ProfiNet questions

[viki2000]

Hello,

What PLC, except Siemens, has Profinet included in its bus communication protocol?

What Profinet to Profinet coupler do you know except those from Siemens, Anybus and Helmholz?

[pturmel]

Prosoft makes Profinet modules for Rockwell products.  I'm pretty sure Omron products also have Profinet options.

[Otto Automation]

Just a note and PTurmel correct me if I'm wrong, If you go with prosoft to use with the Allen Bradley/Rockwell systems, I do believe that prosoft has their own software you will have to buy to make their units work with the Rockwell systems. It is not just plug and play.

[pturmel]

1 hour ago, Otto Automation said:

I do believe that prosoft has their own software you will have to buy

That has not been my experience, but I haven't used Prosoft's Profinet in some years.

[Joe E.]

It's been about 7 years for me since I set up a Prosoft PLX31-EIP-PND module to communicate between a ControlLogix and an S7-300. The software was free and easy (on the AB side). I had to get Prosoft support involved to get the Siemens side working (their instructions and samples were in TIA Portal while our system was Simatic Manager), but it worked very well once it was going.

Be aware that it will work with an S7-300 with onboard Profinet but the add-on network module has 2 versions. One will work with this while the other won't. I don't remember the catalog numbers or have the ability to look them up, but the cheaper one didn't support I/O and that's how the Prosoft module shows up to the S7. The more expensive one was supposed to work but we didn't have any to test. This is all in the S7-300 world. I don't know how it would work to use it in Portal.

[viki2000]

I use Siemens S7-1200 communicating with an HMI Siemens and 2 more devices over ProfiNet.

Siemens is in trouble lately, very long time delivery, almost impossible to work with...

I was thinking to replace the S7-1200 with another PLC, but the software must be written from scratch, then the HMI panel works also with ProfiNet. If I change to another type, then again I must remake the screens and tags..., but the main point is that e have a special device wich communicates only with ProfiNet and worse is that many customers want only ProfiNet to exchange data with our machinery.

So, I must stay with ProfiNet and a interface from ProfiNet to another protocol does not help too much, unless the entire application is remade from scratch.

The easiest way is to have another PLC which is able to communicate over ProfiNet as default bus protocol, without any other expensive interfaces in-between.

From here my initial question: what other PLC brand do you know, besides Siemens, which si able to communicate over ProfiNet?

[Goghie]

Mitsubishi iQr and Mitsubishi Q, support Profinet. Also most PLCs based on Codesys support Profinet,