The VIPA Journal Company Newspaper of VIPA Gmbh No
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The VIPA Journal Company Newspaper of VIPA GmbH No. 5 | February 2013 Vizualisation Programming Networking SP EE IO D UD 7 ST Hardware confi guration CONTENT 2 SPEED7 Studio 5 EtherCAT master CPU 6 PROFINET ECO CPU 12 Maneuvering made easy 15 VIPA international SPEED7 Studio – Thiele chains – 18 Touring around Franconia VIPA presents its own software 2 A hot matter 10 Page 2 | February 2013 The VIPA Journal SPEED Important release of the management VIPA strengthens its market position with its integration into the Yaskawa Group system supplier. Yaskawa for its part completes its product portfolio by involving itself in the fi eld of PLC technology and can build on existing distribution channels with a strong market position and a good image in the fi eld of machinery and plant engineering. We will continue to operate on the market as VIPA with our name, corporate identity, trademarks and products and to serve our and innovation power of a middle sized customers and partners as usual. So your company combined with the security of a contact persons in sales and application will technological worldwide operating enterprise Dear ladies and gentlemen still be available. will remain unchanged. Since 20th November 2012 the company The preservation of our independence, the I look forward to continuing our successful Yaskawa Europe GmbH has held the majority durability of the commitment and the resulting cooperation with you. share of VIPA Ltd. through the planned synergies for us were crucial when choosing a shareholder change. Yaskawa Europe GmbH partner. We are convinced that we have found is an independent subsidiary of the Japanese this partner in the company Yaskawa. Yaskawa Electric AG, one of the leading global manufacturers of frequency converters, In the future Yaskawa and VIPA will be Your Wolfgang Seel servo drives and industrial robots. working together on complete automation CEO VIPA GmbH solutions, so we will be able to offer complete By the market entry with Yaskawa we fi ll an solutions starting whether PLCs, drives, or important gap in our product portfolio, which robots. I still will be CEO and shareholder at guarantees a sustainable growth in the future VIPA and Profi chip to successfully continue and will strengthen our market position as a the path of many years. The fl exibility, speed SPEED7 Studio Detached via own software tool VIPA has become big and popular as a hardware supplier who produces components and systems that are programmable and configurable with Step7 from Siemens. Now the company is launching its own automation framework. The existing philosophy can be expressed speed, interfaces and memory. and the communication processors. This is very easily: The focus of their own innova- At the same time it became clearer and clearer not available in any other systems and hence tions was compatibility with Siemens systems that the usage of the existing software tools makes them cumbersome to confi gure. regarding software and partly also the design. from Siemens combined with the possibilities of • The new I/O system SLIO with the networking The fi rst self-developed solutions were VIPA hardware could only be used with limita- via Profi net, Ethercat and Profi bus will soon compact systems. In 2003 a completely new tions or very inconveniently: have powerful SPEED7 CPUs which simply technology called SPEED7, the then fastest have to be confi gured and programmed. Hard-PLC in the industry, came onto the • So the SPEED7 CPUs have more retentivity market. fl ags, additional organisation modules, integ- So an engineering tool was required with which rated communication processors and Profi net these components combine to a system on The product developed quickly to a class of or Ethercat master functionalities that require the one hand and on the other hand allow the controllers of its own, which on the one hand a confi guration tool. technical possibilities of the VIPA controllers to was compatible with existing standards and • The use of the Speed bus, besides the classi- be used without detours. on the other hand defi ned its own standard by cal serial backplane bus, ensures a fast com- the integrated SPEED7 technology in terms of munication with the input and output modules SPEED The VIPA Journal February 2013 | Page 3 The development goals In terms of structure the following was required: synchronization between different tools. With One of the targets of the development team the database approach SPEED7 studio is alrea- was to fi lter the best out of the existing software • Consistency: Homogeneous engineering dy prepared for the creation and management worlds that are VIPA, Simatic, IEC and IT and fi t whether hardware confi guration, communi- of multi-user projects and version management. them together to a new framework. Ultimately cation and programming, or visualization. specifi cations arose with following development • Multiuser capability: