Direct communication between the Vision & Control system and the PLC SIEMENS S7-1200.
There are many arguments for skipping protocol gateways: lower costs, more speed, more flexibility.
Some electrical engineers simply enjoy the space gained in their cabinet. Others, the reduced effort to wire all components.
Actually, this is just a small reason, these are the real reasons why Vision & Control focused its development on direct communication between pictor® and vicosys® products with a SIEMENS PLC:
- You can directly connect a vision system to a PLC through a normal network switch. In the SIEMENS TIA development environment, the existing “modbus TCP/Server” function is added.
- You can now use the free fieldbus efficiently to exchange measurement values, control bits and serial numbers comparable to Profinet or Profibus, and to access it, the vcwin programmer uses the existing “Process Module“.
- IEMENS includes this free modbus/TCP component for the current S7-1200 series and installs it with the standard installation. Therefore, any experienced PLC programmer can activate it in a matter of minutes.
For those who want to consult the details, here you have a short video tutorial in Deutsch.