New firmware for Simatic controllers

Siemens announces the release of two firmware updates for Simat­ic con­trollers that pro­vide new func­tions. The Simat­ic S7-1500 firmware V2.8 from Siemens improves cross-device capa­bil­i­ties for data inte­gra­tion and diag­nos­tics func­tions. The new Simat­ic S7-1200 firmware V4.4 extends the com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions of the Simat­ic S7-1200, enhanc­ing cross-plat­form data trans­fer with oth­er con­trollers and high­er-lev­el or cloud-based sys­tems such as ERP, SCADA and Mind­sphere. The appli­ca­tions are numer­ous, rang­ing from indus­tri­al use to agri­cul­ture and infra­struc­ture projects.

The V2.8 firmware for the Simat­ic S7-1500 CPUs now makes remote access to the Simat­ic S7-1500 con­trollers pos­si­ble via dif­fer­ent IP net­works. Sen­si­tive email data is pro­tect­ed and encrypt­ed via secured emails with a file attach­ment. An inno­vat­ed web serv­er pro­vides easy and secure data inte­gra­tion. This allows users, for exam­ple, to make stan­dard­ized access to vari­ables for their own eval­u­a­tions. In addi­tion, the new Simat­ic S7-1500 CPUs offer a wide range of diag­nos­tics func­tions: The cross-device project trace per­mits improved plant diag­nos­tics – regard­less of the CPU involved. The diag­nos­tics func­tions for the OPC UA serv­er have also been extend­ed. Thanks to the online diag­nos­tics view, diag­nos­tics buffer entries and the OPC UA con­nec­tion dis­play, com­mu­ni­ca­tion errors can be found and rec­ti­fied more quick­ly. With the new firmware 2.8, it is only nec­es­sary to restart the OPC UA serv­er for TIA Por­tal down­loads when changes have been made to OPC UA-rel­e­vant data, which short­ens load­ing times.

The new Simat­ic S7-1200 firmware V4.4 improves con­nec­tiv­i­ty with new com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions. OPC UA Data Access as a serv­er enables stan­dard­ized hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as the ful­fil­ment of indus­try-spe­cif­ic stan­dards such as OMAC PackML or Wei­hen­stephan. This helps the user to secure­ly trans­mit sen­si­tive email data as well as machine-to-machine com­mu­ni­ca­tion via data access. The Siemens OPC UA Mod­el­ling Edi­tor (SiOME) means that users can define OPC UA infor­ma­tion mod­els as well as map exit­ing indus­try-spe­cif­ic com­pan­ion spec­i­fi­ca­tions on the Simat­ic con­trol. Option­al push-in ter­mi­nal blocks sim­pli­fy han­dling through tool-free installation.