Central data storage All graphics used are vector oriented and are premises: enables parallel working on a project. used for example for the photo realistic display • Scalability by easy plug in mechanism. of the modules and so enables zooming without • The focus as a user is on the programmer. • Multilingual: Easy language switching in the loss. All graphical user interfaces are multilingual • The user interface has to be intuitive, clear middle of the programming process. – so with SPEED7 Studio it is also possible to and up to date and has to have preinstalled switch the language of the surface and menus elements from the library. An engineering tool was created that consistent- during programming to simplify working in an • The user interface must enable the immediate ly visualizes the entire automation process from international environment. By using the latest start into the confi guration and program- hardware confi guration via communication software architectures it is possible - if requi- ming without having to learn a software from and programming up to visualization. Intuitive red - to expand the range of functions of the basics. user interfaces enable immediate access into engineering tools via plug-in mechanisms, or to • The syntax of S7 programming should be different modules – so additional tools from adapt to new requirements. implemented. third-party suppliers for hardware confi guration, • The editors STL, FBD and LAD and later SCL networking of different fi eld buses, programming should be part of the framework. or visualization and operation of the installations • The existing and written code, for example of are not required anymore. a Step7 CPU, should be imported and hence continue to be used. • Editors and debug tools should simplify the Up to date technologies as a basis fi nding and the diagnosis of bugs, already During the development of the engineering during the programming and later during framework the newest technologies and tools installation. such as .Net 4.0 and vector based UI visualizati- • An integrated visualization with preinstalled on with Windows Presentation Foundation were elements from the library applied. Hardware confi guration, networking, • The software should be scalable, equipped programming and visualization use the central, with variable level that can be adapted to SQL server based database. So, for examp- different skills of the programmers whether le, it is possible to access the variables of the basic, standard or advanced level. controller directly during the implementation of the visualization without the requirement of data The program modules The hardware confi guration The hardware confi guration itself was not reinvented. But now it is possible to confi gure VIPA controllers which have Speedbus, Profi bus, Ehtercat or Profi net as well as Speed7 CPUs, communica- tion processors or SLIO-I/Os with all VIPA- specifi c parameters without detours, whereby the required variables in the CPU are created automatically. graphics, the photo realistic display of the graphically. With the devices templates it is The users are supported by pre-defi ned de- modules contributes highly to the clarity – the possible to effect an executable confi guration vices templates during the confi guration of the user sees the hardware in front of him which quickly or to implement changes. hardware that can be inserted in the appropri- enables very intuitive work. The device templates include the VIPA 300S ate space by Drag&Drop. The user maintains CPUs, the SLIO Profi bus and Ethercat interface the overview by colored markings. The networking modules, the Eco panels, the Professional During the parameterization of the modules, The confi guration of the networking panels and the analog and digital 300S and values which do not correspond to the default via Profi bus, Profi net and Ethercat SLIO I/Os. values or are faulty are color-coded; the Tool- with VIPA‘s own tool does not require any fi eld- Programming Tipp gives additional information about Min, bus specifi c knowledge. Rather the SPEED7 For programming the program- Max or Default defi nitions. Studio makes different device templates availa- ming languages STL, FBD and As the display is based on vector oriented ble that are used to confi gure the networking LAD can be used, the realization of SCL is Page 4 | February 2013 The VIPA Journal SPEED Figure 3: Figure 4: Programming the functional blocks: The programming by means of The visualization of a fi lling plant (cutout): pre-built elements simplify STL, FBD and LAD is realized, SCL will follow the design. under preparation. Also a history and a trend graph are available Further features of the tool are the loss As a structuring support in the textual pro- here. free, zoom capable SVG vector graphics, gramming through syntax highlighting, for pre-confi gured dynamizations and objects, example, comments, commands, symbols or The visualization object-oriented parameterization and scripting jumps are distinguished by color.