC from Siemens, based upon a slot PC (VIPA) to be fitted into an S5 housing.
Next was the internal TCP/IP stack, now being used for UDP, TCP, Telnet and FTP.
After this we made an implementation for Interbus-S for the connection of peripheral modules.
Beginning in 1997 Siemens invented a new family of PLC controllers: the S7.
Unfortunately neither Siemens nor Vipa thought about continuing the product line for integrated PC components. Siemens claims to have something comparable: the M7. Due to our investigations this component is not really compatible for our EC32 applications and would have required a huge amount of development.
So we got to evaluate other possibilities for connecting computers to an S7 PLC.
Our final decision is now based upon the communication via ProfiBus.
Reasons:

-	ProfiBus is strongly supported by Siemens and is supposed to live for a long time
-	ProfiBus has been implemented also by other vendors of PLC’s and we expect it to give us access also to their systems in spite we have not tested it yet.
-	With company Hilscher we have found a partner, which has supplied us with the appropriate know-how and development tools. These tools have possibly saved us a year of research and investigations.

The profibus software has been implemented as an internal system function, using an identical PLC interface as with Modicon or S5 controllers. Beyond this, a driver was written for connecting FMS based communication systems without using a PLC interface.

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